Nuclear power is portrayed by the major media and by environmental activists as dangerous and perhaps even sinister.  Wind power, on the other hand, is considered benign. But the track records of nuclear power and wind power present a different picture.

Nuclear power has been been used to produce electricity for more than four decades, beginning with the Shippingport nuclear power plant in 1957. Today there are 104 nuclear power plants in the United States generating some 60 billion kilowatt hours per year of electricity. There have been no deaths from radiation in more than 40 years of American nuclear plant operations. Even considering the "catastrophe" at Three Mile Island,  there has not been a single case of injury to any member of the public. (There were fatalities at the Russian Chernobyl plant, but that plant was radically different from an American nuclear power plant. It did not even have a containment structured around the nuclear reactor.)

How about wind power? How does it fare compared to the perfect record of the American nuclear power industry?  Believe it or not, there is an organization, the Caithness Windfarm Information Forum, that keeps data on wind-power-related accidents and/or design problems. Caithness is based in Great Britain, where homeowners have already grown tired of the noise and other wind-turbine-generated problems. Their "Summary of Wind Turbine Accident Data to 31 December 2008"  reports 41 worker fatalities.  Most, not unexpectedly, were from falling  as they are typically working on turbines some thirty stories above the ground. In addition, Caithness attributed the deaths of 16 members of the public to wind-turbine accidents.

A summary of accidents includes:

• 139 incidents of blade failure. Failed blades have been known to travel over a quarter mile, and that is from turbines much smaller than those being manufactured today. This type of accident has caused some European countries to require a minimum distance of about one mile (2 km) between occupied housing and wind turbines.

•110 incidents of fire. When a wind turbine fire occurs, the local fire departments (without 30-story ladder trucks) can do little but watch. This isn't a problem unless the wind is blowing sufficiently to scatter the debris into dry fields or woodlands — or maybe onto your roof.

• 60 incidents of structural failure. This includes turbine failure and tower collapse failures. While not now a problem for the public — except having to gaze upon at a bent-over wind turbine — it may well become one as governments, under pressure from environmental activists, encourage marginal- and hastily-sited wind projects in urban areas where such an accident could kill and maim.

• 24 incidents of "ice throw" with human injury. These data may be a small fraction of actual incidences, with 880 icing events reported in a 13-year period for Germany alone.

Why these fatalities for wind compared to none for the American nuclear power industry? Nuclear energy comes from a reactor core about the size of a living room where it can be monitored and contained in-depth. It would take 2,000 30-story tall wind turbines to produce the power of a typical nuclear plant, assuming 90 percent and 30 percent capacity factors. How many accidents would you expect when building 2,000 30-story turbine generators as compared to pouring concrete for a single containment building of a few thousand square feet? 

But the deaths and injuries resulting from wind turbine construction and operation will be dwarfed by the carnage certain to occur in California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's "million solar roofs plant" actually comes to fruition? Falls, currently the second largest cause of accidental deaths after auto accidents and five times the rate from fires, will no doubt take a sizable jump as tens of thousands of amateur installers take to the roofs. And remember, solar voltaic cells must be cleaned regularly else they rapidly lose their already poor efficiencies.

Environmental accidents would have more credibility if they presented the full story on "non- renewables" such as wind and solar power. Of course, if they did, and if they at the same time claimed that we must go wind as opposed to nuclear, theyíd be laughed out of town.

March 6, 2009 Addendum: The original intent of this article was to point out the existence of a group, the Caithness Windfarm Information Forum,that kept track of accidents and deaths related to construction and operation of wind turbines. I was amazed that such a group existed and was so knowledgeable about the subject. But being unabashedly pro-nuclear, I couldnít resist pointing out the excellent safety record in the nuclear power generation industry.

I had given it the sarcastic working title of "That Safe Renewable Energy."  Now that I look at it, however,  the article indeed looks like a comparison of the safety records. As pointed out by comments below, however, it is not a fair comparison since the wind data was worldwide and the nuclear power stats were from the United States alone.  As noted by one commentator, it does a disservice to the nuclear power industry as it appears to be spinning data in favor of nuclear power when such spinning is unnecessary.

Then too, as mentioned out by another commentator, the accident and death rates should be put in terms of relative amounts of power generated — a good research topic for another day.  My apologies for not taking all of this into consideration, especially since my raison d'etre is bringing the truth about energy matters to the readers of The New American.

Photo: Creative Commons CC-BY-SA-2.5

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William Palmer said:

Calculating Risk - Wind Versus Nuclear Of particular interest is to compare the methods of calculation of risk to the public posed by nuclear developers and by wind developers. When calculating the "risk to the public" posed by a nuclear accident, the analytical "rule" for individual risk is to assume that a person is physically present at the most impacted site they can be (generally at the outer fenceline of the project) when the accident occurs. Thus, what one is calculating is the risk of an accident occurring that can impact the most affected site. As a common analogy, this says that a deep hole poses a risk if a person can fall into it. The ways to minimize the risk are to fill in the hole, or to put a barrier around it to prevent a person from falling in. When calculating the risk to the public posed by a wind turbine accident, the method generally used is to calculate the risk of the accident occurring, and then to calculate the probability that a person is in the vicinity that they might be impacted by the accident. By saying that a person is only rarely at the impacted site, the "risk to the public" becomes much less. On a common analogy, this says, a deep hole does not present a risk if a person chooses on their own to stay away, even though there are no barriers - even worse, the hole may be dug into the roadway that people generally drive ... Apples and Oranges are more closely related than the risk calculated for wind or nuclear. Des it make sense that because one is determined to be "green" that protection of the public can be ignored?

