Episode: 4668
Title: Nuclear Power Technology Follow Up on Safety
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4668/hpr4668.mp3
Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:16:17 (official HPR transcript)

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4668, for 2026-06-24
Today's show is entitled, "Nuclear Power Technology Follow Up on Safety"
The host is Whiskeyjack and the duration is 00:36:06
The flag is Clean, and the license is CC-BY-SA
The summary is "Response to a question posed by a listener on the comparative safety of different energy sources"
This is the second follow-up to my eight-part series, a nuclear power.
In this episode, I will attempt to answer a question posed by Brian and Ohio in a comment
on HPR 4583.
In that comment, he said, loving this series, maybe Whiskey Jack could give some cost comparisons
between large and small reactors.
He could also give us a realistic look at nuclear plants, safety, and accidents compared
to conventional power production.
Looking forward to the episode on fourth-generation reactors.
And of quote, the first question I answered in my previous follow-up, which was HPR 4628.
In this episode, I will attempt to answer the second question, which was about the safety
of nuclear power, compared to other sources of electrical power generation.
One of the HPR janitors encouraged me to make this episode, so I think we can thank him
for getting another HPR episode made.
Defining the scope, first, let's define the scope of the question.
This will cover electrical power generation only.
Within that scope, I will consider only the following sources of energy.
Coal, oil, natural gas, hydroelectric, nuclear, wind, solar.
I won't cover geothermal, wave, or tidal power, as these are only used in very small amounts,
and so there simply isn't enough literature on them to base a discussion on.
I should mention right away that I cannot provide absolute answers to this question in the
form of a nice, neat ranking table based on numbers from peer-reviewed scientific sources.
The reason for this will become apparent, but to put it briefly, the data on which to
base such a ranking simply doesn't exist.
I will, however, provide context within which people can think about the issue.
Wherever possible, I will provide links to references that I use in the show notes so
that you can read further on this yourself.
Energy catastropheism versus energy-uniformitarianism.
First of all, I need to go off on a slight geological detour in order to explain an important
analogy that I will use.
In the 19th century, there was a great debate among geologists over what is known as catastrophe
ism versus uniformitarianism.
In seeking to explain the origins of the Earth and the landscape that we see around us,
there were two points of view.
One was catastrophism.
This is the belief that the mountains, valleys, and planes that we see around us were formed
as a result of great catastrophes which occurred relatively recently in Earth's history.
This explanation was necessary in order to fit geological features into an Earth that
was believed to be only a few thousands of years old.
This view was heavily influenced by religious belief.
In this view, Noah's flood was the great catastrophe and the fossils of dinosaurs were
where there remains of animals which had not been saved on the ark and so had died in
the flood.
The other point of view was uniformitarianism.
This was the hypothesis that the landscape we see around us can be explained by the very
slow accumulation of very small changes over a very long periods of time.
For this to be true, however, the Earth had to be far older than the few thousand years
that a literal reading of the Bible would suggest.
The Earth, in fact, had to be many, many millions of years old.
Eventually, the uniformitarian view won out and people understood that while some catastrophe
can take place, the shape of the landscape is overwhelmingly due to small changes over
very long periods of time.
How is this relevant to this episode you ask?
How this is relevant is that I will use a analogy to explain how we need to think about
energy and safety.
Very small numbers of deaths and injuries multiplied over many occurrences could add up
to big numbers, comparable in scale or possibly even larger than a single catastrophe or
even several of them.
I don't know if anyone has ever used a analogy before, I've just thought of this while
writing the script for this podcast.
Nonetheless, I think it is a very useful way of helping to understand the issues.
As an example of this, think about the well-known case of the safety of flying versus
the safety of traveling at your car.
Other crashes or catastrophes that make the headlines.
Automobile crashes are sold a more than local news at best.
You have probably heard many times acclaimed that if you are making a trip somewhere, you
are safer to fly than to drive yourself in your car.
Example, Hydro versus Solar, and when I will present an example of this, Hydroelectric
Power has some notable large scale at catastrophes associated with it.
If top solar power does not have any notable catastrophes that I am aware of, however,
which is safer, Hydro-Catastrophies, here are three examples of hydroelectric catastrophes
in just one country, Italy.
The Vaisant Dam, which collapsed in 1963,
an estimated 1,917 to 2,500 people died.
The cellars or bino dam, which collapsed in 1935,
more than 100 people died.
The gino dam, which collapsed in 1923, an estimated 350 people died.
I haven't tried to compile a global list of the worst hydroelectric dam collapses,
as this sort of information is actually very difficult to find,
even on websites dedicated to dam failures.
