Deaths per terawatt-hour

Post by **spot** » Fri Sep 09, 2011 8:00 am

I quite like that unit of measurement for energy producers. Deaths per terawatt-hour.

Any guesses, anyone? Lowest deaths per terawatt-hour, method of production? What would you say. Coal? Gas? Wind? Tidal?

fuzzywuzzy · Post by **fuzzywuzzy** » Fri Sep 09, 2011 8:11 am

aaawwwhhh and you tell me to put up freaking links ...sorry ?

Post by **spot** » Fri Sep 09, 2011 8:18 am

Links? I don't have a link, I merely asked a question. What order would you expect energy producers to rank in, if you consider the number of human deaths resulting from each terawatt-hour of production? And, perhaps, why you might think it.

Coal mining's not got a good reputation when you consider how many people die mining-related deaths.

Working on gas platforms turns lethal now and then.

People presumably fall while erecting pylons or drown setting up tidal barrages.

Entire countries reportedly get flooded in radiation every time a reactor melts down.

Take a shot at it.

Ahso! · Post by **Ahso!** » Fri Sep 09, 2011 8:19 am

Only as death relates to humans or all species'?

Ahso! · Post by **Ahso!** » Fri Sep 09, 2011 8:21 am

Wind - coal - tidal - gas in that order. Or are you asking us to input the numbers too?

fuzzywuzzy · Post by **fuzzywuzzy** » Fri Sep 09, 2011 8:21 am

Now I know what you're talking about...ummm can we speak on behalf of our own countries? cause I have figures for ours but not everyone has our safety standards.

Post by **spot** » Fri Sep 09, 2011 8:23 am

It was the order rather than guessed numbers I was interested in but it might help if you say which end's high and which is low. Where did nuclear get to?

Australian stats would be extremely welcome fuzzy, go for it.

Post by **spot** » Fri Sep 09, 2011 8:25 am

Oh - and human only, yes. Other creatures dying don't count as fatalities, not while we operate slaughterhouses for the food industry.

Ahso! · Post by **Ahso!** » Fri Sep 09, 2011 8:26 am

Left to right - low to high

Ahso! · Post by **Ahso!** » Fri Sep 09, 2011 8:28 am

i think I've read that nuclear is lowest of all.

Ahso! · Post by **Ahso!** » Fri Sep 09, 2011 8:29 am

I've read an enormous number of Bats die via Wind.

fuzzywuzzy · Post by **fuzzywuzzy** » Fri Sep 09, 2011 8:32 am

it's almost two in the morning but you know that already by my incredibly accurate way of telling peeps what time it is on the other side of the world ..shall have to wait i'm afraid or my head will come down on the keyboard with a thud. tomoz morn i will have the stats for you . It's not pretty .

Post by **spot** » Fri Sep 09, 2011 8:40 am

Ahso!;1368860 wrote: Left to right - low to high

I'm wandering the web finding little bits of the puzzle.

Water hydroelectrics, for example: The Banqiao dam failure killed an estimated 171,000 people in 1975. That must up the lethality problems with Hydro, you'd have thought.

Chernobyl's killed an estimated 64 people as of 2008, twenty two years after going boom. The meltdowns at Fukushima have so far killed an estimated one person. I have my doubts about what "killed by" means when it's decades later. Maybe a statistical reduction of more than five years from life expectancy? Would that count as killing?

Post by **spot** » Fri Sep 09, 2011 8:45 am

Ahso!;1368862 wrote: I've read an enormous number of Bats die via Wind.

Rhett Butler would have had a pretty good answer to that. Were they Bald Eagles I'd still not care much. Let them live elsewhere. Or, should that fail as a policy, let them not. Freeze a few for posterity perhaps.

Ahso! · Post by **Ahso!** » Fri Sep 09, 2011 8:55 am

Here you go > Deaths per TWH by energy source

Post by **spot** » Fri Sep 09, 2011 9:08 am

A rather exciting page from several points of view.

