Putting Risk into Perspective

Here's a nice visual along with some text to put the risk of nuclear power into perspective:

Death Rate Per Watt Produced

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

Seth Godin has the dramatic chart.


The little tiny box is “nuclear.”

I knew this, and the chart still is effective. And my kids were at first very skeptical last week when I tried to tell them that so far coal had killed far more people than nuclear power. (Of course the very worst case scenario for a nuclear plant is much worse than the very worst case scenario for any coal-fired plant; but the very worst case scenario for coal plants aggregated is…global warming.)

In the news today German has "speeded up" the closure of its nuclear reactors. Lemmings to the sea!

If you want to be ruled by fear, then worry about the heat death of the universe, worry about the coming transformation of the sun into a red giant which will swallow earth in its fiery maw, worry about an asteroid bringing life to an end, worry that yet another virulent bug will jump the species barrier and spread a billion plus deaths around the earth... There is so much to fear and so little time left in an average person's life to savour the delightful frisson of fear!