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).
This does not include the countless nuclear related incidents and accidents that did not directly result in any fatalities. Between 1950-1980, the U.S. had 27 nuclear accidents acknowledged by the Pentagon, several of which have spewed radiation into earth, sea, and atmosphere. The following is a list of just some of the accidents occurring in the U.S. since the 40's.
In 1959, a clogged coolant channel resulted in a 30% reactor core meltdown at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (Boeing-Rocketdyne Nuclear Facility) in the Simi Hills area of Ventura County, California. Local residents successfully sued for $30 million over cancer and thyroid abnormalities contracted due to their proximity to the facility.
In 1957, a release of radiation at the the Keleket company resulted in decontamination for five-months. A radium salt capsule burst contaminated the building.
In 1962, an "unplanned nuclear excursion" occurred in a plutonium processing facility in Richland, Washington. Radiation was detected in the surrounding atmosphere for several days following the incident.
In 1974, Isomedix company whistle-blowers in New Jersey reported that radioactive water was flushed down toilets and had contaminated pipes leading to sewers.
In 1961, three technicians were killed with radioactivity "largely confined" to the National Reactor Testing Station reactor building in Idaho Falls, Idaho as they moved fuel rods in preparation for the reactor start up. One technician was impaled on a control rod and his body remained there for six days. The radiation exposure was so heavy that their hands had to be buried separately, and their bodies were interred in lead coffins.
In 1971, the water storage space at the Northern States Power Company's reactor in Monticello, Minnesota spilled over, dumping about 50,000 gallons of radioactive waste water into the Mississippi River with some of the waste going into the St. Paul water system.
In 1972, Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska submitted to the Congressional Record facts surrounding a routine check in a nuclear power plants water system. There was an inappropriate cross connection between a 3,000 gallon radioactive tank and the water system that contaminated the plants drinking fountain.
In 1981, 50,000 gallons of low-level radioactive water was dumped into Lake Ontario at Nine Mile Point's Unit 1 in NY.
In 1983, 208,000 gallons of water with low-level radioactive contamination was dumped into the Tennessee River at the Browns Ferry power plant.
In 2005, high tritium levels contaminated groundwater immediately adjacent to the Braidwood Generating Station in Braceville, Illinois.
In 1953, radioactive rain fell on Troy, New York.
In 1970, a cloud of radioactive steam was sent 8,000 feet in the air over Wyoming.
From 1946-1970, 90,000 cannisters of radioactive waste were jettisoned in 50 ocean dumps, prime fishing areas, along the East and West coasts of the U.S. as part of the early nuclear waste disposal program from the military atomic weapons program.
In 1972, 600,000 gallons of high-level waste in leaking tanks at the West Valley, NY fuel reprocessing caused measurable contamination of Lakes Erie and Ontario.
In 1980, a 5.5 Richter earthquake at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory caused a tritium leak.
In 1984, the Department of Energy temporarily shut down the Fernald Uranium Plant, after it was determined that 230 tons of radioactive material had leaked into the Greater Miami River valle, 39 tons of uranium dust had been released into the atmosphere, 83 tons had been discharged into surface water, and 5,500 tons of radioactive and other hazardous substances had been released into pits and swamps (where they seeped into the groundwater), 337 tons of uranium hexafluoride was found to be missing (its whereabouts completely unknown) - the plant was not permanently shut down until 1989.
In 1986 the U.S. Government, after 40 years of cover-up, released 19,000 pages of classified documents that revealed the Hanford Engineer Works leaked discharged billions of gallons of liquids and billions of cubic meters of gases containing plutonium and other radioactive contaminants into the Columbia River, soil and air of the Columbia Basin. In July 1990, 270,000 people received low doses of radiation from Iodine, 13,500 received a total dose some 1,300 times the annual amount of airborne radiation considered safe and 1,200 children received doses far in excess of this number.
In 1997, a 40 gallon tank of toxic chemicals stored illegally at the U.S. Government's Hanford Engineer works exploded and released 20,000-30,000 gallons of plutonium-contaminated water.
Nuclear Power Plants cause between 600-1000 deaths a year per million people - 80%, are to the plant workers. Nuclear energy is not safer than wind turbines.