How many people are killed by powerplants?

[cosmicalstorm]

There have been a number of debates in my social circle recently because of Fukushima. Here in Sweden people have always been scared of nuclear power and many people I know are now acting that this is ultimate proof of the evil of nuclear power (I would go so far as to say that I could smell the disappointment in the tone of voice of my father when the reports of 10 million times higher radiation values where withdrawn!).

Now I have been pondering a question lately, does there exist some general breakdown of how many humans are killed by the various types of powerplants that we use? I have been looking around but there doesn't seem to be any comprehensive source. Here are the fundamental questions that I have. If anyone could answer one or several I would be thankful.
What is the total casualty-count caused by the use of nuclear power for energy production since it began in the 50's?
Roughly how many die from cancer and such due to coal-power per year?
How many have died due to major dam collapses during the past seventy years or so?
(I know the Banqiao incident alone seems to have produced casualty counts close to the Hiroshima bombing, yet few seems to have ever heard about it!)

Also, with regards to wind and solar, lets say we moved as fast as possible to use these as our core energy producers, what would the average monthly electrical bill be per consumer?

I know it's rude to machine-gun questions like this and I apologize, but it would be very interesting to see what people have to say.

[Zac Naloen]

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog ... eting.html

I found this the other day when having a similar debate, essentially... the number killed by nuclear even taking into account accidents is minimal compared to those killed by coal and oil.

Or at least, so this blogger and his use of statistics proclaim.

[someone_else]

In the tread about Japan's late troubles Steel posted this, that seems the most reliable data.

Just look at the amount of coal miners that die per year with wikipedia and realize that noone gives a shit about them even if the number is quite significant, just because there isn't Evil Radiation involved.

[Rahvin]

From here:

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 including Banqiao) 1.4 (about 2500 TWh/yr and 171,000 Banqiao dead)
Nuclear 0.04 (5.9% of world energy)

Supposedly this was compiled using a variety of data from organizations like the WHO and the IAEA. Take it how you will, I have no idea how much confidence to assign to this source, but it looks appropriate based on other data I've seen.

[Rahvin]

In the tread about Japan's late troubles Steel posted this, that seems the most reliable data.

Just look at the amount of coal miners that die per year with wikipedia and realize that noone gives a shit about them even if the number is quite significant, just because there isn't Evil Radiation involved.

Except of course there is radiation involved - people living in the stack shadow of a coal plant are notably more likely to develop radiation-related cancers due to fly ash. Coal naturally contains Uranium and other radioactive isotopes, of course. You're more likely to experience a radiation-related health concern living near a coal power plant than a nuclear one.

The public perception is, as ever, dumb.

[Steel]

Scientific American 2007 quantifies the difference in radiation outputs between coal and nuclear, coal depositing over 100 times as much radioactive waste into the environment as a nuclear plant generating the same quantity of energy.

Also note that the deaths per TWh figure for nuclear can vary wildly if you use the actual deaths figure from Chernobyl: ~50, the predicted over all future time figure: ~4000, or just make up a very big number.

[FSTargetDrone]

Scientific American 2007 quantifies the difference in radiation outputs between coal and nuclear, coal depositing over 100 times as much radioactive waste into the environment as a nuclear plant generating the same quantity of energy.

Also note that the deaths per TWh figure for nuclear can vary wildly if you use the actual deaths figure from Chernobyl: ~50, the predicted over all future time figure: ~4000, or just make up a very big number.

Right [url=ttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm? ... lear-waste]here[/url]:

Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste

By burning away all the pesky carbon and other impurities, coal power plants produce heaps of radiation

By Mara Hvistendahl | December 13, 2007

The popular conception of nuclear power is straight out of The Simpsons: Springfield abounds with signs of radioactivity, from the strange glow surrounding Mr. Burn's nuclear power plant workers to Homer's low sperm count. Then there's the local superhero, Radioactive Man, who fires beams of "nuclear heat" from his eyes. Nuclear power, many people think, is inseparable from a volatile, invariably lime-green, mutant-making radioactivity.

