The nuclear disaster in Japan has focused the world's attention on the dangers of nuclear power generation. Germany has temporarily shut down seven reactors, China has suspended approval of new facilities, and the usual hew and cry has arisen from the anti-nuclear energy crowd in the USA. No one denies that when a nuclear reactor malfunctions that the risk of a large number of deaths is possible and that it is essential to assure that proper precautions be taken to prevent such disasters. However, when assessing the dangers associated with nuclear power to determine if pursuing this form of power generation is worthwhile, one must compare the risks to those associated with other forms of power production such as coal, oil, natural gas, and hydroelectric. One must consider not only the extent of a possible tragedy but also the chance of such a tragedy occurring to determine the full impact of using any particular source. One must also consider the full life cycle of the power production rocess for each fuel type, fuel extraction, plant building, fuel transport and processing, power plant productive life time, decommissioning, and environmental impact of all of these phases.
According to a study in China, based on experiences in their study, coal-fired energy production has caused twelve times the number of deaths per annual GW as the nuclear energy chain. By implementing known improvements that are needed, this ratio could be reduced to a 4X disadvantage for coal. However, this does not include any nuclear accidents, since none have occurred in China to date. This report also found that the radiation from coal, totaled over the entire product cycle, is nearly twice as high for coal as for nuclear power; again, this does not include estimates for nuclear accidents such as occurred at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, or Fukushima. As another means of comparison, a study by the Clean Air Task Force, attributes 13,200 deaths to coal plant emissions annually in the USA, this does not include deaths from any other portion of the energy production chain.
In 1975 China, a one-hundred-year flood event caused 30 dams built for hydroelectric power to fail, drowning at least 230,000 people.The point of this information is to highlight the fact that no means of energy production is without risks. Nuclear power generation seems riskier for two reasons: when there is an accident, it tends to be a disaster, killing and injuring a large number of people at one time and causing environmental damage over a large area; plus it is relatively new and there are many unknowns about it. Nuclear disasters are blatantly obvious and the news media takes advantage of people's fear to raise their ratings and make the consequences seem even more dire than they already are. Predictably people react in fear and want to stay with power sources they know. Coal-powered plants are "silent" killers. Except for the occasional mining disaster, one doesn't hear about the 13,000 annual deaths from breathing particulates emitted by coal-fired plants because they don't happen in bunches nor is it always obvious that coal is the culprit except to a doctor who performs an autopsy and sees the person's black lungs or measures radioactive isotopes charactistic of coal in a person's body.
Whether nuclear power should remain an option should be based on fact-based reasoning and decision making. One must compare all costs associated with each means of power production from acquisition of the fuel until the plant is decomissioned and torn down or buried. Not only the direct human impact, some of which has been highlighted here, but also the environmental impact to teh Earth as a whole and the other organisms that share this p[lanet with us. Currently, fossil-fuel powered plants do not pay for the effect they have on the environment, there is little social cost assessed on carbon emission or the emission of other pollutants. To make economically sound decisions for the long term, these costs must be included. Making such an assessment is beyond the scope of today's post but will be the subject of one in the future.
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The most off the subject post I have ever read! Ever heard of eco-friendly power production methods? I suppose you don't mention those in your article "accidentally"...
ReplyDeleteOf course, if one compares nuclear power with coal, oil, natural gas, and hydroelectric power ONLY, as if this post was posted 50 years ago and no solar, wind, sea or thermo power was invented, then for sure nuclear power could even be a better choice for some.
What can I say... I wonder how misleading articles like this are even allowed to be post...
Yannis, Thank you for your comment. This article was not intended as a roadmap for the future energy policy of the USA or world. I am sorry if that was not clear. The purpose of the article was to combat the knee-jerk reaction to the Japanese nuclear accident by many people to want to immediately shut down all the nuclear plants as being too dangerous. Even though it is true that a nuclear accident has a large impact, if one compares it to the other major means of current production of electrical energy it actually compares favorably. This was only an analysis of current energy production. Other sources of energy production in the USA than those I discussed account for less than 4% of total electrical power production. Even so, the environmental impact of wind energy in particular is significant: several million birds are killed each year in the USA by the blades.
ReplyDeleteI am advocating that one must consider the health hazards of power production from the beginning of the process through consumption, thus including the deaths and health risks of mining and drilling. People tend to only see the nuclear disaster and react with horror, which we should; but they don't think about the fact that burning coal releases a steady stream of radioactive material into the environment, including into the air we breathe and the water we drink. This raises the risk of cancer significantly for those living down wind and near the plant.
I am not advocating nuclear power. I do think that it has to be considered when formulating an energy policy. I am trying to raise the awareness that other forms of energy production also kill people and are environmentally hazardous and destructive.
Greece produces about 80% of its electricity from coal. Have you researched the number of deaths that are attributable to that? I don't know what Greece is doing in regards to renewables. If you would wish to post that information here, I would enjoy learning about it.
I absolutely think that for future production we should be pursuing renewables. The fact is that most of these are still relatively expensive and/or inefficient. I have been advocating elimination of subsidies for fossil fuel production as one step toward getting a better idea of the true cost of fossil fuels. Also, the social cost, i.e., the cost of pollution and environmental damage, should be borne by the fossil fuel industry. This can be done either through an effective cap and trade system or by a direct tax on mining, drilling and consumption of fossil fuels.
Another stupid subsidy here in the USA is for ethanol production from feed corn. It does virtually nothing to reduce the amount of foreign oil we import nor does it have a clear environmental benefit - based on careful analyses that were written about in Scientific American a couple of years ago, at best, it is a wash, neither better nor worse than fossil fuels.