----- Original Message -----
From: "J. van Baardwijk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 4:41 PM
Subject: Re: Times have changed, 'green' sells products L3
> >climbs on the roof 5 times a year, and there are 250 million households
in
> >Europe, then if everyone had solar power, it would be responsible for
about
> >12,500 per year.
> ^^^^^^
>
> >If all of the household electricity in the US (roughly half
> >of the electricity in the US) were to come from nuclear, that would
increase
> >to just under 50 driving deaths per year.
> ^^
OK, all we need to know is the difference in use in Europe and the US. With
Europe having roughly 2.8x the US population, and the US using about 1.8x
the power (or so), then the driving deaths would be right around 75 in
Europe.
But, these are rough, order of magnitude calculations. We're talking a
factor of about 130 here. Plus, I didn't include the deaths from driving to
the solar panel plants. Even if I grant you only two trips up to the top
and assume that solar panel workers never get in accidents, that's still a
factor of about 50.
The bottom line is that one one the riskiest things we do in a house is go
up high. Even if we only hit the roof twice a year, that will be a lot more
risky than a small fraciton of the population driving to nuclear power
plants. That's one of the problems with a distributed anything. Through
concentration, one can concentrate safety efforts.
Dan M.