An additional problem is that information a weathery dam was used for electric power generation
or not is often not available.
Dam failures were contradictory or insufficient information is available,
on whether there was an associated hydro plant,
including the 1975 bankian dam failure, where death estimates range up to a quarter of a million.
Solar panel slow accumulation,
contrasts with rooftop solar panels,
many small accidents could add up to big numbers as well.
Health and safety literature, discussing solar panel safety,
mentioned such things as falls from roofs, electric shock,
arc flash that is burns from electrical arcing,
normal electrical safety procedures, which are based around locking out sources of energy,
do not work with solar panels, which makes safety more difficult, and heat stress
due to working it exposed in the hot sun.
Why we cannot compare the two.
Hydro-catastrophies are not well documented,
but we can at least find records of some of the most notable ones.
However, even though it's have very large variations in estimates of deaths.
rooftop solar deaths, however, are largely undocumented.
The industry is largely unregulated.
There is no central authority which accumulates many individual deaths or injuries.
At best, there are worker and public safety bodies
who simply accumulate those statistics into general construction or household injuries.
Thus, we have no reliable means of comparing the two energy sources on a comparable basis.
We face the same problem with all other major electrical energy sources.
So far as I'm aware, there are no peer-reviewed scientific studies
which compare the relative safety of all of the major electrical energy sources we are
considering here based on actual numbers.
Safety risks. I will now try to list some of the major hazards for each of the energy sources
we are considering.
There is, however, limited data available. In many cases, we just have reference to worker safety
organizations as to what the hazards are. I will not attempt to put numbers to these here.
Coal, oil, and natural gas. The hazards are air pollution,
mining and oil field accidents, pipeline explosions, transportation accidents.
These move a lot of material so these are significant.
Hydroelectric. These include dam collapse and droning.
Nuclear. These include radiation exposure.
Wind. These include falls.
Confined space deaths. There is not much detail on this one.
Electric shock. Ice throws. That is, throwing of pieces of ice off the blades.
This technology has a significant problem with people working alone,
which greatly increases the risks associated with other dangers.
Solar. These include falls, electric shock, arc flash, and heat stress.
I have not tried to cover all possible risks associated with each category.
Just the ones which each industry considers to be the risks they concern themselves with.
There does not exist any beings by which risks of similar types are compared across different
industries. Reliability of supply is also safety. In a completely electrified net zero society,
reliability of supply is a safety matter. People will die in very large numbers in
cold climates if they do not have heat. If we have no fossil fuels, we need to also consider
how reliably does a grid based on any of the options work. I have not seen anyone attempt to
address this question and will not attempt to address here. However, it must be addressed in any
comprehensive attempt to rank safety. Studyter articles on estimates of relative safety.
Despite the difficulties of comparing the safety of different sources of energy,
some people have attempted this anyway. Different estimates done at different times had different
focuses, so unfortunately we do not have a nice set of studies that we can neatly use to cross
check one another. I will, however, this the names and the authors and summarize the results.
The health hazards of not going nuclear by Dr. Peter Beckman published in 1976.
The author of this book tried to address the relative safety of different sources of energy
in the bid 1970s, whoever it is all to this point, so I won't bother digging through
its pages to find his figures. He mainly focused on comparing electric power generated with coal
to nuclear. His conclusion was that if the goal was to prevent deaths or ill health in the process
of generating electricity, then the logical conclusion was to replace coal-fired power plants with nuclear.
The book was relatively well known at the time, at least as far as books on energy are concerned,
so I thought it was still worth mentioning. I happened to have a copy of this book,
which I bought back in that time period. It was the eighth printing of the book,
so it appeared to have had relatively good sales. The author did address the issue of what I have
turned catastrophism in his comparison of different energy sources, although I don't know if he
used that phrase. I don't know if he was the first to use this sort of analysis, but he certainly
was very influential in terms of popularizing it. Risk of energy production by Herbert Inhaber,
publication AECB 1119 March 1978. This study is a scientific paper from the same time period
as the book, the health hazards of not going nuclear. He based his risk estimates,
largely on estimates of the amount of material, which would be used in the construction and
operation of various power sources. We could argue over whether or not this is a valid methodology.
I think any such argument would be pointless, as I think the age of the study alone
renders it not relevant to today. Advancements and materials have changed the basis of the
results significantly by now. However, as it exists, I thought I would mention it to show that the
idea of comparing energy sources to each other is not a new one. The author compared a wider variety
potential sources than Beckman did. Here is his conclusions. He assumes equal amounts of energy
produced by each method. The numbers are normalized, such that the total sums to 100%.
