Death rates from energy production per TWh

Re:Death rates from energy production per TWh by codingdave on Tuesday May 14, 2019 @10:13AM (#19909625)

I've worked in oil & gas, and the deaths come primarily from human error, which increases as operations scale up, as you end up hiring people who are not already experienced at running plants, and have to train them up -- mistakes happen.

So what we need to ask to be sure nuclear is really as safe as the number makes it appear is... what happens when we scale up and introduce more new employees, and more errors? What is the worst thing that can happen if a new worker makes a bone-headed move and causes an incident?

I honestly don't know the answer, and would be interested in hearing more. But I'm not going to be sold on nuclear safety by a chart, not when I've seen how crazy hard it is to keep a large operations staff in energy plants safety-conscious enough to prevent accidents, injury, and deaths. These are human issues that need to be addressed to be sure safety levels stay on track.

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Re:Death rates from energy production per TWh by Ettvatre on Tuesday May 14, 2019 @10:17AM (#19909670)

> I've worked in oil & gas, and the deaths come primarily from human error

The article says:

> Deaths related to air pollution are dominant, typically accounting for greater than 99% of the total.

I understand that you are talking about a subset of the data the article are talking about. But if 99% is due to pollution then it sounds like your subset is not so relevant.

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Re:Death rates from energy production per TWh by codingdave on Tuesday May 14, 2019 @10:26AM (#19909788)

Thank you, I had missed that.

While that does strengthen the point of the chart, it doesn't invalidate my concerns. It was almost 10 years ago now, but I recall an incident that made national news, when a gas hub in Texas exploded, and there were impressive, but sobering, photos of flames shooting 500 feet into the air from the resulting fire. That is one worst-cases for oil & gas. Some of the spills we've had from tankers are other worst-cases. And they do happen.

So again, I need to know what the worst-case for nuclear is before I'm going to be sold on it. Because if it scales to the capacity of our gas industry... something will happen. And we need to know what it will be and be ready to handle it.

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Re:Death rates from energy production per TWh by solveit on Tuesday May 14, 2019 @10:35AM (#19909880)

That's nowhere near a worst case for oil&gas. It's the most visible spectacular case. The worst case is mass extinction events due to climate change. The worst case that's actually happened is a million deaths/yr due to air pollution. Accidents are barely a blip in the calculus, the bulk of the damage happens even when everything is working as intended.

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Re:Death rates from energy production per TWh by codingdave on Tuesday May 14, 2019 @10:45AM (#19909994)

You don't have to sell me on the poisonous nature of oil & gas. It is a given that those are bad ideas and need to go away. The real debate is wind/solar/geothermal/hydro. Once pollution and climate change is removed from the equation, accidents absolutely come into the calculus.

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