Deaths per terawatt-hour · a neutral reference
The safety of electricity, on one scale
Every source of electricity carries some risk. Level places them side by side using deaths per unit of electricity generated — with the uncertainty shown, not hidden.
Or build your own grid and see the deaths, CO₂, land, and cost bands.
Deaths per terawatt-hour
This scale is logarithmic: each step to the right is ten times the previous one, so the visual distance understates how much larger the fossil numbers really are.
counted deaths · modeled deaths
The small grey figure under each source is the same rate turned human: roughly how many people’s yearly electricity corresponds to one death. Coal, about 700–6,000 people; solar, a few million.
The figures as a table
| Source | Low | High | Modeled | 1 death per |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coal | 24.6 | 224 | 95% | 670–6k people |
| Oil | 18.4 | 52 | 94% | 3k–8k people |
| Gas | 2.8 | 8.5 | 90% | 18k–54k people |
| Biomass | 4.6 | 12 | 86% | 13k–33k people |
| Hydro | 0.04 | 1.6 | 2% | 94k–3.8M people |
| Nuclear | 0.03 | 0.07 | 70% | 2.1M–5.0M people |
| Wind | 0.02 | 0.08 | 25% | 1.9M–7.5M people |
| Solar | 0.01 | 0.06 | 25% | 2.5M–15M people |
How to read this
Eight electricity sources sit on one deaths-per-terawatt-hour scale, each drawn as the band its evidence supports rather than a single confident number. Where a band is wide, the underlying literature disagrees, and the chart says so.
The distinction that matters most is what kind of death is being counted. A dam failure or a roof fall is a counted event with a date and a body count. Air-pollution and radiation deaths are modeled attributions — a statistical excess spread across a population, never traceable to one person. Both belong on the same scale, but they are not the same kind of claim, so the bars draw them differently: solid for counted, hatched for modeled.
From there you can mix sources into a grid, apply the rates to a real national mix, or read how each number was assembled.
What is that death toll worth?
Price each source's deaths at the value society already places on a statistical life, and see the cost the electricity bill leaves out — for coal, often larger than the bill itself.