Re:Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe'...
by kelnos on Friday March 04, 2022 @01:21PM
(#30558372)
This is indeed quite worse than the parent suggested, and I agree with your numbers.
I am curious, though, to how many people die due to the normal, continued operation of coal plants (both from mining and from the plant's actual operation). Is that something we can quantify with a reasonable degree of accuracy (like to a rough order of magnitude)?
Because even if we have a Chernobyl every 25 years that kills 150k people and gives another million some sort of disability, we have to acknowledge that operating coal plants -- as a "normal" part of their operation -- kills people too. I don't know if they are better or worse than the "amortized" 6k/year killed by nuclear in our estimate here. But it's certainly not zero.
And beyond that, burning fossil fuels destroys ecosystems, causes extinction of various animal species, and, if we do not arrest the affects of climate change, will kill millions of people due to its various effects. (Arguably, this has already killed lots of people during extreme weather events linked to climate change.) Maybe 150k people dead every 25 years in a nuclear disaster is, unfortunately, a "bargain" in comparison.
If we could scale up renewables at the same rate we could scale up nuclear, then it'd be a no-brainer: choose the former. But it's not clear that we can meet our energy needs with renewables today, even if there was a giant, global push to go fully renewable on a short time scale. Maybe it's better to risk nuclear power incidents in the medium term than continue to vomit fossil fuel byproducts into the atmosphere. But of course the general public will never make this kind of decision rationally; ultimately most of these are political decisions.
I am curious, though, to how many people die due to the normal, continued operation of coal plants (both from mining and from the plant's actual operation). Is that something we can quantify with a reasonable degree of accuracy (like to a rough order of magnitude)?
Because even if we have a Chernobyl every 25 years that kills 150k people and gives another million some sort of disability, we have to acknowledge that operating coal plants -- as a "normal" part of their operation -- kills people too. I don't know if they are better or worse than the "amortized" 6k/year killed by nuclear in our estimate here. But it's certainly not zero.
And beyond that, burning fossil fuels destroys ecosystems, causes extinction of various animal species, and, if we do not arrest the affects of climate change, will kill millions of people due to its various effects. (Arguably, this has already killed lots of people during extreme weather events linked to climate change.) Maybe 150k people dead every 25 years in a nuclear disaster is, unfortunately, a "bargain" in comparison.
If we could scale up renewables at the same rate we could scale up nuclear, then it'd be a no-brainer: choose the former. But it's not clear that we can meet our energy needs with renewables today, even if there was a giant, global push to go fully renewable on a short time scale. Maybe it's better to risk nuclear power incidents in the medium term than continue to vomit fossil fuel byproducts into the atmosphere. But of course the general public will never make this kind of decision rationally; ultimately most of these are political decisions.