The issue with solar is that there are a lot more deaths for a given amount of energy than for nuclear. Yes, they're spread out so it's less dramatic, but overall nuclear is safer and also produces very useful medical isotopes.
What's really missing for nuclear is economics of scale. If we could just organize a repeatable build model so many operational challenges would be solved.
That said, I'll take anything. Wind, solar, batteries, tidal, nuclear. They're all far, far better than coal or oil from a public health and climate change standpoint. It's such a shame so much was wasted on the Iraq War, since the entire USA could have been powered by green energy with half what was spent.
This is some cockamamie figure that is based on rooftop solar panel installers having accidents and falling down.
A fall from a rooftop while installing a solar panel is preventable; it is not a necessary consequence of solar energy. That worker didn't have to die for the sake of two terawatts; he or she could have used safety equipment and common sense.
If we are counting deaths that way per amount of energy, we must count electrocutions among the energy user base too, not only installation and production side deaths.
If there are health risks and accidents working in a solar panel factory, that ought to be counted.
Installations and deaths across the entire grid should be counted: deaths of all electricians installing any sort of residential and commercial wiring, transformers on poles down the street, and everything else.
Possibly deaths arising form unreliable electricity should also be counted as risks of energy use. If a few people die in a heatwave because their AC cuts out due to a blackout, maybe those are energy-related deaths.
Health problems and accidents in solar panel factories should be counted, as well those in mines for nuclear ore, and industries that produce all grid components: wiring, switch boxes, transformers, you name it.
Deaths in every vehicular accident involving an electrician en route to a repair job should also be counted (whether the electrician was at fault or not).
I mean, yes? We should seek to contrast fatalities across every major energy source if we can?
But given that we don't have perfect numbers we have to go off of the ones we have, and solar installations are over 4x the death rate than nuclear. The only reason I bring it up is this constant barrage of anti-nuclear sentiment even though nuclear works great in countries where it is approached correctly. Canada and France, for example, have professional, reasonable cost nuclear that create the medical isotopes we need.
It's all besides the point though, because coal is 1000x more fatal than nuclear, and like I said in my original comment, I'll take anything but coal and oil.
And we should recognize that solar that powers an entire society will be mostly utility scale, because that's so much cheaper. Utility scale solar is installed at ground level, not on roofs.
What's really missing for nuclear is economics of scale. If we could just organize a repeatable build model so many operational challenges would be solved.
That said, I'll take anything. Wind, solar, batteries, tidal, nuclear. They're all far, far better than coal or oil from a public health and climate change standpoint. It's such a shame so much was wasted on the Iraq War, since the entire USA could have been powered by green energy with half what was spent.