Energy Biz - September/October 2008 - (Page 32) (Guest » Financial Front the costs of Failing Infrastructure TALLyiNg UP diSASTERS By BENJAMiN K. SOvACOOL Benjamin Sovacool with the Singapore skyline behind him. OpiniOn) VirTually no one — wiTh perhaps the exception of the occasional Amish person or a Luddite — would contest that energy systems such as electricity networks, refineries, and pipelines have brought society innumerable benefits. But, as one new study shows, society’s burgeoning reliance on fossil-fueled, hydroelectric, and nuclear systems has also come with significant costs. One recent study published in the May issue of Energy Policy looked at major energy accidents from 1907 to 2007. The major accidents were defined as incidents that resulted in either death or more than $50,000 of property damage. The study identified 279 incidents totaling $41 billion in damages and 182,156 fatalities, with the number of accidents peaking in the decade between 1978 and 1987, which had more than 90 accidents. While responsible for less than 1 percent of total energy accidents, hydroelectric facilities claimed 94 percent of reported fatalities. Looking at the gathered data, the total results on fatalities are highly dominated by one accident in which the Shimantan Dam failed in September/October 2008 1975 and 171,000 people perished. In terms of cost, nuclear plants ranked first with regard to their economic damage, accounting for damages equivalent to $16.6 billion, or 41 percent of all damages during the past century. Contrary to the industry’s claim that nuclear facilities are safe, 63 major accidents have occurred at nuclear power plants. Twenty-nine accidents have occurred since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, and 71 percent of all nuclear accidents, that is, 45 out of 63, occurred in the United States, refuting the notion that severe accidents cannot happen within the country or that they have not happened since Chernobyl. Using extremely conservative estimates, nuclear power accidents have also killed 4,100 people. The nuclear power accidents have involved meltdowns, explosions, fires, and loss of coolant, and have occurred during both normal operation and extreme, emergency conditions such as droughts and earthquakes. In terms of frequency, natural gas infrastructure is the most likely to fail, accounting for 33 percent of all major energy accidents worldwide. Faulty joints, malfunctioning valves, operator error, and corrosion induce frequent leaks and ruptures in natural gas pipelines. The U.S. Department of Transportation has even noted that oil and gas pipelines fail so often here that they expect 2,241 smaller accidents and an additional 16,000 spills every 10 years. A database of major industrial accidents from 1969 to 1996 compiled by the Paul Scherrer Institute found that 31 percent, or 4,290 out of 13,914, were related to the fossil fuel sector. Another assessment concluded that about 25 percent of the fatalities caused by severe accidents worldwide in the period 1970 to 1985 occurred in the fossil fuel energy sector. So why is it that these energy systems fail? Generally, those analyzing technology and risk have argued that the more complicated and interdependent technological systems and subsystems become, the more vulnerability they exhibit. This vulnerability arises from their complexity, tight coupling, speed of interaction, and fallibility of their human designers and operators. Large, centralized energy technologies are often so complex that no human designer can know or comprehend all of the factors needed for flawless system operation. This means that the failure of a single component such as a fuse can affect the entire system, and that multiple components can fail in the same manner by a single initiating event such as a lightning strike or fire. Complexity alone would not be deleterious if not for the tendency for large systems to be tightly coupled. 32 E n E rgyB i z
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