Reducing power consumption how much? To zero? By half? That's a bit of a moving target.
Regarding the alternate studies you have posted (which, btw, I really do appreciate): If one were to include the upper limits of them, would that make nuclear more dangerous than fossil fuels? Than widespread "alternatives"?
Please note that I'm not trying to be snarky here. I appreciate your posts and would genuinely like to hear your thoughts.
I haven't posted any alternate studies, I would have to take time to source them. Maybe you didn't notice?
If you bought a kill-a-watt or something similar, you could investigate how much money you can save on appliances. Same goes for energy saving bulbs, based on my own power bills, before and after, I saved about 75 percent when I started to make an effort. It would be foolish to attempt any extrapolation based on my anecdote, but I would surmise there are massive consumption savings to be made. Particularly in the home, insulation and in transport. Particularly startling to me is the frequently thrown about statistic that 5% of the energy consumption of the world is coming from datacentres. And that it was 20% more efficient to use DC to each blade than have a PSU doing ac/dc conversion in each.
The source on Chernobyl (there are lots of caveats given about how it was a once off freak incident and these figures are absolute worst case):
"If those possible 4000 deaths occur over the next 25 years, then with 2800 TWh being assumed average for 2005 through 2030, then it would be 4000 deaths over 112,000 TWh generated over 45 years or 0.037 deaths/TWh."
If one were to include the upper limits, the earlier upper bound figure mentioned was 1 million, assuming they died over 112,000 TWh it would be 1000000/4000 * 0.037 deaths/TWh which is 9.25 deaths per TWh. It looks pretty dangerous then, given that. It is grotesque doing this sort of calculation in the midst of unfolding events.
below is the source chart, figures in TWh:
Coal – world average 161 (26% of world energy, 50% of electricity)
Coal – China 278
Coal – USA 15
Oil 36 (36% of world energy)
Natural Gas 4 (21% of world energy)
Biofuel/Biomass 12
Peat 12
Solar (rooftop) 0.44 (less than 0.1% of world energy)
Wind 0.15 (less than 1% of world energy)
Hydro 0.10 (europe death rate, 2.2% of world energy)
Hydro - world including Banqiao) 1.4 (about 2500 TWh/yr and 171,000 Banqiao dead)
Nuclear 0.04 (5.9% of world energy)
(edit: mistakes, , more mistakes, formatting, reproduced table came out on one line)
> 9.25 deaths per TWh. It looks pretty dangerous then, given that.
I'm sorry, you're saying that less deaths per TWh than Oil, Coal, Biofuel, and Peat looks pretty dangerous? That looks really safe to me, at least in comparison to our other options.
> It is grotesque doing this sort of calculation in the midst of unfolding events.
I'll give you that, if you admit that it's also grotesque to use current events to support related agendas, given that our information about them isn't nearly as comprehensive as it could be.
There's no mention of how the figure for Biofuel is arrived at so I'm not sure that I can agree with it (the idea that arable land is spent on biofuel, thus driving up food prices was doing the round a while ago). With that possible exception, my opinion is that all four are pretty dangerous. It seems they are all at least twice as dangerous as Natural gas. I disagree that it looks really safe compared to the others. I agree that it is grotesque to use current events to support related agendas.
Regarding the alternate studies you have posted (which, btw, I really do appreciate): If one were to include the upper limits of them, would that make nuclear more dangerous than fossil fuels? Than widespread "alternatives"?
Please note that I'm not trying to be snarky here. I appreciate your posts and would genuinely like to hear your thoughts.