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Coal power kills 25 people per TWh vs nuclear's 0.04 (yes that includes the 4000 people who died at Chernobyl and the 1 person who died in Fukushima). [1] The
by arcticbull 4y ago
Coal power kills 25 people per TWh vs nuclear's 0.04 (yes that includes the 4000 people who died at Chernobyl and the 1 person who died in Fukushima). [1]
The US generates ~22% of its power from coal, about 900TWh. As such, coal kills 22,500 people per year in America - five and a half Chernobyl's per year. [2]
Meanwhile the US generates ~19% of its power from nuclear, about 800TWh. This accounts for 32 deaths. [2]
The disparity is so huge that even if you include the 2202 people who died evacuating the area around the Fukushima plant (who may well have evacuated anyways due to the tsunami), the nuclear power plant saved significantly more lives than it cost vs. having a coal, oil or natural gas plant there.
[edit] For those curious about the math, the Fukushima plant has a nameplate 5306MW capacity and operated from 1979-2011. That means it generated a maximum of ~1500TWh. Based on the numbers in [1]:
- A coal plant at Fukushima would have killed 36,900.
- An oil plant would have killed 27,600.
- A natural gas plant would have killed 4,200.
- A biomass plant would have killed 6,900.
- Hydro would have killed 1,950.
So the second-worst nuclear accident in history was safer than a natural gas power plant even if you count the worst-case metric of everyone in the area who died leaving the area they may have left anyways.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
[2] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3
- ncmncm 4y agoCoal is being phased out. There is no point in talking about coal.
- arcticbull 4y agoGood news, the data in [1] shows its safety numbers have it sandwiched between wind and solar, and it produces significantly less greenhouse gas emissions than either (although all three are roughly zero).
- labster 4y agoIs it? Has anyone told China, India, and Australia that yet?
- merely-unlikely 4y agoOr the UK. UK Extends Life of Third Coal Plant to Secure Winter Electricity https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-13/uniper-extends-life-of-uk-coal-unit-to-secure-winter-electricity https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-13/uniper-ex...
- ncmncm 4y agoWars trigger emergency measures. It would be extremely foolish to project this as a trend.
- ncmncm 4y agoWho is building new coal plants? Who does not have plans to close coal plants? Who is exploring for new coal reserves?
- lern_too_spel 4y agoChina is building new coal plants. https://www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/press/7488/plans-for-new-coal-plants-in-china-rebound-with-8-63-gw-approved-in-the-first-quarter-of-2022/ https://www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/press/7488/plans-for-new...
- ncmncm 4y agoChina announces plenty, breaks ground for less. Announcements are cheap. Likely, they will not end up fueling any they do build, because it costs too much. China's command economy creates perverse incentives that do not translate to the outer world. And, announced plans often do not reflect reality. They have also announced >200 new nukes, and last I checked had broken ground on three. I doubt those will end up operating, even if finished, because of cost. But they might be, because [see above].
- arcticbull 4y agoChina has tripled their nuclear power generation capacity from 2014 to 2019 and doubled its share of the generation mix. I can't think of any reason they'd stop. They're planning on building 30 reactors in OBOR countries by 2030 [2] and 150 domestic ones by 2035. > China is one of the world's largest producers of nuclear power. The country ranks third in the world both in total nuclear power capacity installed and electricity generated, accounting for around one tenth of global nuclear power generated. They're going to be a global nuclear powerhouse. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-nuclearpower/china-could-build-30-belt-and-road-nuclear-reactors-by-2030-official-idUSKCN1TL0HZ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-nuclearpower/china-...
- kortex 4y agoGermany's energiewende has been faltering even before the energy crisis. But what do they have a ton of? I can guarantee their coal consumption will increase before it even thinks about dropping again.
- ncmncm 4y agoEurope is in a war-driven crisis. Conclusions from activities of the moment would be foolish, at best, where not actually disingenuous and duplicitous.
