File:Power sources lifetime deaths per PWh.png

Summary[edit]

Common power plant types, listed in order of safety from most deadly to most safe, per unit of energy produced (petawatt-hours, to make the numbers tractable), as of 2011.

There are several different sources for this information, all different, but the general visual trend is the same.

This is the one that includes radiation deaths at Chernobyl, deaths from Banqiao dam collapse, etc.

ENERGY SOURCE        DEATHS FATAL/TWH      TWH NOTES
----------------- --------- ---------  ------- ------------------------------------
Coal – world     67,000,000    129     520,000 (26% world energy, 50% of elec.)
Coal – USA/Europe                              About ten times safer
Oil             101,000,000    133     720,000 (36% of world energy)
Natural Gas       6,000,000     13     460,000 (21% of world energy)
Biofuel/Biomass                 12.00         
Peat                            12.00         
Solar (rooftop)         480      0.44      960 (less than 0.1% of world energy)
Wind                  1,760      0.15   12,000 (less than 1% of world energy)
Hydro + Banqiao)    195,000      0.84  232,000 (~2500 TWh/yr + 171,000 Banqiao dead)
Nuclear              15,000      0.07  208,000 (5.9% of world energy)
----------------- --------- --------- ------- -------------------------------------
World         180.2 million       60  2,000,000 Terawatt-hours
Unaccounted    10.8 million       60    120,000 TWh = 6.00% … fatalities prorated

• Source: Lifetime deaths per TWH from energy sources, Brian L. Wang, March 28, 2011
• Similar sources:

• Update of Death per Terawatt hour by Energy Source, Brian L. Wang, June 03, 2016

• Older version: Deaths per TWH by energy source, Brian L. Wang, March 13, 2011

• Forbes: How Deadly Is Your Kilowatt? We Rank The Killer Energy Sources, James Conca, JUN 10, 2012
• Economic Analysis of Various Options of Electricity Generation - Taking into Account Health and Environmental Effects, Nils Starfelt and Carl-Erik Wikdahl

• Diagram 3 "Mean values of health effects, presented as deaths/TWh, for the respective forms of electricity generation throughout the EU", based on the EU ExternE project

• Wind only: Deaths database, Paul Gipe, 2012
• Figure 24.11. Death rates of electricity generation technologies. x: European Union estimates by the ExternE project. O: Paul Scherrer Institute.
• Similar graph

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