February 16, 2009 | url

Ernest Cooney said:

Nuclear Power vs Foreign Oil Imports The vast majority of business and our so called environmentalists and politicians would rather send our young men and women to fight and die for terrorist oil, all this while spending Billions to protect the terrorist nations who sell us this oil, and price gouge us at every opportunity. Politicians value the life of fish and caribou more than the lives of our soldiers,big oil wines and dines , soldiers just join and die.

February 16, 2009

accidents waiting in the wings, Lowly rated comment [Show]

Rod Adams said:

Reliable, safe, clean, and economic @Ed - Well written article. One quibble on the numbers - according to the Energy Information Agency web site, the 104 nuclear power plants operating in the US produced 806 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2007, not 60 as you state in the article. A factor of 12 is kind of important in this discussion. @Paxus - Davis Besse could have done some damage to the plant and required a clean up of the containment if the pressure vessel head had been penetrated, but it is very unlikely that a core melt or containment breach could have occurred from a hole at the TOP of the pressure vessel. GRAVITY and the heat being removed from the act of BOILING the water would keep the core covered and below the melting point. You continue to be a Lovins disciple; I simply cannot trust the man or his math. His view of the technology does not match the reality that I witnessed as a submarine engineer officer. Amory Lovins is a paid consultant for the oil and gas industry. He has been fighting against nuclear fission power and for fossil fuel combustion since he dropped out of college for the second time and started campaigning for Friends of the Earth in the UK in the early 1970s. Here is a quote in his own words from a July 16, 2008 interview on Democracy Now! "You know, I’ve worked for major oil companies for about thirty-five years, and they understand how expensive it is to drill for oil." Rod Adams Publisher, Atomic Insights Host and producer, The Atomic Show Podcast Founder, Adams Atomic Engines, Inc.

February 17, 2009 | url

this is ridiculous, Lowly rated comment [Show]

Jack of Truth said:

Factually incorrect article. Here is a quote from the report on wind power... "16 were public fatalities, of which three were from road accidents attributed to “driver distraction of turbines” by police, two were from road accidents involving turbine component transport, one was in a transport accident in which the road collapsed and the driver drowned, one was in a transport accident in which a transport worker lost his leg when loading a trailer and later died, one was from an aircraft accident which hit a new and unmarked anemometer, four were from an further aircraft accident which flew into a turbine in fog (one incident killing four people), one was a 16-year old boy strangled after his necktie became tangled around an unprotected turbine shaft, one was a farmer who killed himself due to the pressure of public opposition to his proposed wind turbines, one was electrocuted, and the remaining accident was the collision of a parachutist with a turbine." Also note that these figures are world wide. So therefore one must ask, how many people have died worldwide by driver distraction of nuclear plants? How many people have died worldwide by traffic accidents associated with construction of nuclear plants? How many people have died worldwide by airplanes flying into nuclear cooling towers in the fog? How many people have died worldwide by suicide over nuclear issues? Etc.

February 17, 2009

Robert Singleton said:

... This article compares radiation fatalities at nuclear plants to all fatalities at wind plants. Does nobody ever fall and die at a nuclear plant? Anybody interested in safety at nuclear plants shoud go to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's website and click on Event Reports. Just the Fitness for Duty reports -- people failing drug or alcohol reports -- will cause you to lose sleep.

February 17, 2009

Nancy said:

Playing selective recall with the numbers Saying "not a single injury to a member of the public" is misleading. There are, and will continue to be, industrial accidents and even fatalities at nuclear power plants, among the workers. There have been people killed in steam pipe ruptures, electrocutions, and diving accidents. The rates are probably comparable to other large steam-driven power plants. And, how were these people killed by wind power? It is not exactly specified. Death rate per MWh would probably also be a useful indicator of how risky wind is versus nuclear power.

February 17, 2009

Bill Teer said:

reply to Nancy Comparison of injuries and fatalities based on rates per MwH would show that nuclear is many, many times safer than wind. As noted in an earlier post, nuclear produce 806 billion kilowatt hours in 2007 which is about 20% of the power used in the United States. I don't know the numbers for windmills, but it was probably about 1%.

February 17, 2009

Barry said:

... Some of you know me from other sites...and that I am a strong nuclear power proponent. However, this article does those of us promoting nuclear power as a safe, clean source of abundant 24/7 electricity, a disservice. As stated by others, objectivity requires you compare apples to apples. If you are going to use world-wide statistics, you must include Chernobyl. If you are going to use industrial safety records, then apply that to both where we have seen deaths occur at nuclear power plants during both construction and operation. Of course, none of these deaths in the “west” were radiation related. There are many other issues we can discuss that point out nuclear power’s advantages over other generating sources, including wind. There is no need to apply poor logic in an attempt to spin.

February 17, 2009

davidj said:

Nuclear Coal has about twice the energy density of wood and oil and natural gas are about double the density of coal. Sunlight and wind have energy densities less than a tenth of wood. The energy density of uranium is 2 million. Wind is erratic - over 80% of current facilities are kept on standby spinning in reserve mode for use as peak-load power. Only 3% of our electric power is from oil, so don't count on power generation getting us off the OPEC tit. Of the 4% of total CO2 put into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, 10% is from electricity production, 3% of that is from oil, so the net effect of windmills replacing oil for power generation is negligible when it comes to CO2. The efficiency of the most advanced experimental solar cells is

February 17, 2009

Stupid question, Lowly rated comment [Show]