Absolute numbers are meaningless. It needs to be weighted against how much electricity was produced with each.
(And why is solar not mentioned? Plenty of solar installers die from falling off of roofs and whatnot.)
A cow is more likely to kill you than a shark
Submitted 2 weeks ago by Forester@pawb.social to [deleted]
https://pawb.social/pictrs/image/cf9b4912-6a56-439f-8493-5aee1d0d1323.png
Comments
OwOarchist@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
Forester@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
valgarf@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
On the site there is also a direct comparison: ourworldindata.org/…/death-rates-from-energy-prod…
Grouping Hydro with other renewables is not very nice for wind and solar, which are pretty safe - with the added benefit of being cheaper than nuclear power.
anzo@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
I would also normalize against their frequency. Because if a tech is not used that often for being considered dangerous then of course it can show a low absolute number of deaths.
But then again is a no brainer to tell that this kind of comparison is ill intended from the get go.
The trope defending nuclear energy has always been “too loud” for my “taste”. It’s like mainstream politics, missing the point of why something is actually good and then spouting cherry-picking “facts” but indeed doing propaganda nonetheless.
abbiistabbii@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Genuinely curious as to how and where we got the 140k deaths from renewables? It doesn’t appear on the paper you linked but it cites the structural collapse of a Hydroeletric Dam in china which caused 230k deaths.
I’m curious where you got the renewables figure from, is it from dam collapses (which are structural failures rather than a product of the power source) or is there some sort of issue with wind turbines where they magically sprout legs and march into Cities like Godzilla with PMS?
Funkt4st1c@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You havent been attacked by a solar panel? Theyre awfully vicious in my area /s
Forester@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
I left solar off cause its the safest only deaths are falls and accidental electrocutions unless you count the odd deaths from being hit in the head or crushed.
Forester@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
The chinese claim only 26k deaths some estimates place it at 260k deaths i’m not being exact its a ballpark. No one source tracks all deaths from renewables or fossil fuels or nuclear. 52 dams collapsed not one.
structural failures rather than a product of the power source and what do you think collapsed the dams if not the power source?
Its mismanagement and failure to properly engineer for the situation on hand. Water is heavy the built weak dams to generate hydro power. They had a cascade of containment failure events. likely ~130k people died directly from this event. The other ~10k is a rough estimate on other deaths from similar incidents en.wikipedia.org/…/List_of_hydroelectric_power_st…
Skullgrid@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
so… hydroelectric power stations collapsed, thus renewable energies like wind turbines and solar power are bad?
Simulation6@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
Flood control is often the goal of dams.
wraekscadu@vargar.org 2 weeks ago
Nuclear is cool. With proper regulation, it’s amazing!
BUT, it’s not what we must be focusing on right now. Renewable sources of energy are safer and much MUCH cheaper to implement than nuclear. Also, renewables don’t require decades to come online.
So, “why renewables? Just go nuclear brooo” is a bad bad argument, likely made in bad faith by OnG companies to delay implementation of renewables.
The goal should be “how do we go from the status quo to a non GHG emitting source of energy generation as fast as possible?”.
ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one 2 weeks ago
I live by a bunch of nuclear plants. One day, I got a text alert from the government saying something was going on at one of the nuclear plants. I decided I was probably already going to die and the went back to watching porn on the toilet. I will have my dream of being an environmental telling skeleton.
DupaCycki@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
There is no one ideal energy source. The best approach is, as always, to diversify. Relying completely on one source is irresponsible. Nuclear with renewables is a fantastic mix. Especially in countries that can’t reliably generate significant amounts of electricity with hydro.
Renewable sources of energy are safer
They’re actually not, generally speaking. All types of renewable energy, with the exception of solar, cause more deaths than nuclear does.
Some articles report slightly lower death tolls for renewables, but don’t provide any sources for that data. Geothermal energy, which neither of the two sources above includes for some reason, sits right next to wind, so slightly above nuclear in terms of deaths caused per terawatt-hour.
Forester@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
I didn’t include geothermal because of how rare it is. We don’t all live in Iceland.
mirshafie@europe.pub 2 weeks ago
Nuclear doesn’t compete with wind and solar. You can put up wind and hydro cheaply and quickly almost anywhere, and that’s great and all and we should honestly subsidize manufacture inside Europe rather than just rely on buying from China.