You can think of it in terms of what proportion total deaths or injuries would result from each
source if each were equally used. Call 27.5%. Oil 25.6%.
Methanol 16.7%. Wind 10.8%. Solar photovoltaic 9.2%.
Thurble 8.1%. Solar space heating 1.5%. Ocean thermal 0.4%. Nuclear 0.13%. Natural gas 0.08%.
His natural gas estimate is drastically different from that of other authors. I'm not going to worry
about explaining it, however, as the study, as I said, is old enough to not be very relevant anyway.
I'm mainly including this here out of historical interest. As a footnote,
the Methanol he refers to would be synthetized from wood. This was a popular idea in that era,
as a means of providing liquid fuels for transportation. Practical battery electric cars in
those days were strictly science fiction. The ocean thermal category is a real blast from the past,
and I had forgotten all about that concept. It was a very popular idea at the time,
it was supposed to be the big and upcoming thing in renewable energy. It involved various
means of attempting to extract energy from differences in water temperature at different depths in the ocean.
It gradually faded away, however, as despite great efforts being put into it,
designs never proved to be practical. Electricity generation and health,
by annual markandia and Paul Wilkinson, published in the Lancet, volume 370, 15th of September
2007. This is more recent than the previous one, although it is still nearly 20 years old at this
point. Unfortunately, it doesn't cover winter solar, just fossil fuels in nuclear. However,
it is still useful, and the Lancet is a very reputable, peer-reviewed journal.
I will present just the results, rather than discussing the whole paper.
The authors break it down into death among the public, occupational deaths,
and air pollution related deaths, serious illnesses, and minor illnesses.
They break the energy sources down into Lignight, Cole, Gas, Oil, Biomass, and Nuclear.
Lignight is a type of very low-grade coal used mainly for electric power generation.
In this paper, biomass refers to energy crops and forest residues.
I will summarize the results by category, rather than trying to describe a table that has six
rows and five columns. All numbers are normalized in terms of deaths or cases per terror watt hours.
Occupational deaths from accidents. Lignight, 0.1, Cole, 0.1, gas, 0.001, oil, no data, biomass, no data,
nuclear, 0.019. Deaths among the public from accidents. Lignight, 0.02, Cole, 0.02, gas, 0.02, oil, 0.03, biomass,
no data, nuclear, 0.03, air pollution deaths, Lignight, 32.6, Cole, 24.5, gas, 2.8, oil, 18.4,
biomass, 4.63, nuclear, 0.052, air pollution-series, illnesses, Lignight, 298, Cole, 225, gas, 30, oil, 161,
biomass, 43, nuclear, 0.22, air pollution-miner illnesses, Lignight, 17,676, Cole, 13,288, gas, 73, oil, 9,551,
biomass, 2,276, nuclear, no data. Natural gas, edges out nuclear power slightly in terms of
occupational safety, but in every other category, nuclear is drastically lower in terms of
ill effects than any of the alternatives. 2020 fatalities for US roofers increased 15% as solar roof
installations increase. Published in the next big future, the 6th of July 2021, by Brian Wang.
This seems to be written by someone who has a popular science blog. I'm not familiar with it
personally, but he addresses a subject, so I'll list it. The title implies that it's all about
rooftop solar, but he provides comparative numbers for other energy sources of interest, so that
is useful for our purposes. However, he doesn't describe his methodology, so we need to treat them
with some caution. Here are his results. These are deaths per thousand terawatt hours.
Cole, 100,000, oil, 36,000, natural gas, 4,000, hydro, 1,400, rooftop solar, 440, wind, 150, nuclear, 90.
If we plot these numbers on a bar chart, Cole and oil are so large, that all of the others are
squished to the bottom of the chart, and are difficult to see at all. Let's therefore look at
these in terms of orders of magnitude. Keep in mind that this is a log-merithic scale. This means
that the difference between 4 and 5 is much greater in linear terms than the difference between
1 and 2. Cole, 5, oil, 4, natural gas, 3, hydro, 3, rooftop solar, 2, wind, 2, nuclear, 1. Each of
these numbers represents an order of magnitude, that is, a power of 10. We can see that with rooftop
solar, wind and nuclear, the numbers are close, and there are certain these are so great, and
their relative values are so small compared to say, Cole, that they can be seen as equivalent,
so far as safety is concerned. What are the safest and cleanest sources of energy?
By Hannah Richie, published in our world in data, first published in 2017, updated in 2022 and
2024. The author of this study addressed both deaths and greenhouse gas emissions, deaths from
accidents at air pollution are normalized to per terror water or electricity, while greenhouse
gas emissions are normalized to gigabodd hours of electricity over the life cycle of the plant.
