The brief // by Ben FrankelKeeping it in perspective
The question we should ask about nuclear power is not whether or not it has risks; every mode of power generation comes with its own risks; rather, the questions we should ask are: How do the risks of nuclear power measure relative to the risks of other power generation methods? Was the disaster in Japan proof that nuclear power plants are riskier than we thought — or did the disaster provide evidence for the opposite conclusions: aging plants absorbed unprecedented blows — a double whammy of an 8.9 earthquake, followed by a massive tsunami; a series of mistakes by plant operators — mistakes which came on top of years of wrong decisions about back-up systems and redundancy — and yet, the plants survived: there was no meltdown; there was but little release of radioactive materials into the atmosphere; some would be moved to say this is a pretty good record under the circumstances
Here are comments on two developments that caught our eye this week.
1. Nuclear power in perspective
The damage done to four nuclear reactors in Japan raised the specter of a nuclear catastrophe. Some governments were quick to react by cancelling or putting on hold the licensing of new nuclear plants, while Germany announced that it would shut down its nuclear power plants and move away from nuclear power generation.
Many were quick to proclaim that the renaissance of nuclear power – brought about by fluctuations in the price of oil and worries about the environment – is over.
An examination of the facts would show this may well have been a rush to judgment.
Here are some of the facts:
Fossil fuels do more damage, kill more people
- A 2002 review by the International Energy Agency (IAE) put together existing studies to compare fatalities per unit of power produced for several leading energy sources. New Scientist reports that 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 was the safest, and coal was the deadliest energy source
- Fine particles from coal power plants kill an estimated 13,200 people each year in the United States 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.
- The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the UN estimate that the death toll from cancer following the 1986 meltdown at Chernobyl will reach around 9,000
- New Scientist notes that 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. Even when this is included, the overall toll remains significantly lower than for all other fuel sources.
- “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,” James Hammitt of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis told New Scientist.
