Beware of scientists bearing information.....

[Umfriend]

I also wonder how deaths and deseases caused by nuclear energy compares to fossils fuels on a relative basis: we have used many more KWh generated from the latter and hence it stands to reason that in absolute numbers they kill more. I would think solar/wind and water energy compare well in that sense (although if just one solar panel hit someone on the head anywhere anytime prior to now, it'd screw up the statistics).

[Nowhere]

Water: floods because of failing dams.

[Brian Ellis]

(although if just one solar panel hit someone on the head anywhere anytime prior to now, it'd screw up the statistics).

Seriously, hydroelectricity is actually a major source of deaths, mainly due to dams bursting. Over the past 50 years, the estimate is ~250,000 but this may be higher because two major dam bursts happened in China when news releases of such events were very meagre. Known causes of hydroelectric damage:
- excessive floods (frequent)
- tornado-like phenomena (the 2 major ones in China)
- dam badly anchored (Fréjus)
- anchored rocks giving way (nearly happened at Rawyl 10 years ago)
- earthquakes
- half a mountain falling into the lake (bad event in Italy ~50 years ago)
- broken glacier falling into the lake (Mattmark)
- bad dam design/engineering/materials/construction (Turkey)
- boulder/earth dams eroding
- penstock failure (2 killed in Val d'Herens and major damage to a village only 2 years ago)

I've visited the Three Gorges project in China 3 years ago and also went ~150 km upstream and, quite frankly, it scared the s**t out of me. Not because I found any fault in the engineering or construction but because of the sheer scale of it combined with the visible unstable geology of the region (I actually saw a landslide fall into the Yangtze about 50 km upstream) and the seismic history. However, the really scary thing is there is a city at river level of ~2 million just 20 km downstream. If something did happen, the inhabitants wouldn't have a chance. In fact, I wouldn't give much hope for ~5 million, right down to Wuhan, perhaps more.

I have no info about the casualties in wind farms or solar installations but, as you say, they do not represent a large no. of TWh generated, compared with other methods. Probably installers falling would be the most frequent cause, especially for household-size installations. I'd imagine that hoisting a 3 MW generator and its rotor blades to the top of a 150 m high offshore tower in, by definition, a windy location is not exactly a sinecure, either.

[Umfriend]

LOL, indeed Brian. And thx Nowhere, had not though about that (but had not though about it well either).

My point was that nuclear energy may (or may well not) be more deadly than fossil fuels on a TWh basis. So my point actually is that as far as death and diseases are concerned, they should be compared on a TWh basis and I have no clue how that comparison would work out.

[Dr Mordrid]

Nuclear energy is only potentially deadly when you have a meltdown and the current focus of reactor design is PBMR; pebble bed modular reactors.

PBMR's cannot melt down even if all the coolant (in most designs helium) leaks out, and if it does leak out the coolant doesn't contaminate the surroundings. It just goes straight up and dissipates into space.

Because of its inherent safety small reactors could be placed in more locations. It's also under strong consideration as a nuclear powerplant for space craft.

Dr. Mordrid

[KvHagedorn]

Well, deaths due to hydroelectric are not as bad as deaths due to pollution/radiation. Why? They are clean deaths, and not random. Someone living beneath a dam can at least have the opportunity to say to themselves "this is not good.. I'm moving" but pollution kills everyone equally, and damages the whole ecosystem, and kills with regular certainty.

There really are too many people on this planet. That's the main problem. And before you tell me I'm the first who should die, I am one of only three grandchildren from one set of grandparents and the only grandchild from the other set. It's not ME that's the problem. Talk to the areas and cultures that really are exploding in population growth.

[Nowhere]

I doubt the Chinese living below Three Gorges dam can say to themselsves "I'm moving"...

BTW, I'd like to live in the backyard of the nuclear plant that's going to be built here in the next 10/15 years.
But definatelly I wouldn't like to live nearby one of our power plants - fuelled by brown coal, most effective in the world...which is just another way of saying that it absolutely dethrones any other when it comes to size (OK, guessing here about effectivenes...but it's probable); the area undergoes ecologicall catastrophe. To be fair...not so much because of the powerplant per se, but because of the mine...

[Umfriend]

Aside from meltdowns, there's also the issue of miners mining the stuff, transport of it, accidents during enrichment, transport and storage of nuclear waste. I might have forgotten one or more.