Coal, meanwhile, is believed responsible for a host of more quotidian problems, such as mining accidents, acid rain and greenhouse gas emissions. But it isn't supposed to spawn three-eyed fish like Blinky.

Over the past few decades, however, a series of studies has called these stereotypes into question. Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy. * [See Editor's Note at end of page 2]

At issue is coal's content of uranium and thorium, both radioactive elements. They occur in such trace amounts in natural, or "whole," coal that they aren't a problem. But when coal is burned into fly ash, uranium and thorium are concentrated at up to 10 times their original levels.

Fly ash uranium sometimes leaches into the soil and water surrounding a coal plant, affecting cropland and, in turn, food. People living within a "stack shadow"—the area within a half- to one-mile (0.8- to 1.6-kilometer) radius of a coal plant's smokestacks—might then ingest small amounts of radiation. Fly ash is also disposed of in landfills and abandoned mines and quarries, posing a potential risk to people living around those areas.

In a 1978 paper for Science, J. P. McBride at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and his colleagues looked at the uranium and thorium content of fly ash from coal-fired power plants in Tennessee and Alabama. To answer the question of just how harmful leaching could be, the scientists estimated radiation exposure around the coal plants and compared it with exposure levels around boiling-water reactor and pressurized-water nuclear power plants.

The result: estimated radiation doses ingested by people living near the coal plants were equal to or higher than doses for people living around the nuclear facilities. At one extreme, the scientists estimated fly ash radiation in individuals' bones at around 18 millirems (thousandths of a rem, a unit for measuring doses of ionizing radiation) a year. Doses for the two nuclear plants, by contrast, ranged from between three and six millirems for the same period. And when all food was grown in the area, radiation doses were 50 to 200 percent higher around the coal plants.

McBride and his co-authors estimated that individuals living near coal-fired installations are exposed to a maximum of 1.9 millirems of fly ash radiation yearly. To put these numbers in perspective, the average person encounters 360 millirems of annual "background radiation" from natural and man-made sources, including substances in Earth's crust, cosmic rays, residue from nuclear tests and smoke detectors.

Dana Christensen, associate lab director for energy and engineering at ORNL, says that health risks from radiation in coal by-products are low. "Other risks like being hit by lightning," he adds, "are three or four times greater than radiation-induced health effects from coal plants." And McBride and his co-authors emphasize that other products of coal power, like emissions of acid rain–producing sulfur dioxide and smog-forming nitrous oxide, pose greater health risks than radiation.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) maintains an online database of fly ash–based uranium content for sites across the U.S. In most areas, the ash contains less uranium than some common rocks. In Tennessee's Chattanooga shale, for example, there is more uranium in phosphate rock.

Robert Finkelman, a former USGS coordinator of coal quality who oversaw research on uranium in fly ash in the 1990s, says that for the average person the by-product accounts for a miniscule amount of background radiation, probably less than 0.1 percent of total background radiation exposure. According to USGS calculations, buying a house in a stack shadow—in this case within 0.6 mile [one kilometer] of a coal plant—increases the annual amount of radiation you're exposed to by a maximum of 5 percent. But that's still less than the radiation encountered in normal yearly exposure to X-rays.

So why does coal waste appear so radioactive? It's a matter of comparison: The chances of experiencing adverse health effects from radiation are slim for both nuclear and coal-fired power plants—they're just somewhat higher for the coal ones. "You're talking about one chance in a billion for nuclear power plants," Christensen says. "And it's one in 10 million to one in a hundred million for coal plants."

Radiation from uranium and other elements in coal might only form a genuine health risk to miners, Finkelman explains. "It's more of an occupational hazard than a general environmental hazard," he says. "The miners are surrounded by rocks and sloshing through ground water that is exuding radon."

Developing countries like India and China continue to unveil new coal-fired plants—at the rate of one every seven to 10 days in the latter nation. And the U.S. still draws around half of its electricity from coal. But coal plants have an additional strike against them: they emit harmful greenhouse gases.

With the world now focused on addressing climate change, nuclear power is gaining favor in some circles. China aims to quadruple nuclear capacity to 40,000 megawatts by 2020, and the U.S. may build as many as 30 new reactors in the next several decades. But, although the risk of a nuclear core meltdown is very low, the impact of such an event creates a stigma around the noncarbon power source.

