Posted on 03/17/2011 12:43:09 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
Inconvenient Truth: Wind Energy Has Killed More Americans Than Nuclear By Lachlan Markay Created 03/17/2011 - 1:43pm
By Lachlan Markay | March 17, 2011 | 13:43
There has been quite a bit of hysteria among some major media outlets in the past few days regarding the potential dangers of nuclear power. Some have even suggested that the benefits of nuclear energy do not outweigh its potential dangers to human life.
The dangers of nuclear power, while serious, need to be put in perspective. To that end, here's an interesting fact you won't be hearing from the mainstream press: wind energy has killed more Americans than nuclear energy.
You read that right. According to the Caithness Windfarm Information Forum, there were 35 fatalities associated with wind turbines in the United States from 1970 through 2010. Nuclear energy, by contrast, did not kill a single American in that time.
The meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979 did not kill or injure anyone, since the power plant's cement containment apparatus did its job - the safety measures put in place were effective. Apparently the safety measures associated with wind energy are not adequate to prevent loss of life.
Nuclear accounts for about nine percent of America's energy, according to the Energy Information Administration, and has yet to cause a single fatality here. Wind, on the other hand, provides the United States with only 0.7 percent of its energy, and has been responsible for 35 deaths in the United States alone. So if we're trying to weigh the costs and benefits of each, it seems wind fares far worse than nuclear. Yet no one seems to be discussing plans to halt production of all new wind farms until Americans' safety can be guaranteed.
Of course there are potential dangers to nuclear energy that the nation, thankfully, has not had to endure. But when assessing the dangers of a given technology, it usually helps to look at what has actually happened, not what could maybe, possibly, conceivably happen in the event of a Biblical-scale disaster.
Unfortunately, doomsday scenarios tend to get far more media play than level-headed analysis.
The left wants to demonize nuclear and natural fuel such as oil and coal, which we have in abundance. Facts are like kryptonite to liberals.
And on top of everything else, I understand they kill migratory birds.
... this calls for a modern Don Quixote story... but this time about a bunch of liberals who attack nuclear plants... oh, irony.
Liberals wallow in intellectual defeatism and surrenderism to any issue they feel they cannot understand or perform... uh... oh... wait... that’s about everything and that is why they are all sociopath. They cannot hold a normal conversation, it scares them... to... you know... try to make sense.
Are liberals really the sufferers of autism, and is this autism “epidemic” just another system of their abuse?
Not necessarily. Unless they could trash a state capital somewhere.
Level headed analysis? Comparing the deaths from wind turbines to the deaths from nuclear power plants?
The lowest estimate of deaths from the chernobyl explosion is about 4,000. Had some pretty serious downstream health effects as well. And several hundred thousand people had to be resettled.
I tend to favor building more nuclear power plants. But pretending that there is some point of comparison between the risks of wind turbines and the risk from nuclear power plants makes the one making the comparison look a tad silly.
How many Americans have been killed by OUR Nuke Plants?
I watched a TV show where a crew was installing an enormous windmill in some New England coastal town. It looked like a nighmare and was extremely dangerous.
Technically it's correct with the world's entire history of nuclear as commonly understood, IOW commercial. We had a few deaths long ago on government experimental systems, but not one death ever in a commercial plant.
I would make what I call the "communist exception" on that. They didn't give a damn about the environment or people. For example, it would be wrong to compare the environmental or health impact of your average chemical plant in the US with communist-era plants. When the wall came down, West Germans were shocked at the open toxic pits scattererd all over the East.
Nope. 56 people died as a direct result of the accident.
The 4000 number is the total expected over the next few decades. IOW it IS the downstream health effects.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article563041.ece
Yes and no. I am guessing they’re including accidents, such as falls and so on in the tally for wind turbine fatalities. There have been fatalities at commercial plants of a non-nuclear nature, such as electrocution.
Right. No one working at a nuclear plant ever had an accident and died in the last 35 years.
BS!!
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