[Dr Mordrid]

First of all uranium mining is often in conjunction with other mining ex: copper or other metals. It occurs in the earths crust almost everywhere, surface and deep, in concentrations of 1-4 ppm which is about the same as tin, tungsten and molybdenum.

Since many mines are surface digs risk is no more than in any other quarry operation for copper, marble or whatever. Deeper mines up the risk of course, but no more than if one were mining coal or most certainly gold which is often mined at extreme depths. As time goes more and more mining is, thankfully, becoming mechanized or even robotic and much safer for the miners.

In process extraction is not really any more complex than many other metals. The ore is crushed then treated with acids until the metals are in solution. Then the metals are removed chemically until you tend up with uranium dioxide which, in the case of a PBMR, is formed into a rather large pellet thickly coated with a graphite moderator. These are much more robust structurally than traditional uranium fuel rods & separate control rods , which is just one aspect of the PBMR's inherent safety.

Transport is a red herring used by enviro wackos when nothing else files. The transport vessels used in the US are more than tough enough. Testing includes them being loaded onto semi's and crashed head-on into each other at 60 mph or even being shot with howitzers. Given that they survive these tests I sincerely doubt a fender bender at 45 mph is going to be a problem

Storage here is also becoming a red herring. The Yucca Flats storage facility is due to open soon now that the political wars are over. YC is a monsterously big facility mined under a mountain in Nevada in the middle of a desert full of tumbleweeds and tarantulas. Compared to YC the Australian desert is a paradise.

Dr. Mordrid

[Brian Ellis]

LOL, indeed Brian. And thx Nowhere, had not though about that (but had not though about it well either).

My point was that nuclear energy may (or may well not) be more deadly than fossil fuels on a TWh basis. So my point actually is that as far as death and diseases are concerned, they should be compared on a TWh basis and I have no clue how that comparison would work out.

Of the major electricity generating methods, nukes are heads above all the others as the safest, even counting Chernobyl, TMI, Windscale etc. In China alone, 6,000-8,000 miners are killed annually winning coal for power stations (and those figures are the known ones) and that's quite apart from those killed as a result of burning the stuff. I remember, in Wushan (not Wuhan, which is 400 km away), there is a semi-covered street devoted to restaurants and each one has a coal stove resembling a mini-blast furnace. The sulfurous fumes in that street are something to be believed. That shows the quality of the coal that is available there - and that's the high quality stuff, not what is burnt in power stations.

[Dr Mordrid]

Yup.

And after hydro the next cleanest power stations are probably those that use natural gas, which makes up a very large perentage of the stations in the US. The downside is that this same fuel is used for heating most homes in the northern portions of North America.

This load on local gas supplies, huge as they are, can create artificial shortages when there are delivery problems such as those created by this years gulf hurricanes. This in turn is driving home heating costs beyond the breaking point.

Dr. Mordrid

[Nowhere]

Cleanest, but terrible when it comes to CO2, I think...

[Dr Mordrid]

Yes, and this is why there is such pressure here to go more nuclear. Currently it's only 20% of our power mix, but IMO it should be more lke 50%. Otherwise we'll keep running into the same home heating and pollution issues as in the past.

Dr. Mordrid

[Brian Ellis]

Well, natural gas is reasonably clean because it is reasonably pure methane, as delivered to where it is burnt. But it darn well ain't pure when it comes out of the ground. It therefore requires extensive treatment to purify it and this is polluting.

In terms of greenhouse gases (GHGs), the actual combustion produces ~2¾ kg of CO2 for every kg of NG burnt. However, as methane itself is MUCH worse than CO2 as a GHG, when viewed holistically, the GHG emissions when using NG are WORSE than any other fossil fuel, including coal. See http://www.cypenv.org/world/Files/methane.htm for calculations demonstrating this.

For the anecdote, the Aswan dam project in Egypt actually causes MORE GHG emissions than if the electricity produced were generated from coal, oil or NG, because all the gigatonnes of organic silt deposited annually decomposes anaerobically at the bottom of Lake Nasser and is converted to methane.

I agree that nuke is the only way we can go forward, with our current technology, in a MAJOR attempt to limit GHG emissions. Renewables are fine but are limited.

[DGhost]

Yes, and this is why there is such pressure here to go more nuclear. Currently it's only 20% of our power mix, but IMO it should be more lke 50%. Otherwise we'll keep running into the same home heating and pollution issues as in the past.

Dr. Mordrid

not in my back yard! 3 mile island! omg babies with three heads!

errr