gigawatt-year

gigawatt-year (plural gigawatt-years)

2. A unit of energy equal to that provided by one gigawatt of power acting for one year (31·536 × 10¹⁵ joules).

   Alternative forms: GW·a, GW a, GWa, GW-a, GW·y, GW y, GWy, GW-y, GW·yr, GW yr, GWyr, GW-yr (symbol variants); gigawatt year

   Holonyms: exajoule (1.000e18 J) < petawatt-hour (3.600e18 J) < terawatt-year (31.536e18 J)

   Meronyms: kilojoule (1.000e3 J) < watt-hour (3.600e3 J) < milliwatt-year (31.536e3 J) < megajoule (1.000e6 J) < kilowatt-hour (3.600e6 J) < watt-year (31.536e6 J) < gigajoule (1.000e9 J) < megawatt-hour (3.600e9 J) < kilowatt-year (31.536e9 J) < terajoule (1.000e12 J) < gigawatt-hour (3.600e12 J) < megawatt-year (31.536e12 J) < petajoule (1.000e15 J) < terawatt-hour (3.600e15 J)

   • 1975 July, Energy Abstracts for Policy Analysis (EAPA). A Monthly Abstract Journal for the Analysis and Evaluation of Energy Research, Conservation, and Policy‎^[1], volume 1, number 7, page 375:

     [Abstract number] 01995 LEGACY OF URANIUM TAILINGS. Comey D.D. (Business and Professional People for the Public Interest, Chicago). Bull. At. Sci. 31: No. 7, 42-45(Sep 1975). Cohen (Bull. of Atomic Scientists, Oct. 1974) stated that a typical fossil-fuel power plant kills about 50 people per year with its air pollution, whereas the same-capacity nuclear plant kills about 0.01. The health impact of 50 deaths per gigawatt-year from coal-fired plants was almost entirely due to sulfur oxides released from the plant stack. The health impact of 0.01 deaths per gigawatt-year from a nuclear plant came from radioactive effluents released during normal plant operation and assumed there would be no deaths from nuclear plant accidents. Evidence now emerges that the health impact from the nuclear fuel cycle has been grossly underestimated. The health impact of the uranium tailings piles is often overlooked. Mined uranium is 0.71% fissionable uranium-235, but more than 100,000 tons of uranium ore must be mined to produce one gigawatt-year of electricity, and enormous tailings piles result. When the tailings piles dry out, radioactive radon-222 gas escapes to the atmosphere and travels long distances. The decay of the radon-222 produces the highly carcinogenic daughters polonium-218 and polonium-214. The isotope in the pile that produces the source of radon is thorium-230, with a half-life of 80,000 years. This assures that radon-222 will continue to be produced from a tailings pile for more than a million years, with consequent health effects on human beings. The lethal health effects of the sulfur oxides can be reduced by removing them from the stack gases after the coal is burned or through desulfurization. The health effects of radon-222 can be 90% eliminated by using a 20-foot earth cover over the pile as an intermediate solution, but erosion will damage the cover in a few decades. Long-term problems of the tailings disposal are discussed. (MCW)

   • 1989 [1985], John H. Fremlin, Power Production: What are the Risks?‎^[2], Adam Hilger, →ISBN, page 72:

     The output of a large electric power station may be a million kilowatts—which is called a gigawatt (GW)—and the total amount of electricity produced in a year may be put in thousands of gigawatt hours or in gigawatt years (GWy). A gigawatt year of electricity (GWye) will be worth £200 or £300 million.