The question boils down to the accumulating impacts of daily incremental pollution from burning coal or the small risk but catastrophic consequences of even one nuclear meltdown. "I suspect we'll hear more about this rivalry," Finkelman says. "More coal will be mined in the future. And those ignorant of the issues, or those who have a vested interest in other forms of energy, may be tempted to raise these issues again."

*Editor's Note (posted 12/30/08): In response to some concerns raised by readers, a change has been made to this story. The sentence marked with an asterisk was changed from "In fact, fly ash—a by-product from burning coal for power—and other coal waste contains up to 100 times more radiation than nuclear waste" to "In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy." Our source for this statistic is Dana Christensen, an associate lab director for energy and engineering at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as well as 1978 paper in Science authored by J.P. McBride and colleagues, also of ORNL.

As a general clarification, ounce for ounce, coal ash released from a power plant delivers more radiation than nuclear waste shielded via water or dry cask storage.

[someone_else]

Except of course there is radiation involved - people living in the stack shadow of a coal plant are notably more likely to develop radiation-related cancers due to fly ash.

I was talking of miners dying after explosions, cave-ins... you know, the usual stuff.
That alone makes a significant pile of dead bodies per year, while nuclear stuff can't claim so huge killscores witout inflating Chernobyl's own (only?) killscore.
Cancers are on top of that.
Lung problems due to pollutants released in the atmosphere (and the acid rains from the sulphur dumped in the atmosphere by burning coal) are another important killer only coal and oil have.

[Rahvin]

Except of course there is radiation involved - people living in the stack shadow of a coal plant are notably more likely to develop radiation-related cancers due to fly ash.

I was talking of miners dying after explosions, cave-ins... you know, the usual stuff.
That alone makes a significant pile of dead bodies per year, while nuclear stuff can't claim so huge killscores witout inflating Chernobyl's own (only?) killscore.
Cancers are on top of that.
Lung problems due to pollutants released in the atmosphere (and the acid rains from the sulphur dumped in the atmosphere by burning coal) are another important killer only coal and oil have.

Chernobyl didn't have a particularly large "killscore." The death toll (I don't like the term "killscore," this isn't an FPS) was between 50 and 62, depending on who you ask (the larger number seems to include non-cancer radiation-related deaths of Chernobyl workers and emergency responders over the decade after the disaster). Chernobyl is always massively overstated by nucleophobes. Nuclear power is certainly not scary because it kills - it's scary because people don;t understand the way it kills. It;'s out of the ordinary. If 50 people die in a fire, we'll note the tragedy and continue on with our lives. If 50 people die in a flood, we'll say how sorry we feel for the families and move on. Even with things like Centralia, Pennsylvania, where an entire town is permanently evacuated (it's been unsafe for habitation since the 60s when a coal seam fire started beneath the town - it lets a bunch of mercury, coal ash, carbon monoxide, and other nasty things into the environment, and it's still burning today), most people don't even notice or care. But when we have a nuclear incident, everybody loses their minds, because it's not a "normal" way to die.

People make up ridiculous excuses like "radiation is invisible, so it's more scary," but they aren't particularly afraid of carbon monoxide or a dozen other "invisible killers." The real reason is that they just find radiation poisoning to be too exotic and too unfamiliar; they don;t understand it, and they associate it with horrible things like "cancer" and "atomic bombs." They associate it with all of the TV shows from Captain Planet to 24 where radiation is presented as something special and terrible, as opposed to something that we're exposed to every day. And so "nuclear" disasters get extra media attention and extra public outrage.

And only a few people ever bother looking at the facts to see how the risks should actually be assessed. People in general, as we all know, are dumb, irrational, panicky animals. Risk assessment isn't something humanity does well, at least not by default.

[Bedlam]

New Scientist had an article on this sort of thing last week.

It shows Hydroelectic as the most dangerous due to a number of dam failures in China in 1975 which killed almost a quarter of a million people giving ~55 death per 10 billion KWh. Without out that it was 1-1.6 deaths per 10 billion KWh.

