The Inconvenient Truth about the "Inconvenient Truth: Wind Energy Has Killed More Americans Than Nuclear," is that the right leaning article does not tell you many of the deaths were construction related deaths, or the result of moving a wind turbine - and not all were in the U.S.
The nuclear crisis in Japan has stirred up the nuclear debate and the nutty nuclear right wants to throw in their monkey wrench with slanted truths. Has there been deaths related to wind turbines? Yes. Granted, some of the wind turbine deaths, such as "ice throws," could be considered freak accidents. Fact is, not all the fatalities happened in the U.S., and those that did were mostly from construction and transportation of wind turbines. To suggest that the collision of two nuclei is somehow safer than wind or solar energy is dangerous. Using the time period between 1970 through 2010 is convenient, but the reality is nuclear energy has not been safer.
Since the 40's there has been tens of thousands of nuclear related deaths, both directly and indirectly. These include the following.
In a study by Dr. Ernest J. Sternglass, professor of radiation physics at the University of Pittsburgh, showed that the 1979 Three Mile Island accident led to a minimum of 430 infant deaths.
September 1980, an Air Force specialist was killed by a Titan II ICBM accident in Damascus, Arkansas (missile warhead hurled 600 feet from silo after pressurized fuel tank explosion).
An accident in 1986 at the Sequoyah Fuels Corp. uranium processing factory in Gore, Oklahoma killed one worker and injured dozens of others and contaminated the Arkansas River and groundwater (highly toxic gas explosion).
The acute effects of atomic energy killed 90000–166000 in Hiroshima and 60000–80000 in Nagasaki, and:
Two Manhattan Project chemists at the Naval Research Laboratory in Philadelphia, PA. on 2 September 1944 (explosion of radioactive uranium hexafluoride gas).
One on 21 August 1945 during the final stages of the Manhattan Project Los Alamos, New Mexico (radiation burst).
One on 21 May 1946 at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico (acute radiation sickness).
An electro-chemist at a Menlo Park, CA, laboratory December 1991 (cold fusion cell explosion).
Three technicians at the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho Falls, Idaho on 3 January 1961 (reactor explosion).
One at the United Nuclear Corp. fuel facility in Charlestown, Rhode Island on 24 July 1964 (exposed to a lethal dose of radiation).
Two workers at the Surry Unit 2 facility in Virginia on 27 July 1972 (steam release in a gap in a vent line).
Four at the Surry Unit 2 facility in Virginia on 9 December 1986 (steam release).
13 near the near Manzano Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico on 11 April 1950 (B-29 carrying a nuclear weapon crashed into a mountain).
A B-47, and its crew, disappeared with "two capsules of nuclear weapons material" over the Mediterranean Sea on 10 March 1956.
One B-47 crew member on 4 November 1958 died when the plane, carrying a nuclear weapon, crashed during takeoff from Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, Texas.
Eight crew members on 15 October 1959 (B-52 with two nuclear bombs collided in mid-air with a KC-135 jet tanker).
Three B-52 crewmen on 24 January 1961, 12 miles north of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, NC (bomber suffered structural failure and disintegrated in mid-air).
A B-52 and its crew, with two nuclear weapons, crashed near Cumberland, Maryland on 13 January 1964.
One pilot in an A-4E fell overboard off the USS Toconderoga in the Pacific Ocean approximately 200 miles east of Okinawa on 5 December 1965 (not reported by the Department of Defense until 1981).
Eight B-52 crewmen on 17 January 1966 over the coast of Spain (collision with an Air Force KC-135 jet tanker - Two hydrogen bombs ruptured, scattering radioactive particles over the fields of Palomares).
One killed October 1959, USS Triton (explosion and fire of a prototype reactor).
129 men aboard the nuclear submarine Thresher on 10 April 1963 (sub imploded).
17 aboard the nuclear aircraft carrier Enterprise on 14 January 1969 (series of explosions).
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