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A cow is more likely to kill you than a shark
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2026
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Where do these values come from because all I find when searching for 140,000 renewable-related deaths are references to wildlife deaths, and if this is the case it's pretty disingenuous to compare against nuclear accident deaths of humans.
This article has a more sensible comparison that ties deaths to the amount of power generated:
Energy Source Mortality Rate (deaths/trillionkWhr)
Coal – global average 100,000 (41% global electricity)
Coal – China 170,000 (75% China’s electricity)
Coal – U.S. 10,000 (32% U.S. electricity)
Oil 36,000 (33% of energy, 8% of electricity)
Natural Gas 4,000 (22% global electricity)
Biofuel/Biomass 24,000 (21% global energy)
Solar (rooftop) 440 (< 1% global electricity)
Wind 150 (2% global electricity)
Hydro – global average 1,400 (16% global electricity)
Hydro – U.S. 5 (6% U.S. electricity)
Nuclear – global average 90 (11% global electricity w/Chern&Fukush)
Nuclear – U.S. 0.1 (19% U.S. electricity)
I still.cant find where these figures are sourced, but at least these figures account for the actual amount of generation in proportion to deaths.
Deaths from nuclear seems very hard to measure, and maybe impossible. If you were in the path of the fallout from Chernobyl and died from cancer 10 years later there's no way of knowing if the radiation caused that or if something else did.
Humans, animals, who cares? In fact, let's just go full phylum-agnostic!
5,000 deaths from nuclear power. (humans)
140,000 deaths from renewable energy. (wildlife)
70 million deaths from a single dose of mouthwash. (~100 miillion bacteria per ml of saliva, assuming vaguely 0.7 ml of saliva in the mouth)
Seriously, though, renewables are technically more lethal than nuclear but that's mainly because NPPs are usually designed for extreme bulk production and (AFAIK) most renewable deaths are due to construction accidents. Just look at that rooftop solar number. All in all, both renewables and nuclear are pretty safe as far as pure mortality goes. Beyond mortality we of course run into the nuclear waste issue but that's another story.
Coal is comically bad on so many levels it's amazing how insistent some people are on maintaining it. It even manages to lose to nuclear on the metric of radioactive pollution. That's... impressive, I suppose. I'd prefer it if it could be impressive in a history book.
How did 440 people die from solar? Fell from the roof?
Iirc its a three way split between falls electrocutions and mining deaths. In that order.
Probably sunburn.
False. The solar panels block sunlight and kill people of Vitamin D underdosis.