Safety of energy sources: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 11:15, 8 June 2012

The safety or danger of energy sources is usually discussed in the context of nuclear energy - but what is the actual impact of the various sources of power, including nuclear, solar and coal?

A comparison in a blog post, Deaths per TWH by energy source^[1] (TWh = terawatt hour) concludes that:

Coal is by far the most deadly (161 deaths per TWh, largely due to the health effects of air pollution) - however US coal has much lower fatality rate (15 deaths per TWh, which we could speculate to be due to different composition in coal resulting in different levels of pollution, or to more efficient power plants and anti-pollution equipment in the US, or a combination of both^{[expansion needed]}).
Renewable energy sources are much lower - of these solar rooftop installations are estimated to be the highest based on falls from roofs during installation (0.44 deaths per TWh, though actual figures are not available, so this is estimated based on deaths during roof tiling). Electricians working on Solar installations also can face additional risks because functioning solar panels are producing live current as long as they are in sunlight.
Nuclear energy is given in the blog post as the lowest, at 0.04 deaths per TWh. However, if you run the numbers you can see that the whole premise of the blog post is propaganda. If you go back to the earlier post where he published the numbers. The blog states talking about Chernoybl:
- "Averaging about 2100 TWh from 1985-2005 or a total of 42,000 TWh. So those 50 deaths would be 0.0012 deaths/TWh. If those possible 4000 deaths occur over the next 25 years, then with 2800 TWh being assumed average for 2005 through 2030, then it would be 4000 deaths over 112,000 TWh generated over 45 years or 0.037 deaths/TWh."

This is a fairly low estimate on the number of deaths from nuclear power over its history (itself a very controversial topic). If you use some more recent numbers on the high end - See Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment is an English translation of the 2007 Russian publication Chernobyl. It was published in 2009 by the New York Academy of Sciences in their Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. It presents an analysis of scientific literature and concludes that medical records between 1986, the year of the accident, and 2004 reflect 985,000 premature deaths as a result of the radioactivity released.^[2] So if we take out our calculator and assume no other deaths (a very conservative assumption) we get 7.8 deaths/TWh using the blog's electricity values. That number of course is incomplete as it doesn't include any other deaths (e.g. Uranium mining, likely cancer deaths from Japan's latest nuclear disaster, etc.) - and I did not verify the electricity generation numbers (this will increase every year and bring the deaths/TWh value down) -so this calculation needs to be dynamic and be completed with much more rigor. It would also be better to use some sort of "premature death years" for the quantification rather than simply deaths.

There are other factors not accounted for here:

Nuclear has the most terrifying of worst case scenarios in the short term, in terrorists or "rogue states" gaining and using nuclear weapons. This has not happened to date, and thus is not included in the statistics - to ignore this is to risk a black swan event. The risk of it happening is also a reality that affects decisions of international policy and war.
Coal has the greatest negative impact on a long term threat, in increasing our rush towards climate change

Footnotes

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@@ Line 3: / Line 3: @@
 {{warning
 |Warning - unverified calculations
-|This page depends heavily on calculations taken from the ''Next Big Future'' blog. These calculations need to be checked, and laid out in more detail (perhaps putting all working on a subpage).
+| All the numbers from the Next Big Future blog appear to be wrong/inaccurate/biased -- someone should redo all of them and only cite the peer reviewed literature.}}
-}}
 The safety or danger of energy sources is usually discussed in the context of [[nuclear energy]] - but what is the actual impact of the various sources of power, including nuclear, solar and coal?
@@ Line 11: / Line 10: @@
 * Coal is by far the most deadly (161 deaths per TWh, largely due to the health effects of [[air pollution]]) - however US coal has much lower fatality rate (15 deaths per TWh, which we could speculate to be due to different composition in coal resulting in different levels of pollution, or to more efficient power plants and anti-pollution equipment in the US, or a combination of both{{sp}}).
 * [[Renewable energy]] sources are much lower - of these solar rooftop installations are estimated to be the highest based on falls from roofs during installation (0.44 deaths per TWh, though actual figures are not available, so this is estimated based on deaths during roof tiling). Electricians working on Solar installations also can face additional risks because functioning solar panels are producing live current as long as they are in sunlight.
-* Nuclear energy is given as the lowest, at 0.04 deaths per TWh.
+* Nuclear energy is given in the blog post as the lowest, at 0.04 deaths per TWh. However, if you run the numbers you can see that the whole premise of the blog post is propaganda. If you go back to the earlier post where he published the numbers. The blog states talking about Chernoybl:
+** "Averaging about 2100 TWh from 1985-2005 or a total of 42,000 TWh. So those 50 deaths would be 0.0012 deaths/TWh. If those possible 4000 deaths occur over the next 25 years, then with 2800 TWh being assumed average for 2005 through 2030, then it would be 4000 deaths over 112,000 TWh generated over 45 years or 0.037 deaths/TWh."
+This is a fairly low estimate on the number of deaths from nuclear power over its history (itself a very controversial topic). If you use some more recent numbers on the high end - See ''Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment'' is an English translation of the 2007 Russian publication ''Chernobyl''. It was published in 2009 by the New York Academy of Sciences in their ''Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences''. It presents an analysis of scientific literature and concludes that medical records between 1986, the year of the accident, and 2004 reflect 985,000 premature deaths as a result of the radioactivity released.<ref>[http://www.nyas.org/publications/annals/Detail.aspx?cid=f3f3bd16-51ba-4d7b-a086-753f44b3bfc1 Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 15 March 2011.] see also [http://www.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/planet-2/report/2006/4/chernobylhealthreport.pdf].</ref> So if we take out our calculator and assume no other deaths (a very conservative assumption) we get 7.8 deaths/TWh using the blog's electricity values. That number of course is incomplete as it doesn't include any other deaths (e.g. Uranium mining, likely cancer deaths from Japan's latest nuclear disaster, etc.) - and I did not verify the electricity generation numbers (this will increase every year and bring the  deaths/TWh value down) -so this calculation needs to be dynamic and be completed with much more rigor. It would also be better to use some sort of "premature death years" for the quantification rather than simply deaths.
+{{delete| This entire page needs major work. To do this right would be a detailed scientific study - I am not sure if advertising the blog posts miscalculations on Appropedia is good precedent to set. I re-recommend deletion. --[[User:Fixer|Fixer]] 04:15, 8 June 2012 (PDT)}}
 There are other factors not accounted for here:

Safety of energy sources: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 11:15, 8 June 2012

Footnotes

See also