A BOE Estimate of Deaths Connected with Coal Combustion in Wyoming.
There's something I really, really, really like about the head rote antinuke at the so called "Union of Concerned 'Scientists.'"
His name.
He's Edwin Lyman, or as I like to put it, Ed LIE-man.
As for the "Union of Concerned 'Scientists,'" I'm a former member, from a long time ago, which probably allows me some room to justify placing the word "Scientists" in internal quotes.
When I was a young antinuke myself, participating in an admittedly small way to murdering the planetary atmosphere, and tens of millions of people killed by air pollution, actually well over 100 million people, since I was an antinuke until my private analysis of the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, which I compared with my ill thought out expectations. These expectations were guided by rather credulous acceptance of the claims about the "danger" of nuclear energy, provided to me by my membership in the "Union of Concerned 'Scientists.'" The Chernobyl reactor blew up (a hydrogen explosion) in 1986. I spent the next two or three years trying to understand the situation, whereupon I suspended my "concerns" about nuclear energy and became pronuclear. Kiev, which is about 100 km (60 miles) from Chernobyl, is still there. It doesn't appear that the death toll from Chernobyl, after 39 years of angst, is anywhere near the values Ed loves so much to calculate for, say, a terrorist attack on Indian Point, or any of the other more than 100 commercial nuclear reactors that have operated in the United States.
Kiev is, of course, repeatedly bombed these days by fossil fuel weapons of mass destruction, including those that shelled the Chernobyl sarcophagus. The funding for these weapons of mass destruction was provided by German antinukes with the aid of Gazprom employee and close friend of Putin, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, the antinuke responsible for initiating the German nuclear phase out, in part motivated by, um, Chernobyl.
Let's be clear on something, OK?. In Kiev, fossil fuel powered weapons of mass destruction killed vastly more people in Kiev than the hydrogen explosion of the Chernobyl reactor killed in Kiev.
Anyway.
Let me tell you how I became a "Concerned Scientist." I wrote a check. I put it in the mail - in those days we only had snail mail - and back came my membership documentation placing me on the mailing list. There was no application form by the way. No one asked me about whether I had exposure to courses in the matrix formulations of quantum electrodynamics using Dyson series, or whether I had any insight to the genetics responsible for the proteome of Castanea dentata (American Chestnut) providing no resistance to Cryphonectria parasitica for which the proteome of Castanea mollissima, the Asian Chestnut, renders it immune. I wasn't asked for insights to string theory - the subject in which Ed Lie-man earned his Ph.D. at Cornell. No one inquired whether I knew anything about the Kohn-Sham equations underlying density functional calculations, or even if I had taken a high school class in Earth Science in the 9th grade. There was none of that. I wrote a check and I was a "Concerned Scientist."
And here we are in a world where people are required to get formal educations, often at considerable expense in tuition, books and time, to become "scientists."
Who knew it could be so easy, not just to be a "scientist," but even better, a "concerned" scientist?"
So what about Ed, antinuke?
Well, Ed, it appears, is "concerned" about the Terrapower nuclear reactor for which ground has been broken in Wyoming.
Ed is always "concerned," when the word "nuclear" is raised. As far as I can tell, he doesn't give a flying fuck about how many people die from air pollution about which he is apparently less concerned. (I always cite the following article to describe annual deaths from air pollution: ] (Lancet Volume 396, Issue 10258, 17–23 October 2020, Pages 1223-1249). Global burden of 87 risk factors in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019. (There are updates, but they require a bit more effort to parse, which my former status as a "concerned scientist" notwithstanding doesn't allow for simplicity in translation.)
I consider myself - one can judge for one's self if I am justified in this - something of an autodidactic expert in nuclear engineering. This should be allowed I think, because Ed Lie-man does not have a degree in nuclear engineering, although his fellow former antinuke "Concerned Scientist" David Lochbaum, was a nuclear engineer with a bachelor's degree from the University of Tennessee. Before the explosion of the Chernobyl reactor, I assumed these guys must know something I didn't. (Credulity is easily dismissed by education, autodidactic or otherwise.)
I have developed over the 39 years since Chernobyl blew up, routine familiarity with the wide array of nuclear power designs and I have opinions about most of them.
Let me tell you about what I know about the Terrapower reactor. It uses a coolant that has been problematic in a wide array of fast breeder nuclear reactors, liquid sodium (or perhaps, I confess ignorance, a sodium potassium alloy). It features a molten salt reservoir designed to store energy in the best thermodynamic state industrially available, heat. This allows for load following. It's an interesting design, but whether it is an excellent design remains to be seen. I am a fan of liquid metal reactors, but not sodium cooled liquid metal reactors. If I were investing in a nuclear power plant, I would not choose to invest in the Terrapower reactor. There are no nuclear reactors, even the worst nuclear reactors, like say, the RBMK (the Chernobyl design) that are as dangerous as the best fossil fuel power plants. Zero. None. Zip. This said, I'm sure the Terrapower engineers are smarter than I am; I expect the reactor to be a success, despite Ed Lie-man's "concerns."
Sodium cooled fast reactors have operated in France (Phoenix and SuperPhoenix) and in Japan (Monju) and both the SuperPhoenix and Monju were highly problematic and were shut down after short periods of operation. On the other hand, the Russian fast breeder reactors have a more successful history. The BN-600 fast breeder reactor in Russia came on line in 1980 and was recently licensed to continue operations until 2040. Russia is planning on building another, larger, fast breeder reactor the BN-1200. (India is expected to finish its sodium cooled fast breeder reactor in 2026.)
