The little tidbit about coal fly ash gives me the opportunity for a little rant: I have always been a proponent of nuclear power plants being safer for the environment than coal-fired plants. Notwithstanding, Three Mile Island, Chornobyl, and Fukushima.
I worked for several years at the Department of Energy Remote Sensing Laboratory, Aerial Measurements Dept., in Las Vegas. We surveyed plants from Niagara Falls to San Diego. From the surveys, I learned that there was more off-site radiation surrounding coal-fired plants than nuclear power plants.
Luddites have opposed nuclear energy from the start, mainly because of the sensationalist attitude of the press when it comes to reporting anything nuclear.
Gemini:
Official investigations and over a dozen independent epidemiological studies conclude that there were zero deaths directly attributable to the 1979 Three Mile Island accident.
"Coal contains uranium and thorium — both radioactive elements. They occur in trace amounts in natural coal that aren’t a problem, but when coal is burned into fly ash, uranium and thorium are concentrated at up to 10 times their original levels. Scientific American. The result is striking: the fly ash emitted by a power plant carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy. Scientific American"
Claude Sonnet 4.6:
Nuclear & the Rest: Which Is the Safest Energy Source?
A 2007 study of energy production in Europe assessed accident-related risks across multiple energy sources. Nuclear energy production averaged 0.012 deaths per TWh from accidents, while coal averaged 0.12 deaths per TWh — making coal ten times more deadly from accidents alone. Nuclear also had fewer accident-related deaths than oil, gas, and lignite. Stanford University
“A 2021 peer-reviewed study published in Science and Technology of Nuclear Installations used computational models to compare radiation doses to the public from both plant types. It found that estimated doses from coal plants were consistently higher — for example, organ equivalent dose from the coal plant was about 6.5 times higher than from the nuclear plant.” Wiley Online Library
Nuclear power plants are also safer for workers.
A 2007 study of energy production in Europe assessed accident-related risks across multiple energy sources. Nuclear energy production averaged 0.012 deaths per TWh from accidents, while coal averaged 0.12 deaths per TWh — making coal ten times more deadly from accidents alone. Nuclear also had fewer accident-related deaths than oil, gas, and lignite. Stanford University
Total deaths including air pollution
When you add in the chronic health toll from emissions — which disproportionately burdens people living near coal plants — the gap becomes staggering:
A 2007 study published in The Lancet found that to supply one terawatt-hour of energy, coal would kill 25 people, oil would kill 18, and natural gas would kill 3. Nuclear energy, by contrast, would cause one death every 14 years for that same unit of output. Earth.Org
Nuclear energy results in 99.8% fewer deaths than coal, 99.7% fewer than oil, and 97.6% fewer than gas. Researchers note that the current death rate estimates for fossil fuels are likely underestimated by a factor of 4 to 9. Our World in Data
"To put it in human terms
Consider a European town of about 187,000 people consuming one TWh of electricity per year. If that electricity came from coal, it would cause around 25 premature deaths per year. If it came from nuclear power, it would cause one death every 14 years." ref
The numbers above include Chernobyl and Fukushima. Despite those large disasters, nuclear energy on average leads to only 0.07 deaths per TWh when both Chernobyl and Fukushima are counted. The famous accidents loom large in public perception but are statistically swamped by coal’s routine, ongoing toll.
Bottom line: Whether you count only on-the-job industrial accidents or the full picture including air pollution deaths, coal is dramatically more deadly than nuclear — by roughly a factor of 10 on accidents alone, and closer to 100-fold when chronic health effects from emissions are included.