Only the Americans would still be measuring heat in "Quadrillion British Thermal Units[1]". When are you guys going to grow out of Imperial measurement and adopt decimal standards?

I like their mortality by industry table too.

eta:[1] - for the terminally baffled, one BTU is the energy required to heat one pound of water from 39 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

1.8 degrees Fahrenheit is one degree Celcius.

One pound is something trivial that weight-watchers laugh over, as opposed to ten pounds.

A quadrillion is a shockingly old-fashioned ambiguous 19th century term for (probably) ten to the power fifteen, or a thousand tera-things.

The last time I checked a gas bill I was, admittedly, charged per therm. A hundred therms is a million BTUs. But then, it was a while ago and the gas companies are notorious throwbacks from the time of Sir Humphrey Davy (who may well, now I think of it, have specified the BTU in the first place).

Bruv · Post by **Bruv** » Fri Sep 09, 2011 10:41 am

This is remotely related, and even if it's not it is interesting.

Cheapest petrol

Post by **Bryn Mawr** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 12:09 am

spot;1368854 wrote: Links? I don't have a link, I merely asked a question. What order would you expect energy producers to rank in, if you consider the number of human deaths resulting from each terawatt-hour of production? And, perhaps, why you might think it.

Coal mining's not got a good reputation when you consider how many people die mining-related deaths.

Working on gas platforms turns lethal now and then.

People presumably fall while erecting pylons or drown setting up tidal barrages.

Entire countries reportedly get flooded in radiation every time a reactor melts down.

Take a shot at it.

Certainly nuclear least and coal greatest so, as a complete guess, nuclear, wind, tide, gas, oil, coal.

Electric is deliberately not included as it is a secondary form of one of the above.

Post by **spot** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 7:33 am

Solar is surprisingly dangerous, given how many people fall off roofs while fitting it. But yes, coal is still way out front.

So why, if nuclear is demonstrably so safe by comparative orders of magnitude, and so cheap if the complete sequestration costs of both nuclear and fossil fuel wastes are factored in, is nuclear not the Green option? Far from being that, it's the Green party that's doing its best to have nuclear abandoned entirely (and in Germany they seem to have succeeded).

What the world needs as soon as possible is a couple of thousand new-generation high-output nuclear fission plants, I'd have thought.

Post by **Bryn Mawr** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 9:11 am

spot;1369655 wrote: Solar is surprisingly dangerous, given how many people fall off roofs while fitting it. But yes, coal is still way out front.

So why, if nuclear is demonstrably so safe by comparative orders of magnitude, and so cheap if the complete sequestration costs of both nuclear and fossil fuel wastes are factored in, is nuclear not the Green option? Far from being that, it's the Green party that's doing its best to have nuclear abandoned entirely (and in Germany they seem to have succeeded).

What the world needs as soon as possible is a couple of thousand new-generation high-output nuclear fission plants, I'd have thought.

And, as I've said previously around here, in the short term a few dozen new generation fusion plants would be a great help - a far better option than the ageing coal, oil and gas powered polluters they're using today.

Post by **spot** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 9:27 am

I think you're biting off more than you can compress, there.

Týr · Post by **Týr** » Sun Sep 01, 2013 3:29 am

I note firstly a bit of twaddle from the BBC:The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) had originally said the radiation emitted by the leaking water was around 100 milliseverts an hour. However, the company said the equipment used to make that recording could only read measurements of up to 100 milliseverts.

The new recording, using a more sensitive device, showed a level of 1,800 milliseverts an hour.

BBC News - Fukushima radiation levels '18 times higher' than thought

What the BBC news website means, and what the BBC news website would have published had it a competent sub-editing team, is "less sensitive", not "more sensitive".

Plonkers.

I note secondly that Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant has still failed to kill anyone. Nuclear fission reactors are astoundingly safe even when incompetently operated.