Now let's turn to Ed Lie-man's "concerns." Ed is "concerned" that the Terrapower reactor lacks a containment building. (So does the BN-600.) This he says is, as I learned here, NRC's Rushed Approval of Bill Gates' Experimental Wyoming Nuclear Reactor will Imperil Public Health, the Environment
Notice the verb. It's not "may." It's will.
Ed is very good at soothsaying, I guess, or at least thinks he is.
Of course, soothsaying is not required to consider whether the practices of generating electricity in Wyoming imperil public health and the environment.
Let's look at Wyoming's electricity supply, using the figures provided by the EIA and estimate, BOE, back of the envelope, the number of people killed by the generation of electrical power in Wyoming, the largest source of which is powered by the combustion of coal.
The source of the data I will use here can be found by poking around here, downloading a few Excel files and playing with the functions in Excel, like, say, adding and subtracting. (Matrix algebra functions which you wouldn't need to become a "concerned scientist" are not necessary, adding and subtraction are enough. In a little bit, I'll turn to, gasp, multiplication.)
Wyoming produced In 2024, 29,675,757 MWh of electricity, 25,860,576 (87.14% in “percent talk” ) from coal, in its six coal plants, Jim Bridger, Laramie River Station, Dave Johnston, Naughton, Dry Fork Station, and Wyodak; 838,081 (2.82%) with its loan gas plant, Shute Creek, and 1,595,044 MWh (5.37%) in its two wind plants, Roundhouse Wind Energy Project, and Cedar Springs Wind Energy Plant LLC.
There's an old paper, from 2007, highly cited, also from Lancet that makes an estimate of the death toll associated with generating electricity with various sources, this one: Electricity generation and health Markandya, Anil et al. The Lancet, Volume 370, Issue 9591, 979 - 990. I'm sure one could go through the 588 citations Google Scholar reports for updates, but this is a BOE calculation, probably somewhat more accurate that Ed Lie-Man's predictions of how many people would have been killed in New York City if terrorists drove tanks up the New York Thruway to blast Indian Point before it was closed, thus raising the carbon profile of New York State's electrical generation, about which Ed Lie-Man apparently isn't "concerned."
Here's a table from the paper just cited:
We are now in a position to calculate the number of deaths associated with the combustion of coal in Wyoming to generate electricity.
25,860,576 MWh is equal to 25.86 TWh. With a mean estimated death toll of 25.5 deaths per TWh of coal combustion, this suggests that in 2024 roughly 630 people were killed by the normal operations of the coal plants there. No accident, no explosion was required.
Now Ed Lie-man, who wanted you to know what would happen at Indian Point if terrorists drove up the New York State Thruway to blow up the containment building at Indian Point, although that didn't happen and was, clearly - at least to anyone with a modicum of rationality - this was very unlikely, is concerned that the Terrapower reactor is sure to explode. He has wonderful faith in his soothsaying, even though the BN-600 reactor has operated for 45 years without exploding and is licensed to run another 15.
I note that 2024 was just one year, out of decades, of coal burning in Wyoming. Every ten years we can estimate that 6000 people die in Wyoming from coal related combustion, although we should allow for some reduction in the estimate to account for the low population density of Wyoming, although it is likely that coal plants are not far from supporting cities to maintain the toxic infrastructure. Suppose it's only 5000 deaths every ten years, or 4000. Is this comforting?
Note that the health consequences of combustion of coal are not limited to air pollution. Coal contains heavy metals, notably the neurotoxic elements mercury and lead, as well as uranium and its decay daughters. Neither mercury nor lead exhibit half-lives. They don't decay at all.
There is, by the way, very little evidence that Chernobyl killed, over a period of close to 40 years, 6000 people. The reactor, even with the breeched sarcophagus does not kill 600 people per year, nor 24,000 people over 40 years. The most volatile and problematic fission products, 137Cs and 90Sr have decayed to less than half the load released in 1986. The most problematic nuclide, 131I, with a half-life of 8 days is completely decayed. None of this, of course, will keep people from carrying on about Chernobyl, in which they show far more interest than the roughly 7 million people killed each year by combustion products, air pollution.
Here, by the way, is what I said in the DU post about Ed Lyman's "concern" about the lack of a containment building on the Terrapower reactor:
Poke an antinuke, any time anywhere, and one finds an apologist for fossil fuels.
There are no exceptions.
The planet is dying, soaked in dangerous fossil fuel waste, in flames, and still we hear antinukes shouting about radioactivity, with which the planet formed, exists and has always existed.
When I was a young man, I worked with radioactive 125I and did so for a number of years. At that time it was the only tool for analyzing important biomarkers associated with serious human diseases, a now historical technique known as RIA, radioimmunoassay.. My work helped save lives. I am now an old man, proud of having has a radioactive thyroid gland four decades ago.
Nuclear energy saves lives on balance, millions of lives. It follows that on balance, antinukes whining about radioactivity in isolation kill people.
In this post, I did what the author of that post did not do, estimate the deaths associated with coal burning in Wyoming.
The Terrapower reactor is small, much smaller in terms of power output than any coal plant in that benighted State. It will not save very many lives from coal combustion, but that said, a rational person, as opposed to terrified and concerned Ed, it is not clear that it will kill anyone, his bizarre certainty that it will do so notwithstanding.
It's not my favorite design, but I am very, very, very, very happy it is being built, and "concerned" assholes, I mean "concerned scientists" can take their "concern" and shove it.
Have a nice day tomorrow, and I wish you the happiest and healthiest holiday season.
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