But you still need base load and nuclear is the only option that makes any sense on scale from an ecological perspective. Hydro is highly situational and almost always a worse option for the environment, as well as for safety.
So yeah, just go nuclear bro.
zloubida@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Yeah nobody ever died here (an uranium mine) and you absolutely don’t need any fossil fuel to make it works.
Nuclear energy is better than fossils, but it’s far from green.
DupaCycki@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Nuclear causes the fewest deaths out of all available energy sources, except solar, which is a tiny bit lower in that regard. Both wind and hydro have a higher death toll, with wind being just slightly above nuclear, and hydro being a lot higher (about 40x more deaths).
ourworldindata.org/…/death-rates-from-energy-prod…
Usually I wouldn’t cite this source, but in this case their data matches other, more trustworthy ones, and is the first that shows up in search engines.
bountygiver@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
It also have a bit of due to regulations making sure people who work on nuclear are way more compentent, while other green energy infrastructure can be built by rando workers like your roads and such. Kind of similar to how air travels are the safest only because of strict protocols and requirements to work on it.
elephantium@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Nuclear is very green.
Source: Watching too many Simpsons episodes in my misspent youth
Forester@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
Those deaths are counted in my 5 k
You actually don’t need any fossil fuel to make it work. You just have to electrify the mining machinery then you can power it with solar, wind, hydro and nuclear.
zloubida@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
“You just have”… that wishful-thinking and technosolutionism.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Are the fossil fuels used to create wind and solar power are also unavoidable?
zloubida@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Absolutely. If you broaden the scope to include R&D, mining, transport, manufacturing, service, and disposal, you can’t eliminate fossil fuels from everywhere. And if you widen the scope even further and look at the absolute numbers, it’s very clear: even if the share of renewables in total energy production grows, fossil fuel use still increases in absolute terms. Renewables do not replace fossil fuels; they add to the energy mix. There is no transition. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use them, because they are faaaar better than “pure” fossil fuels and better than nuclear. It just means we shouldn’t think of them as the solution. They are not green; green energy simply does not exist. The only solution is degrowth. And it will happen, with or without humanity’s consent.
Einskjaldi@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Open pit mining doesn’t require that much energy or labor, and they’re relatively safe for the same reason because being underground is much more dangerous.
zloubida@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Still more risky than constructing a windmill, which was what OP’s post was about.
Diddlydee@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
I cow is more likely to kill you than a shark (on land).
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
If you get into a pool with a cow, its not going to be nice to you either.
AcidBurn@retrofed.com 2 weeks ago
What if you put a shark and a cow in a pool?
banazir@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
I see you are not familiar with sea cows.
Forester@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
Good thing that the petrochemical industry has not polluted the land air and water then…
untorquer@quokk.au 2 weeks ago
Yeah there’s a reason I’m leaving the energy sector. The choice to use fossil fuels for grid in the last 50yrs has been and will continue to be a purely political one.
then_three_more@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’d be willing to put money on the amount of deaths from fossil fuel power generation related accidents (mining coal isn’t exactly the safest job) is higher than the rest on its own. Even before the millions who’ve had their lives shortened by the pollution.
Admetus@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
Quoting 5k deaths when Chernobyl was a single incident probably contributing to most of them.
marcos@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Most of the renewables count is one dam that failed in China too.
Forester@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
Forester@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
The only reason it killed so many was the poop grade soviet response. Men were cheaper than machines.
emmy5482@quokk.au 2 weeks ago
That’s definitely not accurate. For example, stopping the water table from being as polluted under the conditions meant having to use people.
They could also have just not bothered.
I’m not saying that their response didn’t kill a lot of people.
It did.
I’m saying it could have been much worse sr
Thorry@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Only 30 people actually died as a direct result of the Chernobyl disaster. It’s very hard to know how much indirect deaths however. Or the overall impact on health for people in Europe. Estimations range from 4000 (WHO) up to 16000. No idea what OPs numbers include or don’t include.
Admetus@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
That’s the trouble, just under 5000 deaths when you take away freak accidents (like the Japanese worker who was inundated with highly radioactive liquid) so those numbers must fall under a specific estimate.
emmy5482@quokk.au 2 weeks ago
5000 would have been a massive undercount too
Kolanaki@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
I never even considered that nuclear power isn’t renewable until now. 🤣
OwOarchist@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
Can’t make more radioactive rocks if we run out.
