Elbows up?🤔 Why Carney’s fast-track announcement is a disaster course for BC — from US foreign ownership to overseas jobs and climate impacts /1 🧵 #bcpoli

@Maxfieldripken @emilylowan

If you want to get out of fossil fuels, you need something which does the same job but better. We have that. We've had it for well over 50 years, and there has long been opposition to it precisely because it has proven capable of displacing fossil fuels.

#AtomicPowerToThePeople

@greensfornuclear

@publius @emilylowan @greensfornuclear

Do you have any death toll stats on wind solar tidal and geo?

I've got some on nukes.

@Maxfieldripken @publius @emilylowan

For wind and solar, yes. Sovacool et. al. studied fatal accidents compared to power generation for different energy sources between 1990 and 2013 and found that nuclear power was safer than solar and solar. There is very little deployed tidal energy in the world. We might assume that it is similar to hydro power in many respects, but it is likely safer as there is no 'down hill' for water to rush. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.07.059

@Maxfieldripken @publius @emilylowan
We placed all of the studies we could find in out background paper. They're in section 3 starting on page 4. Hope it helps.
https://greensfornuclear.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/document3.pdf

@greensfornuclear @publius @emilylowan

Rates per twh is interesting

I'm looking for your number of deaths, not as a rate (deaths of humans)

Also solar is safer than nuclear, by your chart, and wind is close. And you don't have geothermal, I see.

@Maxfieldripken @greensfornuclear @publius @emilylowan

Hi, I'm one of the members of Greens For Nuclear. I don't think that the total death figure is relevant. Far less power was generated over the time frames Sovacool et. al. studied through solar/wind than through nuclear (60,205 TWh for nuclear versus 3,566 TWh for wind and solar combined).

I heard it once quoted that more people die falling out of bed in the UK than are shot, does this make guns safer than beds?

@Maxfieldripken @greensfornuclear @publius @emilylowan

In the interests of completeness, Sovacool et. al. calculates total fatalities from 1950–2014 for wind at 126, solar at 13, and hydro at 177,665. Again, we're at our beds and guns comparison: would scaling up wind and solar to the scale of hydropower or nuclear make the world far safer?

The fatality rate data they calculate suggests the answer is no, and actually wind is more dangerous than hydropower per unit of production.

@tolstoys_lizard @Maxfieldripken @greensfornuclear @emilylowan

Considering that Sovacool is notorious for anti-nuclear papers, often well outside his areas of expertise, some of which are egregious enough to end in retraction, if the worst he can find to say about nuclear is "not worse than hydro", the truth is probably a great deal more favourable.

Possibly the deadliest single industrial accident in history was the Macchha irrigation dam collapse in Gujarat, estimated 20 000 dead.

@publius @tolstoys_lizard @greensfornuclear @emilylowan

I won't agree that total death figures are irrelevant.

Deaths per terawatt, or any kind of measure can be interesting, but can also move us past the humanity of war, economics and policy.

Direct deaths from energy failures matter.

Flooding a valley for a dam matters.

Irradiating geography matters.

Increases in cancers and reduction of lifespans and quality of life matter.

@publius @tolstoys_lizard @greensfornuclear @emilylowan

Drones killing people is maybe more cost effective and safer than 2 highly trained pilots in a more expensive plane.

We can make efficiency comparisons and productivity arguments all we want, but all this isn't a board game with hypothetical consequences.

And if 3 wind turbines burn down in a forest fire, the risk of catastrophic consequences is lower than say, nukes.

Solar panel failures? Generally harmless?

@Maxfieldripken @tolstoys_lizard @greensfornuclear @emilylowan

Burning down forests is not without consequences. In fact it kills people as well as polluting the air and destroying habitat. And wind construction projects, as well as malfunctioning turbines, have started such fires.

Malfunctioning solar panels set fires as well. Amazon had to replace huge numbers of them after its rooftop installations set several warehouses afire.

@publius @tolstoys_lizard @greensfornuclear @emilylowan

Wow, we are into The Obtuse Zone, like The Twilight Zone, but less fun.

Yes, a wind turbine can cause a forest fire.

A wind turbine can be burned in an existing fire, and its burning will likely not kill anyone. In a forest. Already on fire.

Most forest fires, forever, have not been caused by wind turbines. In the history of wind turbines.

If a solitary solar panel fails, its failure likely won't kill anyone. Just no energy.

@Maxfieldripken @tolstoys_lizard @greensfornuclear @emilylowan

And what then?

You are trying to imply that VERY LARGE NUMBERS of PV panels and wind machines are harmless, based on the idea that the probability of one individual machine causing a forest fire, or a house fire, is reasonably small.

Meanwhile, you are WORSHIPPING the effectively zero probability of a mass casualty event caused by a nuclear power reactor, of which a few thousand units would supply all world energy needs.

@Maxfieldripken @tolstoys_lizard @greensfornuclear @emilylowan

Again, experience of actual nuclear accidents shows that the "catastrophic consequences" you are thinking of, which were anticipated early on (hence the measures put in place to protect against them), CANNOT OCCUR.

Chernobyl dispersed roughly 1/3 of the core material of a 1 GW reactor during full-power operation. No such event could occur in any other kind of plant (or remaining RBMKs). Consequences were FAR SMALLER than expected.