Is solar riskier than nuclear

Risk to human health has become one of the prime considerations in choosing energy systems, if it has not already overtaken economic cost. Accidents at reactors and collapses of dams all capture public attention. But are they the total risk of energy systems. Just as the cost of any article is made up of a number of sources, so the total risk of an energy system has many origins. The author lists these as: raw materials and fuel production, transportation (all applications), component fabrication, plant construction, operation and maintenance, waste disposition and deactivation and public health risk. While it is impossible to state with certainty that these sources of risk are the only ones, they are the major considerations in most risk studies. Most of these listed risk sources seem to be of non-catastrophic origin, i.e., accidents or illnesses that occur one at a time. Even for systems like nuclear power and hydroelectricity, which receive considerable publicity about real or potential catastrophies, the proportion of catastrophic (as meaured by historical statistics) to non-catastrophic risk is very small. As a result of the risk analysis philosophy described in this article, the author concludes that the risk in total man-days lost is least for energy from natural gas, next least from nuclear energy, greatest from coal, next greatest from oil, with all other sources between these limits