- pydry 4y agoFaltering how? Everybody's coal consumption in Europe will go up this year. One of the few viable quick replacements for gas is power plants that were about to be turned off.
- redanddead 4y agoDamn, nuclear seems so obvious... though I know some people really hate it too. Seems very controversial, and fascinating in a way. Maybe we will react the same way to other advanced technologies, like cloning, AI, stem cell research e.g. instant shutdown. Lots of people are even worried about CERN... monkey logic. My province gets 90% of its electricity from hydro though, I'm glad I don't have to think about this issue too much
- EB66 4y agoI think this logic is flawed. Oil, coal, gas, hydro, etc inflict casualties gradually and predictably. They are, generally speaking, not capable of the sudden region-wide catastrophic disasters that nuclear power is capable of. Those are rare events. The Poisson distribution, with regard to inflicting mass casualties, is completely different for nuclear power. We haven't had a true nuclear catastrophe yet. We came close with Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, but those events were not nearly as bad as they could have been. The number of casualties could have been orders of magnitude higher. In other words, our sample size with nuclear power is small. All it would take is one nuclear catastrophe and the safety stats averaged over the last century suddenly look much different.
- samatman 4y agoThis is comprehensively untrue. No nuclear plant built since Chernobyl will have an incident as bad as Chernobyl. Passive safety is a given now. Your emotion-driven conservatism has to be weighed against the real harms caused by other viable baseline power systems. Advocacy against nuclear power is advocacy for fossil fuels, like it or not.
- imtringued 4y ago>No nuclear plant built since Chernobyl will have an incident as bad as Chernobyl Fukushima is older than Chernobyl. This type of thinking is how these catastrophes happen. People keep obsolete designs in operation for 50 years or more and basically make any safety gains today pointless.
- EB66 4y ago> This is comprehensively untrue... Your emotion-driven conservatism... I think your choice in phrasing speaks more to your emotional state than mine. > No nuclear plant built since Chernobyl will have an incident as bad as Chernobyl. You are discounting the fact that many of the nuclear reactors that remain in operation today were designed decades ago and were built decades ago. Of course newer nuclear technology is safer -- I don't think anyone would ever disagree with that. But we are considering the safety of nuclear power as it exists today. Why would we omit nuclear reactors that are currently in operation today (and will continue to be in operation for quite some time) from the discussion?
- wrycoder 4y agoIt is very likely that the “4000 deaths” due to Chernobyl is vastly overstated. Actual deaths at the event and subsequently are less than 100. The 4000 is a projection that ignores the biological process of mutation repair.[0] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_...
- oxfordmale 4y agoThis completely ignores the stress of evacuating your home town and the fear of having been exposed to a cancer inducing radiation dose. Even ignoring those it would have resulted in poverty for those who had to evacuate and poverty is a known cause of increase death rates
- arcticbull 4y agoThose were included in the 4000 deaths number. Irrational though the fears were they led to people believing they were 'contaminated' and committing suicide, etc. The overwhelming majority of cancers were thyroid which is 99% curable (especially when you're monitoring for it).
- akamaka 4y agoA coal plant at Fukushima would have killed zero people if we spent $200 billion on containing its pollution, which is what it will cost to clean up the radiation from the disaster.
- arcticbull 4y agoAnd the CO2 emissions leading to rising sea levels? The mining? Transportation? And where do you plan to put the concentrated uranium, thorium, mercury, etc from the smoke stacks? These are all large sources of deaths. If you spend $200B on one plant, the economics of that are nuts, right, which is why we don't. You'd have to spend $200B on each plant, where nuclear you'd have spent $200B twice in the last 60 years. These are of course just ballpark numbers.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- vkou 4y agoYou'd also need to clean up the pollution of all the other coal plants, the counterparties to the hundreds and thousands of reactors that didn't explode. Which we can't do for ~any amount of money, and definitely not for 200 billion.