We’ve put together a list of five of the worst power plant disasters in recent history, measured by death toll, monetary damage, and regions affected. The lesson? The issue isn’t so much the kind of energy you use, but how you design the power plants that contain it.
As you can see, when accidents happen, the deadliest and costliest source of energy is water – especially when it’s held back by poorly designed dams. The Chernobyl disaster doesn’t come close to the damage done when a dam at a hydroelectric plant bursts.
Oil and natural gas are among the most expensive energy sources in terms of damage done.
In addition, we have only measured the cost to human life here. The Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill – both enormously expensive oil industry disasters – destroyed enormous amounts of wildlife on land and in the water, even if the human toll was low.
1975: Shimantan/Banqiao Dam Failure
Type of power: Hydroelectric
Human lives lost: 171,000
Cost: $US8,700,000,000
What happened: Shimantan Dam in China’s Henan province fails and releases 15.738 billion tons of water, causing widespread flooding that destroys 18 villages and 1500 homes and induces disease epidemics and famine
1979: Morvi Dam Failure
Type of power: Hydroelectric
Human lives lost: 1500 (estimated)
Cost: $US1,024,000,000
What happened: Torrential rain and unprecidented flooding caused the Machchu-2 dam, situated on the Machhu river, to burst. This sent a wall of water through the town of Morvi in the Indian State of Gujarat.
1998: Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Jess Oil Pipeline Explosion
Type of power: Oil
Human lives lost: 1078
Cost: $US54,000,000
What happened:Petroleum pipeline ruptures and explodes, destroying two villages and hundreds of villagers scavenging gasoline.
1944: East Ohio Gas Company
Type of power: Liquified natural gas (LNG)
Human lives lost: 130
Cost: $US890,000,000
What happened: Explosion at LNG facility destroys one square mile of Cleveland, OH.
2007: Monongah Coal Mine
Type of power: Coal
Human lives lost: 362
Cost: $US162,000,000
What happened: Underground explosion traps workers and destroys railroad bridges leading into the mine.
Compare these to:
1986: Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant
Type of power: Nuclear
Human lives lost: 4056
Cost: $US6,700,000,000
What happened: Mishandled reactor safey test at Chernobyl nuclear reactor causes steam explosion and meltdown, necessitating the evacuation of 300,000 people from Kiev, Ukraine and dispersing radioactive materials across Europe.
NOTE: Monetary damage is measured in 1996 US dollars, except in accidents since that time measured in the dollar values of that year.
A lot of this research was based on public policy professor Andrew Sovacool’s extremely informative monograph “The Accidental Century,” which looks at power plant disasters in the twentieth century in great detail.
Reporting by Robert T. Gonzalez
Photo via AP
Richard Djordjevic
Sunday, March 20, 2011 at 11:30 AMDoesn’t Chernobyl have a death count and monetry loss great enough to see it in number 2 slot after Shimantan, as well as showing that it does rate up there with the worst?
Oliver
Sunday, March 20, 2011 at 12:17 PM“The Chernobyl disaster doesn’t come close to the damage done when a dam at a hydroelectric plant bursts”
Did you seriously just say that? The figures you quoted of 4000+ lives lost is a severe understatement. If you count all of the lives that were lost in the years and decades following the catastrophe due to exposure to extreme levels of radiation you’re looking at a figure more like 50,000. This figure would be even higher if you take into account the thousands of children born every year with birth defects, miscarriages or the increase of cases of thyroid cancer by 10,000%.
In regards to the economic impact, well, the economic impact of the chernobyl disaster on belarus (lossed production, health problems etc.) for the 30 years following the incident has been estimated to be US $235 billion. The chernobyl disaster, unlike the others you mentioned, is still ongoing and costing millions of dollars and thousands of lives every year.
Tyris
Sunday, March 20, 2011 at 3:17 PMNice to see these sort of articles among all the media panic… but its disappointing to see your first sentence is so completely wrong… The nuclear plant in danger is one of the ones in Fukushima (miles from Tokyo).
bugwan
Sunday, March 20, 2011 at 9:36 PMYour figure of 4,056 human deaths as a result of the Chernobyl disaster falls woefully short of the real human toll caused by this monumental stuff up…
What is the point of this article? Defending this form of power generation as safe would be hilarious if it wasn’t tragic.
We may never quite know how many were killed (or had their lives irreparably damaged (some numbers suggest over 100,000). Check this photo gallery of children born to parents affected by radiation exposure (now 20 years later)… http://inmotion.magnumphotos.com/essay/chernobyl
These children don’t make your list of 4,056. There’s more to nuclear safety than initial body counts.
wallabyted
Sunday, March 20, 2011 at 9:41 PMThe evidence seems a little terse and biased. How many people would have died in floods if dams weren’t there in the first place (don’t most have warning systems anyway). Then there is no mention that Nuclear accidents never have a one time, one off effect – they keep on actively radiating long after the event. Many times longer than a coal or oil fire even. And its an invisible killer like that poisoness spider on the toilet seat in the dark.
jessica
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jessica
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