The word "hysteria" - its sexist etymology notwithstanding - means freaking out over something of small consequence.
Lots of oil, gas, and coal is burned to run computers for people freaking out over Fukushima.
The people who do this freaking out want to pretend that bad mouthing one alternative of energy is divorced from ever other alternative, for instance, that shutting nuclear plants will have no effect on the use of gas, coal, oil.
This is a shallow, and frankly deadly lie.
I spend most of my free time reading about environmental issues in the primary scientific literature.
Here is a list of serious - very serious - environmental issues that vastly outstrip Fukushima in importance.
1. Climate change.
2. The toxicology of air pollutants.
3. Atmospheric ozone distribution.
4. Degradation of surface water effects.
5. Persistent organic pollutants such as PFOS, PFA, PCBs...etc.
6. Heavy metal pollution.
Each of these effects is responsible for millions of deaths and health consequences over the last several decades.
The scientific literature teems with discussions of the health and mortality consequences of Fukushima and Chernobyl. Anyone with enough intelligence and enough concern can seek this information out, as I have been doing for 30 years. There is no reputable claim anywhere in the primary scientific literature that indicates that these two events even remotely approach the seriousness and consequence of the above 6 listed massive and extremely dangerous environmental issues, which uniformly, anti-nukes disregard.
The use of dangerous fossil fuels is rising not falling. This is the main effect of anti-nuke hysteria.
The people freaking out hysterically about Fukushima want to divorce their picayune bullshit from all of the above. They are clueless, and in my opinion know nothing, nothing at all about the environment. The word "ignore" is the root of the word "ignorance," and ignorance is not ethically or morally neutral. Ignorance kills people.
You say you don't appreciate hysteria. Neither do I, and since I believe with all my heart, and all my soul that ignorance is a moral issue, I call out hysteria when I see it.
In my experience, many, if not all, anti-nukes are very bourgeois consumerist brats, and they argue, like right wing Republicans, that the only reason anyone does anything is for money. This, more than anything else, reflects their moral depth. They throw around the word "commercial" like a slur.
They're ethically clueless.
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