Well … unless you use your uranium reactor to create plutonium… But, you’re right – even then, it would eventually run out. So fission power isn’t renewable.
Fusion power, though… If you can make a viable fusion reactor ecosystem that can use regular ordinary hydrogen as its input fuel, then that’s at least psuedo-renewable. Yeah, eventually you’ll have converted so much hydrogen into helium that hydrogen might start running low. But I’m guessing you could power 100 earths for 10 billion years before you used even half the hydrogen available.
Forester@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
We can actually en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Breeder reactors don’t create fuel. They convert not-quite-usable isotopes into usable isotopes.
then_three_more@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If we get to that point it might become commercially viable to build reactors the extract some more energy out of the fuel we’ve already used.
GargleBlaster@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Sooo you base this on an opinion piece disguised as journal article in a low impact journal by a guy that has, let’s say interesting views on radiation damage and global warming.
Forester@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
96 cited references supporting a thesis is a opinion piece?
GargleBlaster@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Sentences like “It is exploited in attempts to strangle development of atomic energy, the cleanest, safest and practically inexhaustible means to meet the worlds energy needs” or retelling of the events from his perspective or constant self citation make it a definitive opionion piece.
And I looked at random papers that cited this paper. Some are not even listed anymore and most others I randomly selected (~20) cited the paper for random facts (“release of around 70 tons of nuclear fuel”, “radioresistant microbes can tolerate a high radiation incidence”, “many of these communities have not, and will not, be repopulated due to the current radiation”) or outright contradicted the paper (“[his] assumptions [about cancer incidence] are in conflict with observations from Russia…”).
The amount of citations a paper has is absolutely useless information without context to whether the citations support/contrast or are incidental
fodor@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
You can say that but I remember Fukushima. The damage causes by the Fukushima meltdown cost more than the power company’s total profits in Japan over the previous 40 years.
So keep telling me that nuclear is safe, and I’ll keep pointing to the damage it is guaranteed to cause. Low risk high consequence situations are the hardest to regulate. And you’re risking your entire city, all at once, everything in it.
But look, the real question is what new sources to build. Current sources will stay online for years or decades. For new production, the cheapest by far is solar, followed by wind, as long as the externalities are dumped back on the utilities. Also, home solar means the utilities can’t price gouge you.
mirshafie@europe.pub 2 weeks ago
There’s been what, three disasters total similar to the one in Fukushima? And remind me, how many people died from that one? Was it one guy?
Artemis_Mystique@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
it isnt about the total DC its about lasting damage in the affected people and environment
Forester@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
The cost was because people like you dont understand low dose exposure and stick to the LNT model for radiation exposure. So they literly dug out the ground and removed all traces of radation. On paper that sounds great till you realize that nothing is radiation free and this was essentially a massive theatrical production of mopping the rain.
Passerby6497@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
People never hesitate to show that feels > reals
You can say that but I remember Fukushima. The damage causes by the Fukushima meltdown cost more than the power company’s total profits in Japan over the previous 40 years.
And it’s a mistake that will never happen again, as this accident immediately triggered a ton of retrofitting across the nuclear reactors in use specifically to cover the eventuality that Fukushima showed us.
Now compare Fukushima to the ongoing effects of fossil fuel plants, and the deaths caused. What do you think caused more deaths, Fukushima, or stopping all nuclear plants in the country? This paper argues that the shutdown caused an increase in mortality (people freezing to death over winter due to 40% higher energy costs) ultimately killing more people than radiation exposure (emphasis mine):
To put these estimates in context, we calculate that the higher electricity prices resulted in at least an additional 1,280 deaths during 2011-2014. Since our data only covers the 21 largest cities in Japan, which represents 28 percent of the total population, the total effects for the entire nation are even larger. Meanwhile, the number of deaths due to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident is much lower. No deaths have yet to be directly attributable to radiation exposure, though projections estimate a cumulative 130 deaths (Ten Hoeve and Jacobson 2012). An estimated 1,232 deaths occurred as a result of the evacuation after the accident.7 Therefore, the deaths from the higher electricity prices likely outnumber the deaths from the accident in only four years if we extrapolate our estimates to the entire country, and almost certainly outnumber the deaths over a longer time period given that the higher electricity prices persisted beyond the end of our study. This suggests that ceasing nuclear energy production has contributed to more deaths than the accident itself.
