this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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And they’re going for coal in some places because the political situation has made other reliable energy sources unavailable:
Outside of coal, nuclear, and natural gas, there aren’t many options for reliable sources of electricity.
Why are people so against nuclear? It doesn't make any sense.
Nuclear is probably the safest form of power when proper protocols are put in place but it's hard to do that when the largest country in Europe (Russia, both by size and population) is currently in a war
Safer than wind and solar?
Oddly enough, it's safer than wind.
Solar's a little better in that regard, but all three are so much safer than any high-carbon sources of energy that any of them are great options.
I can't look at their sources, so I'm going to believe them, buuut that is death per energy units. And I can't argue that nuclear isn't more efficient and generally safe. Presumably though, those injuries from wind are from construction primarily? Nuclear power plants have been out of fashion since the 80s for some reason, so there aren't really equal opportunities for construction incidents to compare that while wind construction has been on the rise. And I can only assume that after construction, the chance incidents only go down for wind while they can really only go up for nuclear.
None of that is to say that nuclear is bad and we shouldn't use it. Statistics like this just always bug me. Globally we receive more energy from wind than nuclear. It stands to reason that there's more opportunity for deaths. It's a 1 dimensional stat that can easily be manipulated. it's per thousand terawatt per hour, including deaths from pollution. So I got curious and did some Googling.
After sorting through a bunch of sites without quite the information I was looking for, I found some interesting facts. I was wrong in my assertion that wind deaths don't go up after being built. Turns out, most of those deaths come from maintenance. It does seem to vary by country, and I can't find it broken down by country like I wanted. It's possible that safety protections for workers could shift it. But surprisingly, maintenance deaths from nuclear power are virtually non existent from what I can tell. It seems like the main thing putting nuclear on that list at all is including major incidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima. Well, Fukushima has really only been attributed for 4 deaths total. And Chernobyl was obviously preventable. So it looks like you're right! Statistically, when including context, is definitely the least deadly energy source (if we ignore solar).
I believe so because of construction injuries but idk how well that scales