Climate Morons

It goes completely against what most believe, but out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

July 24, 2017 by Hannah Ritchie

Our World in Data presents the empirical evidence on global development in entries dedicated to specific topics.

This blog post draws on data and research discussed in our entry on Energy Production and Changing Energy Sources.



Energy production and consumption is a fundamental component to economic development, poverty alleviation, improvements in living standards, and ultimately health outcomes. We show this link between energy production and prosperity here, where we see a distinct relationship between energy use and gross domestic product per capita.



The unintentional consequences of energy production can, however, also result in negative health outcomes. The production of energy can be attributed to both mortality (deaths) and morbidity (severe illness) cases as a consequence of each stage of the energy production process: this includes accidents in the mining of the raw material, the processing and production phases, and pollution-related impacts. We have recently explored this trade-off with respect to development and air pollution.



If we want to produce energy with the lowest negative health impacts, which source of energy should we choose? Here we limit our comparison to the dominant energy sources—brown coal, coal, oil, gas, biomass and nuclear energy; in 2014 these sources accounted for about 96% of global energy production.1 While the negative health impacts of modern renewable energy technologies are so far thought to be small, they have been less fully explored.2 We also acknowledge that there are numerous metrics which could be considered (even in consideration of health impacts only) for such comparisons. Here we focus on death rates.



There are two key timeframes to consider when attempting to quantify potential fatalities from energy production. The first is the short or generational timespan, which covers deaths related to accidents in the mining, processing or production phase of energy sources as well as the outdoor air pollution impacts from the production, transport and combustion of fuels. The second is the long-term or intergenerational impacts (and resultant deaths) from climate change.



Deaths from accidents and air pollution

In the chart below we see the results of the analysis by Markandya and Wilkinson (2007) published in the medical journal The Lancet.3 This is the rate of short-term deaths from accidents and air pollution related to energy production. Since we want to compare the relative safety of producing energy from various sources, this data has been standardised to the deaths resultant from the production of one terawatt-hour (TWh) of energy in each case. One terawatt-hour is roughly equivalent to the annual energy consumption of 12,400 US citizens. Although deaths from accidents and air pollution have been combined, it’s important to note that air-pollution related deaths are dominant. In the case of brown coal, coal, oil and gas, they account for greater than 99% of deaths, as well as 70% of nuclear-related deaths4, and all biomass-related deaths.



We can see that brown coal and coal rate the worst when it comes to energy-related fatalities. Coal-fired power plants are a key source of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, key precursors to ozone and particulate matter (PM) pollution, which can have an impact on human health, even at low concentrations.5



At the other end of the scale as the safest source of energy we have nuclear energy, resulting in 442 times fewer deaths relative to brown coal per unit of energy. Note that these figures also account for estimated cancer-related deaths as a result of radioactive exposure from nuclear energy production.



In the second chart below we have estimated the hypothetical number of global deaths which would have occurred as a result of energy production if all energy was produced from a given source, by multiplying respective death rates (per TWh) by IEA estimates of global energy production in 2014 of 159,000 TWh.6 If global energy demand in 2014 was met solely through brown coal, we estimate global deaths as a result of energy production to be more than five million. In contrast, if global energy demand was met through nuclear sources, the number of deaths would have been only 11,800 (442-times less).