[kuschku]

And on the other hand we have ten thousands of people directly dying slow deaths due to nuclear power — the leukemia regions in the Elbmarsch, or in southern Bavaria, or around the Asse II come to mind.

Areas where nuclear waste or faulty reactors contaminated tap water, and people were never told about it until the leukemia rate reached several hundred times of the normal rate.

Just counting direct deaths is misleading.

[ars]

Are you deliberately being misleading, or do you not actually check your info?

There were 6 cases of leukemia in Elbmarsch, and it's not clear if they have anything to do with the reactor. Asse II has not hurt anyone. Southern Bavaria is not specific enough to google.

6 cases, and no one died as far as I can tell.

> Areas where nuclear waste or faulty reactors contaminated tap water, and people were never told about it until the leukemia rate reached several hundred times of the normal rate.

What areas?

> Just counting direct deaths is misleading.

Go for it. Count leukemia if you like - Nuclear still comes in far ahead.

[soundwave106]

Ultimately, I think one fundamental "problem" with nuclear power is the worst case scenario at the plant level.

Big picture wise, I'm sure it is statistically be safer than fossil fuels (counting the problems of fossil fuel pollution and the environmental problems / lives lost due to the extraction process). But looking at the power plant itself, and focusing on the worst case, the only other form of power I can think of with the potential to create a Chernobyl type disaster is hydro (as dam failures can create pretty widespread destruction and kill hundreds of thousands -- see the Banqiao Dam disaster). Coal / oil / gas plants that explode kill people too, but generally only within the plant boundaries.

Even a hydro disaster won't necessarily make 1000 square miles of land uninhabitable for 200-300 years, ala Chernobyl. The only comparable thing I can think of in the energy realm that comes close to that is coal mine fires (ala Centralia PA), and that's at the extraction level, not the plant level.

I'm actually struggling with your assertion that nuclear power has killed more people than solar... peer reviewed estimates of Chernobyl vary between 4,000 and 25,000, is there a solar disaster on that scale that I'm not aware of?

[ars]

(Sorry for replying to your points out of order.)

> is there a solar disaster on that scale that I'm not aware of?

And that's exactly the problem! Solar (and coal, etc) kill people slowly, here and there. No big disasters. Nuclear is always a big very public disaster.

Yet the other energies kill in total way more people, but the perception is less. As evidenced by what you wrote.

That makes people think incorrectly about the pros and cons. You have to force yourself to use the numbers, not the perception, if you want to logically make a decision.

> I'm actually struggling with your assertion that nuclear power has killed more people than solar.

You have to calculate deaths per Watt. Solar just hasn't made much energy, yet had a disproportionate amount of deaths (relative to nuclear), roof falls mostly. Nuclear has generated something like half the power on this planet, so proportionally is not as much.

> (counting the problems of fossil fuel pollution and the environmental problems / lives lost due to the extraction process).

Actually, nuclear is better even without counting the environmental problems!! (But yes counting extraction.) If you count pollution, even ignoring global warming, youch, it's not even close.

> Even a hydro disaster won't necessarily make 1000 square miles of land uninhabitable

You'd be surprised at how much land is uninhabitable because of open face coal mining - it's way more than nuclear. And river acidification, and entire areas of land poisoned and basically useless because of 75 year old mines?

Don't forget Chernobyl still has forests and lots of animals. It's just useless for people. It's the same with coal mining - there are plants and animals, but the whole area is useless for people.

Even by this metric nuclear still wins over coal.