Forester@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
You deserve a standing ovation for this comment.
gedaliyah@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Does that include like building the hoover dam or what?
Forester@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure Mostly that but a few others.
Carmakazi@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Maintaining wind turbines is very dangerous. You’d think it’s falls but the leading one is electrical injuries (that may then lead to a fall).
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Oh look, yet another person with an opinion on the LNT model for radiation exposure. As a safety professional, let me explain in really basic terms.
Everyone knows the model is pretty shit for long-term exposure to small doses. This isn’t news, and hasn’t been new for the past half century.
Similarly, we all know that chemical exposure levels are, for the most part, entirely bullshit. The exposure lengths are often based on 40 years of 40 hours a week, which is almost never true, and are even then very conservative.
The problem is that you can’t get accurate data. You can’t expose a couple of hundred people to hazardous conditions for decades, just to get better data. Everyone bitching about LNT for radiation or all sorts of chemical and biological exposure limits is overlooking one key detail.
We don’t have a better model. We can’t develop a better model in any remotely ethical way with current or near future technology either.
Forester@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
Its the best model we have it may not be 100% accurate but it is better than nothing and assumes any radiation exposure is carcinogenic. However in gen pop (read healthy adults) our natural repair mechanisms are generally apt to repair damage caused by exposure to doses less than 5mSv/y
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Exactly! The model is wrong for low level, long term exposure. We know that, it’s not new or shocking. But there isn’t anything else, and you can make a decent argument there won’t be anything else either, so we’re kinda stuck with it.
chuckleslord@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
LNT is wrong
We know it’s wrong
We don’t know how to get to a different model
Let’s do nothing
Like, to clarify, this is your argument, yeah? Wouldn’t “the highest levels we know don’t cause excess deaths” be a better standard? You could claim that that isn’t particularly rigorous, but neither is LNT. And it allows more movement than “We must spend every penny we can on radiation mitigation, regardless of harm reduction”
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
All the nuclear stuff happens in one place, with a few people minding it. But they do have to be super careful and know what they’re doing.
And if there’s a critical flaw in the reactor design (looking at you Chernobyl) it can go very very wrong.
Renewables are all spread out, and a lot more people manage it for the power output.
That also means a lot more people have power-related jobs.
Fossil Fuels, Methane (Natural Gas) and Coal are just ugly all around. But they have really, really great lobbyists.
melsaskca@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
A sea cow or a land cow?
kablez@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Public trust in governments and the private sector is at an all time low, all around the world. And that’s an earned reputation.
Nuclear energy is a promising solution, but there are risks associated with it that cannot be ignored.
Can you trust a government that can’t even feed it’s poor and house them to properly dispose of all nuclear waste used at scale? I doubt it. Even if it’s done right for a while, that handling will erode because everything in our system does. That’s the problem.
The question isn’t just efficacy of the technology. It’s implementation. Execution. Maintenance. Long term sustainability.
Leviathan@fedinsfw.app 2 weeks ago
How many cases of cancer are caused by burning fossil fuels and micro plastics from tires? I bet a fucking dick load.
Limonene@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
A lot of people fall off roofs during solar installation. But that’s not an externality – these people know the risks, they can ask for higher pay, or choose to wear their PPE properly. The deaths from fossil fuels are mostly externalities.
Korne127@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Ah yes, surely we should go nuclear! It’s not like countries depending on nuclear energy have to shut them down during summer, which will only get worse every year
Also this meme is just wrong lol. NIMBY culture against wind energy is so much more stronger (to be fair, because of other reasons though)
VibeSurgeon@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Is the implication that NIMBYs are generally speaking pro-renewables? Because my experience is that they fucking hate wind power because they think they look ugly.
If anything, nuclear is more popular with the NIMBY crowd around here since you need fewer of them, and the chances of them happening to be in your backyard is hence way lower.
Tiral@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Sharks kill more people on a case by case basis.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
what about a cow shark.
Abyssian@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Thank God. I’ve never even seen a cow, but I swim wish sharks daily. I have a few small cuts that still bleed a bit when I get into the water, and the sharks have been acting a lot more aggressive and bitey than normal.
I was really starting to get worried until I saw this post.
Danarchy@lemmy.nz 2 weeks ago
When you burn the remains of these ancient life forms it releases their ghosts and that’s what kills so many when they breathe haunted air
Forester@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
img.gifglobe.com/grabs/…/27rGoCfDwLlU.gif