Green Jobs and the Ethics of Energy - Ethical Engineering for International Development and Environmental Sustainability - page 140

including workers brought in for clean-up operations, from effects of Chernobyl
over the next 70 years. Others have put the fi gure at up to 60,000 (Fairlie and
Sumners 2006 ).
Nuclear and fossil fuels are not alone is presenting big risks from accidents. The
OECD also noted that the Banqiao/Simantan dam failure in China (then outside the
OECD) in 1975 claimed 30,000 lives. And there have been many other large hydro
plant failures in China and elsewhere. However, to put that in perspective, it is esti-
mated that 300,000-700,000 people a year die from outdoor air pollution in China,
much of it from coal-burning power plants (World Bank 2007 ).
Certainly in terms of health damage in the wider community, the use of fossil
fuel, and coal especially, has major impacts, even in countries with signifi cant air
pollution controls. Here we are not talking about accidents, but routine emissions.
For example, in the USA, studies have suggested that about 13,000 people die each
year in the USA from air pollution from coal-burning power plants (CATF 2010 ;
ALA 2011 ). Worldwide, the World Health Organization estimates that about 1.2
million people die each year from outdoor air pollution, much of this being from
coal burning and vehicles (WHO 2010 ). For example, premature deaths caused by
particulates from fossil fuel generation are thought to be around 288,000 per year
worldwide, based on OECD data.
Focusing on deaths is obviously important, but some of the impacts of coal burn-
ing are more diffuse and delayed, leading to respiratory illnesses later on, only some
of them fatal. With nuclear it is even harder to assess long-term impacts, in that
radiation can lead to a range of diseases and conditions, some which can kill later
on, and perhaps not be directly attributed to earlier radiation exposure, e.g. immune
system damage. Moreover, radiation exposure may not just be from power plant
accidents and leaks but also from the release of radioactive dust from uranium min-
ing, milling and processing operations, as well as, potentially, from waste storage,
long-term active waste disposal being as yet an unresolved problem (Alley and
Alley 2013 ).
Scientists and engineers do what they can to reduce these risks, but the nature of
the basic energy sources, the associated energy conversion processes and the dan-
gerous by-products and wastes most generate, in many cases, makes it hard to elimi-
nate risk. For example, our success at generating energy on a vast scale has been
based on systems that rely on transporting and using potentially dangerous materi-
als and the use of very high temperature and pressure processes, most of which need
very careful control. We do not always succeed. Accidents happen, in mines, in fuel
transport, in power stations and in waste dumps and tragically also include large
hydro-dam failures. In addition to deaths, most involve major pollution episodes
with ecological consequences. The names of episodes with large-scale impacts
often become familiar due to media coverage - the Torrey Canyon oil tanker disas-
ter, the Pipa Bravo gas blow out, the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the
Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear disasters. The list goes on and includes many
that do not get global media coverage (Madrigal 2011 ).
And yet there seemed to be no alternative. The risks associated with large-scale
energy production were often portrayed as the price of progress, even though the