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.