Dr. Conca reports that the costs of energy are usually discussed in terms of dollars required to construct, fuel and operate power plants or arrays, or the cost of transmitting that energy to whomever is using it. But there are some additional costs that are rarely discussed because we do not know how to determine them, and we do not know who to charge for them. Known as externalities, these vague eventually-someone-has-to-pay kind of costs are hard to put a value on because they are mainly associated human health and environmental effects. Everyone has heard of 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 per kWh. The physical footprint, or the amount of land required to produce a kWh, is also an important issue but only for renewables. But an energy has a deathprint, as it is called, a rarely-discussed externality.
The deathprint is the number of people killed per kWh produced. There is debate on the absolute numbers, but no debate on the relative ranking of 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. Estimates of the mortality rate for each energy source are made as deaths per trillion kWhs generated over the last 40 years, plus an estimate of that source contribution to global energy use from the IEA. The numbers are a combination of direct deaths and epidemiological estimates and are an amalgam of many sources. These health care externalities are probably the biggest reason to decrease the use of coal, even more so than the effects of global warming. But the ramifications of these issues are not so simple. Nuclear stands out as the most favorable.
The original URL: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/09/30/the-deathprint-of-energy-grapples-with-the-powers-of-regulation/#296bb3832c6b
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