TechCrunch - Bill Gates spoke at a Wired business conference in New York City. Bill spoke about the benefits of nuclear energy, particularly next-generation designs. The backlash [to Fukushima], he thinks, is overblown. “If you compare it to the amount that coal has killed per kilowatt hour,” he points out, “it is way, way less.” When an accident does occur, however, its effects are much more visible. “Coal kills fewer people at one time, which is highly preferred by politicians,” he says.
Clearly Bill Gates needs to hire me for energy and other analysis at a very high salary.
Why is nuclear power feared more than other energy
I would note that actually coal often kills more people at one time but people have gotten used to it. It is like random shootings or car accident fatalities on the street that happen every day against a broadcast of the movie Saw. The Saw movie has unusual kinds of deaths. They are more shocking. No one actually has died because of the Fukushima nuclear incident that was caused by the Tsunami, but there is concern that cancer deaths for those exposed might go from 30% to 30.1% over a lifetime. The earthquake and tsunami deaths and the fear from that are associated with the problems at the nuclear reactors. There were actual deaths from a dam failure caused the Tsunami, but that had almost no reporting. It can also be more frightening because the radiation exposures can happen so quickly, while the air pollution exposures are over a longer period of time. Coal or oil accidents that can kill hundreds are usually over quickly. It is more rare for a major oil leak, oil fires or coal fires to last a long time and usually any risks of deaths are over in the first few days. Any increased fossil fuel pollution risks are generally ignored.
Nextbigfuture has written several articles related to analyzing energy sources with impartial metrics such as deaths per terawatt hour.
