In a new study, James Hansen pushes nuclear power as saving more lives than it has harmed

Watts Up With That? ^ | April 2, 2013 | Anthony Watts

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

This is sure to get some enviros in a tizzy.

Fukushima I nuclear power plant before the 2011 explosion. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From Chemical and Engineering News of the American Chemical Society:

Nuclear Power Prevents More Deaths Than It Causes

Climate Change: Study estimates that nuclear energy leads to substantially fewer pollution-related deaths and greenhouse gas emissions compared with fossil-fuel sources

By Mark Schrope

Using nuclear power in place of fossil-fuel energy sources, such as coal, has prevented some 1.8 million air pollution-related deaths globally and could save millions of more lives in coming decades, concludes a study. The researchers also find that nuclear energy prevents emissions of huge quantities of greenhouse gases. These estimates help make the case that policymakers should continue to rely on and expand nuclear power in place of fossil fuels to mitigate climate change, the authors say (Environ. Sci. Technol., DOI: 10.1021/es3051197).

In the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, critics of nuclear power have questioned how heavily the world should rely on the energy source, due to possible risks it poses to the environment and human health.

“I was very disturbed by all the negative and in many cases unfounded hysteria regarding nuclear power after the Fukushima accident,” says report coauthor Pushker A. Kharecha, a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in New York.

Working with Goddard’s James E. Hansen, Kharecha set out to explore the benefits of nuclear power. The pair specifically wanted to look at nuclear power’s advantages over fossil fuels in terms of reducing air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

Kharecha was surprised to find no broad studies on preventable deaths that could be attributed to nuclear power’s pollution savings. But he did find data from a 2007 study on the average number of deaths per unit of energy generated with fossil fuels and nuclear power (Lancet, DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(07)61253-7). These estimates include deaths related to all aspects of each energy source from mining the necessary natural resources to power generation. For example, the data took into account chronic bronchitis among coal miners and air pollution-related conditions among the public, including lung cancer.

Read more here http://cen.acs.org/articles/91/web/2013/04/Nuclear-Power-Prevents-Deaths-Causes.html

Prevented mortality and greenhouse gas emissions from historical and projected nuclear power

Pushker A. Kharecha and James E Hansen

Environ. Sci. Technol., Just Accepted Manuscript

DOI: 10.1021/es3051197

Abstract

In the aftermath of the March 2011 accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the future contribution of nuclear power to the global energy supply has become somewhat uncertain. Because nuclear power is an abundant, low-carbon source of base-load power, on balance it could make a large contribution to mitigation of global climate change and air pollution. Using historical production data, we calculate that global nuclear power has prevented about 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths and 64 gigatonnes (Gt) CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that would have resulted from fossil fuel burning. Based on global projection data that take into account the effects of Fukushima, we find that by mid-century, nuclear power could prevent an additional 420,000 to 7.04 million deaths and 80 to 240 GtCO2-eq emissions due to fossil fuels, depending on which fuel it replaces. By contrast, we assess that large-scale expansion of natural gas use would not mitigate the climate problem and would cause far more deaths than expansion of nuclear power.

Full paper: Hi-Res PDF

[KarlInOhio]

More people died in Ted Kennedy’s car than in nuclear power accidents.

Well, American accidents anyway.

[ransomnote]

Petr Beckman detailed the precise ways in which nuclear power would save far more lives in producing electric power than any other method in this book.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Did he detail the medical studies dating from the 60’s to the present detailing the damage done to human health by low level radiation? How about Chernobyl? Oh but Chernobyl started in the 80s so that was before Beckman. As was Fukushima and other little mishaps the nuclear power industry simply pretends didn’t happen and didn’t harm anyone. The problem with Beckman is he had to have believed the ad copy written by nuclear power shills stating as a fact that containment could NOT fail - that it was by design impossible. By now of course it’s obviously false (there are 3 nuclear cores in Japan that have melted through the containment structures and are ‘somewhere’ in the basement of the power plants) but so much of what Beckman believed was just propaganda.

[SuziQ]

IIRC, there was a city in the Northwest that was powered by the plant on a Nuke submarine, during a blackout. Smaller nuke plants are a great solution, but that will happen only after folks get over their hysteria about nuke plants.