Here are the deaths figures. Cole, 24.6, oil, 18.4, biomass, 4.6, natural gas, 2.8, hydro power, 1.3,
wind, 0.04, nuclear, 0.03, solar, 0.02, for greenhouse gas emissions the figures are, Cole,
970 tons, oil, 720 tons, natural gas, 440 tons, biomass, 78 to 230 tons, solar, 53 tons,
hydro power, 24 tons, wind, 11 tons, nuclear, 6 tons. If we take the death figures and rank them by order
of magnitude as we did with the previous article, we get the following. Cole, 4, oil, 4,
biomass, 3, natural gas, 3, hydro power, 3, wind, 1, nuclear, 1, solar, 1.
Keep in mind that the previous article covered only rooftop solar and not large industrial
installations and so is not directly comparable. Also, the units are different with the previous
article being in terms of 1,000 terror water and this one being in terror water hours.
If we exclude solar as the numbers are not comparable, Brian Wang's numbers are between 1.5 to
4 times higher than Richies, except for Hydro, which are almost identical. I think this ladder
is due to both such a numbers dominated by one exceptionally big hydro accident.
Overall, however, the relative rankings are quite comparable. Richies numbers for deaths from
Cole, oil, and natural gas appear to be directly from the study by Marquandia and Wilkinson
mentioned above. For the benefit of those who are wondering, Richies specifically states that
her numbers for nuclear include the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents.
Conclusion from studies. Remember that in engineering terms, when comparing groups of numbers,
which contain both very small numbers and one or more very large numbers, the differences
between the small numbers are often not significant. The differences between the small numbers
may be the product of our ability to measure these things rather than any real differences.
For example, in the article by Richie, Windpower would appear to be twice as dangerous as nuclear.
However, the difference between them is 0.02 compared to 24.6 for Cole. In other words,
the difference between apparently dangerous wind and apparently safe nuclear is equivalent to 0.08%
of the total for Cole. It is therefore meaningless and a red herring to even worry about.
With the above taken into consideration, generally the difference sources of energy fall into
two broad categories in terms of number of deaths, injuries, and illnesses. The fossil fuels and
biomass fall into one group, and wind, solar, and nuclear into another group. Hydro power
would seem to fall into the higher risk category, or at least somewhere between the two.
But this I suspect is mainly due to one exceptionally large dam collapse in China, the Ben
Kean Dam failure in 1975. This is mentioned as being specifically included in the article written by Richie.
This was a multipurpose dam, and information on this dam is difficult to find. It is not
clear to me whether it had a hydroelectric generator associated with either it or another dam
that was part of the same system. Some people, therefore, may argue for its exclusion from the numbers.
Of course, some people may argue for its inclusion anyway, as it was a dam, regardless of whether
it actually had an electric generator attached. If we exclude it, then I think the number for hydro
power would fall into the same range as for nuclear, wind, and solar. Most people would consider
hydro power to be safe and clean enough, regardless of this, and I will rank it as such in any
conclusions that I come to. As you can see, even if we have numbers, it can be a matter of opinion
as to how to interpret them. Taking a system's approach. Now let's look at the broader energy
picture today and into the future. Many countries, in many parts of the world, have committed to
the concept of net zero, which means eliminating carbon emissions on a net basis.
Net zero essentially means the complete electrification of society. We must therefore have
electrical energy on demand and at low cost. We must as a result of this, look at complete
electrical systems, rather than individual sources in isolation. At one time, many electrical
systems were entirely coal or entirely hydroelectric. This is no longer the case. There are now major
amounts of wind and solar involved in many countries. However, these are inherently intermittent.
This means that other sources of energy are inherently also required to have a functional
system. If any particular solution inherently requires fossil fuels to meet part of the demand
then the safety, pollution, and climate issues relating to those fossil fuels
have to be factored into that complete system when trying to come up with a relative ranking.
Talking about individual sources in isolation are therefore meaningless in those countries.
There are battery systems, but these are mainly used to stabilize and regulate the grid
plus to a lesser degree to smooth out short-term daily peaks in demand.
They do not have the ability to store large amounts of electricity on a large scale for entire
grid for days, weeks, and months to make up for inter-bitancy.
So a serious attempt to rank sources of energy would need to look at a variety of representative
and for each one come up with a plan that involves x-megawatts from source A, y-megawatts from
source B, et cetera, and total up the values for each. I am not aware of anyone who has studied
this larger issue. However, the problem has to be addressed from this perspective in order for any
answer to be useful. Not taking this into account is like ordering a diet soft drink to go with a
high-calorie meal and assuring yourself that your plans to diet are just fine.
