MAE 124/ESYS 103: Spring 2011

Week 3 Assignment: Coal, Oil, Nuclear Energy and Public Perception


due in section: Monday, April 11 OR Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Public perception does not consider coal or oil to be dangerous energy resources. Yet, over the past 5 years, an average of 35 people have been killed in U.S. coal mining accidents annually, with 48 deaths just last year. China reports an average 3300 annual accidental coal mining deaths over the past 5 years. These numbers do not include deaths resulting from, for example, pnuemoconiosis (black lung disease). Oil wells are also risky work environments:  the Deepwater Horizon accident last year killed 11 workers, and in recent years in the US an average of 120 oil-workers per year have died on the job.   When miners or oil workers are killed in accidents, the public outcry is for improved safety measures, not the end of coal and oil as energy resources.  The longer term dangers of greenhouse gas emissions, acid rain, and health impacts due to particulate emissions do not typically arise in discussions of the “safety” of coal or oil. 

On the other hand, no workers died in the Three-Mile Island nuclear power plant accident in 1979, and according to the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, just 64 deaths due to radiation resulted from the Chernobyl accident in 1986.  (Admittedly other estimates are higher.)  At the moment, it's too early to determine fatalities from this years tsunami-related nuclear accidents in Japan.

 Some argue that public perception distinguishes between risk that impacts one socioeconomic level of society (e.g., coal mining accidents) and risk that impacts all socioeconomic levels (e.g., a nuclear accident).  Does this argument value lives of the general public more than the lives of coal miners? Or perhaps this argument arises from the fact that coal miners choose to work in a mine and thus choose to take on that risk (although, admittedly, many have few occupational choices.)  Consider what the public reaction might be if the lives lost in the coal industry were not limited to the workers, but instead were distributed among the general public? Would the public perception of coal mining change? If so, how?  Last year's Deepwater Horizon accident caused considerable environmental damage along the Gulf Coast.  Does that color your perceptions of the safety of oil?   Finally, how do the events unfolding this year in Fukushima, Japan, influence your perception of the safety of nuclear energy?   What role does perceived risk play in determining energy policy?  Does perceived risk reflect true risk?   And if you had the power to make decisions about future US energy policy, how would you assess the trade-offs between available energy choices?

Write a brief paragraph (no more than 250 words).  First address the role that public perception of risk plays in energy policy, and second evaluate how risk should be managed in planning for future energy requirements.   Submit your written assignment via WebCT (see the week 3 discussion for a link).   Please come to discussion section prepared to discuss the topic.