When it comes to energy production, safety is a major concern. One way to compare the safety of different energy sources is by looking at the death rates per unit of electricity production. According to data from Our World in Data ², nuclear power has one of the lowest death rates, with 0.2 to 1.2 deaths per 10 TWh (terawatt-hours) of energy produced ¹. In contrast, coal has one of the highest death rates, with 2.8 to 32.7 deaths per 10 TWh ¹.
This means that for each person killed by nuclear power generation, 4,000 die from coal ⁵. These numbers are adjusted for how much power is produced by each method of power generation.
While nuclear power has had some high-profile accidents, such as Chernobyl and Fukushima, overall it has a much better safety record than coal. Coal mining and burning releases harmful pollutants into the air and water, causing respiratory and other health problems.
When it comes to safety, it seems that nuclear power has a much lower death rate than coal-fired power.
Source: GPT-4 enabled Bing, 30/04/2023
(1) Death rates per unit of electricity production – Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
(2) How Safe Dams Are Compared to Nuclear, Coal, and Gas Power Plants. https://bing.com/search?q=death+rate+nuclear+power+coal.
(3) Death Rate From Nuclear Power Vs Coal? This May Surprise You – The9Billion. http://www.the9billion.com/2011/03/24/death-rate-from-nuclear-power-vs-coal/
(4) Nuclear Energy – Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-energy
(5) How Safe Dams Are Compared to Nuclear, Coal, and Gas Power Plants. https://www.businessinsider.com/dam-safety-statistics-risk-of-death-2017-2
(6) Comparing Dangers of Coal and Nuclear Energy – Stanford University. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2019/ph241/marshall2/
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