On the same scale Coal give between 2.8 and 32.7 deaths, gas betwen 0.3 and 1.6 and nuclear between 0.2 and 1.2.

[FSTargetDrone]

New Scientist had an article on this sort of thing last week.

It shows Hydroelectic as the most dangerous due to a number of dam failures in China in 1975 which killed almost a quarter of a million people giving ~55 death per 10 billion KWh. Without out that it was 1-1.6 deaths per 10 billion KWh.

On the same scale Coal give between 2.8 and 32.7 deaths, gas betwen 0.3 and 1.6 and nuclear between 0.2 and 1.2.

And here it is:

Fossil fuels are far deadlier than nuclear power

23 March 2011 by Phil McKenna

Read more: "Special report: Rescuing nuclear power"

IN THE wake of the nuclear crisis in Japan, Germany has temporarily shut down seven of its reactors and China, which is building more nuclear power plants than the rest of the world combined, has suspended approval for all new facilities. But this reaction may be more motivated by politics than by fear of a catastrophic death toll. It may be little consolation to those living around Fukushima, but nuclear power kills far fewer people than other energy sources, according to a review by the International Energy Agency (IAE).

"There is no question," says Joseph Romm, an energy expert at the Center for American Progress in Washington DC. "Nothing is worse than fossil fuels for killing people."

A 2002 review by the IAE put together existing studies to compare fatalities per unit of power produced for several leading energy sources. The agency examined the life cycle of each fuel from extraction to post-use and included deaths from accidents as well as long-term exposure to emissions or radiation. Nuclear came out best, and coal was the deadliest energy source.

The explanation lies in the large number of deaths caused by pollution. "It's the whole life cycle that leads to a trail of injuries, illness and death," says Paul Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School. Fine particles from coal power plants kill an estimated 13,200 people each year in the US alone, according to the Boston-based Clean Air Task Force (The Toll from Coal, 2010). Additional fatalities come from mining and transporting coal, and other forms of pollution associated with coal. In contrast, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the UN estimate that the death toll from cancer following the 1986 meltdown at Chernobyl will reach around 9000.

In fact, the numbers show that catastrophic events are not the leading cause of deaths associated with nuclear power. More than half of all deaths stem from uranium mining, says the IEA. But even when this is included, the overall toll remains significantly lower than for all other fuel sources.

So why do people fixate on nuclear power? "From coal we have a steady progression of deaths year after year that are invisible to us, things like heart attacks, whereas a large-scale nuclear release is a catastrophic event that we are rightly scared about," says James Hammitt of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis in Boston.

Yet again, popular perceptions are wrong. When, in 1975, about 30 dams in central China failed in short succession due to severe flooding, an estimated 230,000 people died. Include the toll from this single event, and fatalities from hydropower far exceed the number of deaths from all other energy sources.

Read more: Our interview with David Spiegelhalter, "Risk expert: Why radiation fears are often exaggerated"

Check out the original as it has multiple links in the article I don't have time to inline right now.

[Sky Captain]

Regarding hydropower I cosider there is still quite a lot of luck involwed there has been no colapses of really big dams that impound hundreds of km3 of water. For example a potetial catastrophic failure of Aswan dam could lead to Egypt being largely destroyed because most population and infrastructure is located in Nile valley. And I'm fairly sure Aswan is not the only big dam that has densely populated areas downstream.

[Sea Skimmer]

The Saddam Dam north of Mosul is probably the biggest single risk in terms of probability of actually breaking and flooding a big city quickly I've heard of. Mosul is only 30 miles down stream and the problem so bad the US thinks they could build a backup dam at the site of a dam Saddam abandon half finished. The Saddam is only held in place by constant injections of grout to thicken up the eroding soil, for about 20 years now. Some American dams have similar problems, but we've done more serious work to build slurry walls as stabilization.

The Three Gorges dam bursting could flood out as many as 300 million people if it broke completely but complete failure is highly unlikely. Also lets keep in mind that hydro dams are often also needed as water storage and flood control. Some are purely for power production, but many are not. A nuclear plant won't help you beat a flood.... unless it was so powerful it could actually vaporize a significant portion of the water in the cooling towers.