If we're going to do things that aren't power plants then aren't you going to get renewables in trouble for needing more raw materials per unit of generation from dangerous environmentally hazardous mining operations?

wat10000 a day ago | parent | next [-]

We definitely should look at the entire supply chain for all of them, assuming the goal is maximum benefit for minimum suffering.

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pfdietz a day ago | parent [-]

> maximum benefit

If we do that, we need to assign a value to a statistical human life. This is usually taken to be something like $12M (adjusted for age).

And having done that, we discover the contribution of lost lives to the cost of solar and wind (and nuclear, without accidents) is lost in the noise. So the problem ends up choosing the source that is directly cheaper; differences in deaths per TWh can be ignored.

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wat10000 21 hours ago | parent [-]

I’m assuming you mean when choosing between solar/wind/nuclear? I don’t imagine all others are so benign.

	▲	pfdietz 19 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Right, the deaths from (say) coal are much higher and would contribute significantly to cost.

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pfdietz a day ago | parent | prev [-]

I was nitpicking.