This is not to imply that there is anything inherently wrong with wind or solar.
It does mean that if your goal is to achieve both net zero and a clean environment,
you have to look at your entire energy system as a complete system,
rather than focusing on what you feel are the most reassuring parts of it while ignoring the rest.
This does however add to their argument that is in fact inherently very difficult to come up with
a system of ranking energy sources for safety. Nuclear climate and clean air contrasting examples.
To give a tangible example, we will now look at two different places that followed two
divergent paths that roughly around the same time frame. These are the province of Ontario and Canada
and Germany. Ontario had a mix of coal, hydroelectric, and nuclear generating plants.
Germany had a mix of coal, nuclear, and natural gas plants.
Ontario shut down their coal-fired plants and kept their nuclear plants.
Germany, however, shut down their nuclear plants and kept their coal-fired plants.
The phase out of coal in Ontario. In 2003, Ontario decided to close all of its coal-fired
generating plants, which consisted of 19 units that is boilers and turbines,
totaling 8,800 megawatts. This phase out was completed by 2014.
Here are the figures for the amount of power generated by each energy source in 2003 and 2014.
Nuclear went from 42% to 60%. Hydro went from 23% to 24% gas went from 11% to 9% coal went from 25%
to 0%. Non-hydroenewable went from 0% to 7%. As you can see, the bulk of that replacement
came from increased use of nuclear power. Furthermore, this did not result in simply replacing coal
with natural gas. While gas is cleaner than coal, it still has emissions, and if you recall from
the studies that we looked at earlier, had an estimated death rate roughly two orders of
magnitude greater than nuclear, solar, or wind. To put this in more practical terms, at one time
Toronto, regularly had clouds of smog obscuring it to a large extent due to these coal-fired
power plants. With the phase out of coal, smog days went to 0 in 2015, compared to 53
a decade earlier. The 2023 figures for Ontario show carbon emissions of 53 grams per kilowatt-hour
electricity generated. We can use this as a rough benchmark comparison for totally emissions.
The phase out of nuclear in Germany, until March of 2011, Germany generated one quarter of
its electrical power from nuclear. Starting in 2011, however, they began shutting down their nuclear
power plants. These were then phased out over the next decade. However, the coal plants were to be
kept until 2038. In 2026, Germany began talking about increasing use of coal in order to save gas.
In the same year, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz stated that the phase out of nuclear was a
quote, Sirius Strategic Mistake. EU Commission President Ursula Vandreland said that it was
a strategic mistake for Europe to turn its back on a reliable, affordable source of low emissions
power. I won't go into the details of the phase out, but let's look at some emissions numbers
for Germany. If we look at the official numbers from the European Environmental Agency for 2024,
for Germany, the emissions were 298 grams per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated.
We call that we are using emissions as a very rough guide to amount of air pollution,
and this has a direct effect on the safety of the overall electrical energy system.
So who actually made their people safer? Ontario who phased out their coal plants and kept
their nuclear plants, or Germany who phased out their nuclear plants and kept their coal plants.
If you want to comparison directly within Europe, then Germany has one of the highest rates
of emissions per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated, whereas France, who is mainly nuclear power,
have one of the lowest at 43 grams per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated.
Again, who is making their people safer? Germany or France?
I don't want to make it sound like I am picking on Germany.
I am also not going to tell them how they ought to run their country.
However, they provide a good real-world example of how we need to look at things in overall
context when we are thinking about the choices that we make.
Conclusions, as we can see, they don't appear to be in abundance of peer-reviewed scientific studies
that we can simply point to in order to answer the question of safety of all possible major
different energy sources once and for all. Collecting the data to even attempt to answer
the question is inherently very difficult as we cannot readily conduct experiments to answer
that question, and sources of data are not collected or consolidated in a manner which can
answer this question adequately. The essence of the problem is that most energy industries
are not as tightly regulated and monitored to the same degree that say nuclear power or commercial
airliners are, so this data is simply not being systematically recorded. However, a number of people
have attempted to make estimates. Their conclusions were seem to be that nuclear, wind and solar
are roughly equivalent in terms of safety. All fossil fuels are much less safe than nuclear
wind and solar by as much as several orders of magnitude. We can, however, say with a reasonable
degree of certainty that if a country shut down their nuclear power plants and kept their fossil
fuel plants, particularly coal, then they probably made their people less safe than if they had
done things the other way around. I hope that I have provided some context in which to think about
the issue. Thanks again to Brian and Ohio for providing the question upon which this episode is based.
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