...to say "Chernobyl and Fukushima?"
How many people died exactly from radiation at Fukushima? As many people as will die from the next hour from air pollution? That would be about 800 people.
Here is the most recent full report from the Global Burden of Disease Report, a survey of all causes of death and disability from environmental and lifestyle risks: Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 79 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks, 1990–2015: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015 (Lancet 2016; 388: 1659–724) One can easily locate in this open sourced document compiled by an international consortium of medical and scientific professionals how many people die from causes related to air pollution, particulates, ozone, etc.
If we did nothing but build more nuclear plants, we would save human lives, because on balance, nuclear energy saves lives:
Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)
Just because there are people distracted enough, and ignorant enough to care more about Fukushima than they care about the more than 50 million people who died because people don't pay attention to air pollution, doesn't make these people either ethical, informed, or intellectually honest.
Nuclear energy need not be risk free either in reality or in the mind of every fool with a poor education to be vastly superior to all other forms of energy. It only needs to be vastly superior to all other forms of energy, which it is.
Of course, as a person who has studied nuclear energy for more than 30 years in the primary scientific literature, including significant portions of my readings referenced in many of my posts on this website, I am of course familiar with rote nonsense which gets thrown at me all the time by people who actually know next to nothing about energy and the environment, most of whom are blissfully unaware of the contents of science books.
In our world, regrettably and increasingly, we are seeing the triumph of ignorance over reason. We can all laugh bitterly at Trump, and should do so. But more than a few of us should look in the mirror.
So called "renewable energy" - a chimera that remains popular despite a vast, expensive, and frankly toxic failure - will never be as clean, as safe, or as sustainable as nuclear energy.
That's a fact. Facts matter.
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