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Sustainability and Future

The Nuclear Accounting

No energy source generates more fear per kilojoule produced or kills fewer people per terawatt-hour generated. The nuclear accounting problem is a problem of denominator confusion: the rare but vivid accidents receive the scrutiny that the continuous and ordinary deaths from air pollution do not. The Lifetime Risk-Adjusted Carbon Score compares every major electricity source on a common basis and the result inverts the conventional hierarchy of fear.

The Nuclear Accounting, Part 4: The Waste That Isn't What You Think

Compares the total US nuclear waste inventory against 130 million tonnes per year of coal combustion ash in hundreds of unlined surface ponds — a comparison of physical scale and toxicity that is arithmetically accurate and almost never presented.

The Nuclear Accounting, Part 1: The Number No One Cites

Introduces the Lifetime Risk-Adjusted Carbon Score and applies the Hansen-Kharecha finding that nuclear power prevented 1.84 million deaths through displacement of coal generation — a calculation receiving a fraction of the media attention given to any nuclear accident.