[Tichy]

How is wind power dangerous to people? Because the production of wind wheels pollutes the environment? Or it diverts thunderstorms? Maybe people die in the construction of the turbines? But then, wouldn't people die in mining Plutonium and constructing nuclear power plants? Somehow my faith into that kind of number juggling to make nuclear power look good has not yet been 100% established.

[jws]

Apparently about a dozen people a year are killed installing or maintaining wind turbines, however the post in question was referring to byproducts of refining the rare earths ultimately used for the magnets in the generators.

http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/accidents.pdf

(Solar is fairly deadly too. Mostly installers falling from roofs.)

[thwarted]

(getting off topic here...) That pdf seems to be missing one crucial piece of information: the total number of turbines installed per year (or I can't find it). A 16x increase in (documented) accidents (not all of which are of equal threat) over 16 years does sound pretty dire and damning, unless the rate of installations has been growing at a larger rate. Do you know of any resource that provides that? I can only find megawatt rate of growth (which is a useful metric too, but not as usefully comparable since the events in this pdf seem to be primarily related to installations, not the output of the installations).

Nothing is going to be completely safe. It's valuable to get accidents and events as close to zero as possible, but I suspect that's being done by increasing the denominator rather than reducing the numerator.

[jws]

Yeah, the PDF is not well written. I can't even tell if it means worldwide, or just in the UK. But it is probably accurate to an order of magnitude or so.

[MichaelSalib]

Which operational nuclear power plants generate electric power without using generators with rare earth magnets?

[jws]

I believe they use induction generators which do not use permanent magnets. I have not seen one, but that is the old school way of doing AC power.

[waster]

While we're at it, electricity is deadly. http://www.esfi.org/index.cfm/page/Injury-and-Fatality-Stati... has a list of ways in which; and http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/98-131/pdfs/98-131.pdf says an average of 411 deaths (occupational) occur annually.

In looking this up, I was struck by the avoidance of data that just says X people die annually by electrocution (of any kind), although I freely admit that perhaps my search terms were faulty. Maybe it was that time I was almost died by electrocution.

[Tichy]

Are nuclear power plants still being built at the same rate as wind turbines? Or are they mostly old ones sitting around? I suspect the latter, in which case the "accidents in construction" comparison doesn't make much sense imo. Interesting point about the rare earths.