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Comment by vibragiel | Hacker News Reader

By some estimates, nuclear would be among the safest energy sources (in deaths by TWh, one of the few honest ways of comparing the risks), even safer than wind and rooftop solar power.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-so...

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With most energy generation schemes, including nuclear, many costs and risks are externalized to a third party -- namely the taxpayer.

I'm not familiar enough with the methodology to dispute it's finding regarding deaths, but I'd argue that evaluating risks solely on the number of attributable deaths is not a full accounting of risk.

What is the economic and social impact of the 20 mile exclusion zone around Fukushima? You're looking at a handful of deaths, but many lives have been affected nonetheless. If my rooftop solar panel kills my family somehow, that is a personal tragedy, but the scope in terms of people affected is nothing like a rare, but catastrophic nuclear failure.

That's a valid argument, but this thread is all about human safety.

That's a problem -- engineers are frequently frustrated with the public perception of nuclear because they focus on a single metric which is just one of many considerations.

But that's wrong. Just because this thread is about human safety doesn't mean that a lot (lot, lot) hasn't been written about socioeconomic aspects of the different energy sources.

You can say similar things about coal and strip-mining.

Many things are "externalized" in the process and we are pretty naive about risk.

Do we count the cost of side-effects like wars and oppression in our energy ? Think about Libya for oil or Niger for Uranium. Do we count the cost for democracy of the impact of energy lobbies ? Centralized production entails centralized structures which often have a tremendous influence (in France there was never ever any democratic feedback loop about nuclear energy).

The cynical view though is that this is nothing compared to other "industrial risks" and to the insiduous and continuous risk we are producing by saturating our planet with garbage.

What kind of numbers did this estimate use as 'deaths by nuclear power'? I bet they used that two-digit death toll for Chernobyl. Look it up on Wikipedia. Estimates range from less than a hundred to one million deaths.

You don't need to bet when you can just read.

Alright, so the article claims 0.04 d/TWh, 0.037 of which are a direct result of Chernobyl at a claimed cost of 4000 lives. Other sources claim 1000000 deaths. That would be a 250-fold increase to 9.25 d/TWh from Chernobyl alone.

That does not look all that well now. Just sain'

Even Greenpeace seems to claim at most roughly a quarter million deaths. Thirty one people were killed directly, everything else is the result of trying to measure the increase in cancer and such. Clearly, the real cost was far higher than those 31, but how high is a good question.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Chernobyl_dis...

Estimates of the number of deaths potentially resulting from the accident vary enormously: Thirty one deaths are directly attributed to the accident, all among the reactor staff and emergency workers.[10] A UNSCEAR report places the total confirmed deaths from radiation at 64 as of 2008. The World Health Organization (WHO) suggest it could reach 4,000.[11] A 2006 report predicted 30,000 to 60,000 cancer deaths as a result of Chernobyl fallout.[12] A Greenpeace report puts this figure at 200,000 or more.[13] A Russian publication, Chernobyl, concludes that 985,000 excess deaths occurred between 1986 and 2004 as a result of radioactive contamination.[14]

If we will blow up our planet by huge bomb, it might be even safer (in deaths by TWh, one of the few honest ways of comparing the risks).

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