The Fukushima meltdowns may have derailed hopes that American will be upping its investments in nuclear energy anytime soon. And no wonder: It wasn't but a couple days after the tsunami that you regularly saw misguided "environmentalists" claiming there's no way we can prevent disasters like the one that struck Japan.
But the fact is, these arguments aren't based in fact, and this simple, utterly powerful infographic by famed business writer Seth Godin illustrates why. What you see are the deaths per terawatt hour of energy produced:
Shocking, huh? The data it's drawn from is about as reliable as it gets: The World Health Organization's figures on worker deaths in various industries. As Godin writes:
Vivid is not the same as true. It's far easier to amplify sudden and horrible outcomes than it is to talk about the slow, grinding reality of day to day strife. That's just human nature. Not included in this chart are deaths due to global political instability involving oil fields, deaths from coastal flooding and deaths due to environmental impacts yet unmeasured, all of which skew it even more if you think about it.
This chart unsettles a lot of people, because there must be something wrong with it. Further proof of how easy it is to fear the unknown and accept what we've got.
We're betting that the tragedy in Japan sets back nuclear energy in the U.S. by at least a decade. But make no mistake: That's not because of science or facts. It's because of politics, and an irrational fear we have of nuclear power that's a relic of the 1950s.
Do you have an opinion about nuclear power? About the relative safety of one form of power over another? How did you come to this opinion?
For every person killed by nuclear power generation, 4,000 die due to coal, adjusted for the same amount of power produced... You might very well have excellent reasons to argue for one form over another. Not the point of this post. The question is: did you know about this chart? How does it resonate with you?
I think that any time reality doesn't match your expectations, it means that marketing was involved. Perhaps it was advertising, or perhaps deliberate story telling by an industry. Or perhaps it was just the stories we tell one another in our daily lives. It's sort of amazing, even to me, how much marketing colors the way we see the world--our reaction (either way) to this chart is proof of it.
Comparing deaths/TWh for all energy sources
I (Seth Godin) wrote this back in 2008 and with one new death that is somewhat nuclear energy related (a death at one of the japanese nuclear plants following the 8.9 earthquake) the statistics are not changed. Japan should have had sealed backup diesel generators or updated some of their designs. However, nuclear still compares very, very well to the other energy sources. The air pollution data is mainly from the World Health Organization and the european study Externe. The World Health Organization compiled peer reviewed health studies on air pollution from many institutions. Occupational health and safety statistics track the deaths of workers in the different industries.
Energy Source Death Rate (deaths per TWh) Coal – world average 161 (26% of world energy, 50% of electricity) Coal – China 278 Coal – USA 15 Oil 36 (36% of world energy) Natural Gas 4 (21% of world energy) Biofuel/Biomass 12 Peat 12 Solar (rooftop) 0.44 (less than 0.1% of world energy) Wind 0.15 (less than 1% of world energy) Hydro 0.10 (europe death rate, 2.2% of world energy) Hydro - world incl Banqiao) 1.4 (about 2500 TWh/yr and 171,000 Banqiao dead) Nuclear 0.04 (5.9% of world energy)
COMMENTARY: The problem with this comparision of deaths caused by different energy sources, is that they are just estimates, and deaths can occur any number of ways and they occur over lengthy periods of time. For example, of the 400+ workers asked to work on the Chernobyl disaster, only one is alive today, and she is having a variety of health issues related to exposure to radiation.
Precautions to prevent the safety of nuclear power plant workers and civilians are extremely tight, and thankfully, there haven't been that many nuclear accidents other than the highly publicized Three Mile Island (US) nuclear reactor near meltdown, Chernobyl (Russia) and the Dai-Ichi nuclear reactor plant at Fukushima, Japan. Those are the three major ones. It is beginning to look like the Dai-Ichi nuclear reactor plant at Fukushima, Japan may match Chernobyl for nuclear fallout intensity.
We all know that the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan that killed 250,000 Japanese instantly. At least three to four times more died due to radiation poisoning in the after-math of the explosiions, and countless more died from the effects of radiation exposures.
The key difference between deaths caused by nuclear energy and other sources of energy, is the fear factor that nuclear fallout and exposure to radiation causes civilians. Radiation can go through four feet of concrete. Simply closing the window or door doesn't stop being exposed to nuclear radiation. That's the difference between smoke or carbon emissions from coal plants, gas and oil.
You don't know the total number of casualties for years or decades. With nuclear fallout the ground, buildings, flora, water, everything that was exposed to nuclear radiation, remain dangerous for decades or thousands of years. It leaves a permanent scar on the landscape that will always be there for many, many years.
If you were to compare FEAR by different energy sources, nuclear energy would be the big black bar.
Courtesy of an article dated March 25, 2011 appearing in Fast Company Design and an article dated March 13, 2011 appearing in NextBigFuture
It is a sad fact that mass employment industries produce workers' deaths from time to time. So it is a good thing that many more are becoming independent for their energy supply.
Posted by: natural energy resources | 08/24/2011 at 03:01 AM
That is worst thing it can get. Glad it's controllable.
Posted by: title bond | 04/19/2011 at 05:59 AM