Deathprint For Energy (James Conca) USofA

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Natural Gas And The New Deathprint For Energy James Conca January 25, 2018

Pixabay Gas and coal-fired power plants have a dramatic effect on human health and the environment as well as total health care costs. Shown here is a natural gas explosion in Seattle. Natural gas has the greatest number of accidental deaths while coal deaths are mainly health-related.

Tuesday afternoon witnessed a horribly fatal accident in Oklahoma when natural gas exploded at an oil and gas well outside of Quinton, killing five workers. The accident is the deadliest U.S. drilling mishap since the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion that killed 11 workers.

The explosion is the latest in a series of fatal accidents at American oil and gas fields. Accidents during oil and gas drilling claim about 100 lives a year in the United States. You’d think this 1

would be big news. If any other energy source, like wind or solar, killed that many people, it would be front page. And if five people died at a nuclear plant, there’d be calls to close all nuclear plants immediately, accompanied by mobs with pitchforks.

So it might be a good time to review the actual deathprint of each of our energy sources.

Most people have heard of something called externalities, in this case, costs not factored into the price. The most famous is the carbon footprint of different energy sources, since it is now driving policy, tax credits and some actual costs. The largest carbon footprint belongs to coal with about 1,000 grams of CO2 released for every kWh generated, and the smallest belongs to nuclear, hydro and wind, all under 30 gCO2/kWh. The physical footprint, or the amount of land required to produce a kWh, is also an important issue but only for renewables which are about a hundred thousand times the other sources.

But an energy’s deathprint, as it is called, is a rarely-discussed externality. The deathprint is the number of people killed per kWh produced. There is debate on the absolute numbers, but no one debates on the relative ranking from most dangerous to least. Like the carbon footprint, coal has the largest deathprint while nuclear has the smallest, even with the worst-case Chernobyl numbers. Natural Gas has the highest accident-related deaths.

Nuclear Power Plant Leibstadt, Switzerland.

Make the world economies strong and help protect the environment. Use Gen III+ and Gen IV nuclear power, with used fuel reprocessing. Employ uranium and thorium fuels.

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The table below estimates the mortality rate for each energy source as deaths per trillion kWhs generated over the last 40 years, plus an estimate of that source’s contribution to global energy use from the IEA. The numbers are a combination of direct deaths and epidemiological estimates, the latter being tricky at best, and are an amalgam of many sources (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).

Energy Source*

Mortality Rate (deaths/trillion kWh)

Coal

100,000 (41% global electricity)

Coal – China

170,000 (75% China’s electricity)

Coal – U.S.

10,000 (32% U.S. electricity)

Oil

36,000

Natural Gas

4,000

Biofuel/Biomass

(33% of energy, 4% of electricity) (22% global electricity)

24,000

(21% global energy/2% electricity)

Solar

440

(< 1% global electricity)

Wind

150

(2% global electricity)

Hydro Hydro – U.S. Nuclear Nuclear – U.S

1,400 5

(16% global electricity) (6% U.S. electricity)

90 (11% global electricity) 0.1 (19% U.S. electricity)

*global average unless otherwise noted It is notable that in media and legislative discussions, the only time death is mentioned is for nuclear, ironic since it has the lowest deathprint of any source.

According to the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control, the National Academy of Science and many health studies over the last decade (NAS 2010), the adverse impacts on health become a significant effect for fossil fuel and biofuel/biomass sources. In fact, the World Health Organization has called biomass burning a major global health issue (WHO).

At the other end of the spectrum, nuclear energy is the safest. In fact, the United Nation’s (UNSCEAR) changed the estimate of additional deaths from the Chernobyl disaster from radiation in the public, from about 4,000 to about zero. Some plant staff and emergency workers were killed, and those deaths totalled 58 people, including 9 childhood thyroid cancers. The numbers for nuclear in the table reflects the old number.

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For coal, oil and biomass, it is carbon particulates resulting from burning that cause upper respiratory distress, kind of a second-hand black lung. Our lungs just donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t like burnt carbonaceous particulates, whether from coal or wood or manure or pellets or cigarettes.

The impact of fossil fuel on global health care systems has been significant, not just in deaths, but in non-lethal health effects and lost days of work.

It is important to note that using nuclear, hydro and renewables in place of coal and gas actually saves lives. These avoided deaths are in the millions for nuclear and hydro since they have generated trillions of kWhs of electricity over 60 years that would have been generated from coal and gas. Avoided deaths are in the thousands for renewables since they have yet to produce that much energy.

In the above table, the deathprint in the United States is given for coal, hydro and nuclear, three sources for which separate country data is available. Note the extreme difference between the U.S. deathprints and the global deathprints for each of these three sources.

Why are the global deathprints so much higher than the ones in the United States?

Strong regulations.

Whether itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the Clean Air Act, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) or the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), our energy systems are pretty safe.

Although fossil fuels could obviously do a better job.

Dr. James Conca is an expert on energy, nuclear and dirty bombs, a planetary geologist, and a professional speaker. Follow him on Twitter @jimconca and see his book at Amazon.com

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