Hydro is on par with nuclear in capacity, but has caused an order of magnitude more deaths per kWh. EDIT: Almost an order of magnitude if you take the favorable numbers
https://www.businessinsider.com/dam-safety-statistics-risk-o...
https://www.businessinsider.com/dam-safety-statistics-risk-o...
Flip the favorable/deadly bias around, and hydro looks to be safer (1.0 vs. 1.2).
EDIT: Also, what's with that variance on nuclear? Another thing is that calculating the long term effects of nuclear fallout is quite difficult. How much evidence for and against could we have for rising cancer rates in Europe since 1986? (I don't actually know what the cancer rates are, but figuring out causation is probably very difficult, and may or may not have something to do with Chernobyl)
And cancer rates in general have been rising for 80+ years, so yes, causation is difficult.
A better statement would have been that "the soviet union reported 31 immediate deaths at the time".
That 30 number was highly disputed unto itself, and doesn't include fatal cancers directly caused by radiation exposure.
There's an entire wikipedia page about it if you're interested in learning more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_di...
>>Maybe 60 for eventual cancer deaths for people that were actually on-site.
It's the 10,000+ numbers that I take real issue with. And am skeptical of even the 4,000 "agreed-upon" estimate. I don't doubt radiation was released. I don't doubt radiation exposure can increase risk of cancer.
But when you need statistical methods to calculate deaths, that's just not as meaningful as counting body bags on-site. I get that radiation plays a part in increased cancer risk.
Claiming that there were 1,010,000 cancer deaths, but there should have only been 1,000,000, and not being able to tell which 10,000 were "caused by Chernobyl" is problematic for me. It diminishes the pain of the other 1,000,000. Is this logical? Idk
Some studies in Fukushima claim over 1,000 more people have died by continued forced evacuation, than if they been had been allowed to return to the exclusion zone after a few weeks.
It just gets hard to take these numbers seriously when you only have statistical speculation to rely on. Moreso to treat them with the same equivalence as deaths on-site.
Agreed, but it's necessary if the government lies to you -- which of course was a frequent problem with the soviets.
More recently, the Puerto Rico death toll for Hurricane Maria was just 64, and remained that way for a year. The only way it was eventually changed was proving (through statistical analysis) that the death toll was in fact higher.
And that's my point. There are really two sets of numbers that are being called the same thing when they clearly are not.
You can say "See, Chernobyl wasn't so bad. Nuclear power accidents aren't as bad as they say." Meanwhile the mismanagement of Chernobyl is still regarded as one of the greatest atrocities that came from the Soviets.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/29/18285367/c...
In the immediate aftermath, Trump repeatedly complained about how expensive it was to help the island, and said the hurricane wasn’t a “real catastrophe.”
“If you look at the — every death is a horror, but if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina and you look at the tremendous hundreds and hundreds of people that died and what happened here with a storm that was just totally overbearing. No one has ever seen anything like that. What is your death count?” he said during his visit after the hurricane.
And I still think 64 is closer to the real death toll for Maria. It's certainly no where near 3000. People who have been through a hurricane know what it's like. You don't need to inflate your numbers to get sympathy. A body count based on "expected mortality rates" is by-definition, not a body count.
"Which meant that in the first few weeks and deaths after the storm, doctors failed to record many deaths that were indirectly related to the storm..."
They even admit that they're "indirect" deaths. Maria didn't kill those people. If people that died weeks later are being counted, that's absolutely wrong.
You can be against Trump's policies, but no one can claim with a straight face that Puerto Rico wasn't at fault for the state of their infrastructure. Or empty bank accounts.
The reporters needed a shock-value to try and get people in the US to care. It didn't work.
(Also, vox isn't exactly a neutral source, even by mainstream standards.)
Humanity could survive to even thousands of accident each killing thousands of people, but a thousand Chernobyl would be quite problematic.
The question is how much we want to trust the risk.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Exclusion_Zone 2: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/oct/11...
In part I am also worried about nuclear power plants in case of war.
I understand that there are many advantages on many sides, but in my opinion it is not worth it considering what could happen if thing go very wrong.
Is this factoring in all future deaths from existing nuclear incidents?
If nuclear causes 1 death a year for 500 years and hydro causes 100 immediate deaths, which one is more lethal? Also consider the morality of pushing the costs of a failure generations down the road.
I don't mind hydro. I don't particularly like the habitat destruction but they provide tons of clean power and tons of fresh water. But those dams have to be maintained for those 500 years. A collapse of a dam is pretty catastrophic.
There are two cases to consider. Accident and normal waste. Accidents aren't nearly as contained. Normal waste is contained for now, but what about long term? We are looking at time length longer than any government has been stable.
>Two, some waste products decay alpha particles which are basically harmless unless consumed.
...some...
Also, what vectors could these particles enter into food when you consider their lifespan?
>Three, some waste products have short half-lives which increases their risk in the short term but substantially decreases their risk over a 500 year period.
But to what extent are these the ones being pushed for?
>Four, most deaths from nuclear waste would be slow and probabilistic (e.g. 18% increase cancer risk for an individual with high exposure) whereas deaths from some other power source would be immediate and devastating (e.g. flood, destruction of habitat).
Are we really suggesting that the death isn't comparable because it is a long term probabilistic? Imagine if some company dumping sludge into drinking water was making the same argument. Would we find it acceptable?
98% of radioactive waste is "safe" after 40 or so years. After 40 years the radiation is 1/1000th of its initial waste state. The 1,000 - 10,000 year period generally cited is for the radioactive products to decay back to their original ore's radioactive intensity.
> Also, what vectors could these particles enter into food when you consider their lifespan?
Russian FSB.
> Are we really suggesting that the death isn't comparable because it is a long term probabilistic?
Yes. Would you rather die now or have a 10% increased chance of developing a cancer that may or may not be treatable 10 years from now?
That isn't the comparison being made.
That'll be great news for all the governments who haven't come up with a plain "solution" that'll definitely work for all the time it needs to work, because only God could really make sure of that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_radioactive_waste_m...
> It is widely accepted that spent nuclear fuel and high-level reprocessing and plutonium wastes require well-designed storage for periods ranging from tens of thousands to a million years, to minimize releases of the contained radioactivity into the environment.
Compared to tens of thousands, 500 years sounds great. Though you do have a point in that dams are not great, either, because 500 years are a long time, too.
But a risk being "probabilistic" also applies to dam accidents, since not every single last person in the wider area of it dies. I know it sucks either way, but having cared for cancer patients, I would rather drown in 5 minutes than over the course of months like one might with lung cancer.
The EPA estimates zero deaths for Three Mile Island.
The worst dam failure in history (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam) killed somewhere between 150,000 and 230,000 people. Hydro has a big head start.
The 150k-230k death toll most likely is estimate for whole flood event, not just for this dam. We can say that if the constructions of the dams or coordinates between dams were better death toll can be much lower. But if dams were not existed at all, for that level of heavy rainfall, some people at some specific locations may be alive, but for the whole basin, I don't think there will be a huge difference.
So 4,000 is a good upper bound, if anything.
Also, per the Wikipedia link they included following famine in the numbers killed. Is that accurate?