[trhway]

>even natural gas and rooftop solar have higher rates of death per year than nuclear.

the difference here is that no event can significantly change the death rate from gas or solar whereis one wrong cough by nuclear power plant worker and we have Chernobyl with thousands of deaths (in particular in Belarus which took the majority of the Chernobyl hit - about 5000 extra thyroid cancer cases (normally a rare cancer) in the people who were children at the time plus doubling (and in some areas tripling) of the rate of the most frequent cancer - breast cancer (typically 1 in 7 women would get it during lifetime, so doubling means additional 15% of all the women in the affected area would get it) in the areas close to Chernobyl like the Gomel and Mogilev regions plus very significant increase in other frequent cancers of internal organs like colon,etc.)

Or counting it the other way - Russia and Ukraine both have the same - 0.0034 - incidence rate of cancer per year (despite the war and economic differences it is the same people with the same behavior/habits :), while Belarus where people are basically the same as in Ukraine and Russia and drink and smoke and eat the same - has 0.0052 incidence rate, ie. 50000 new cases per year instead of 34000 if they were to have the same incidence as Russia and Ukraine. 16000 extra cancer cases per year for several decades with mortality higher than 50% ...

>nuclear is among the least evils,

hardly so, giving the numbers i referenced above (compare it to coal - the coal's 700K/year deaths means "only" 1K/year for Belarus) and potential of any nuclear power plant to repeat Chernobyl - i'm aware about technical improvements of modern reactors, yet "stupidity will find a way"...

> yet faces the greatest overall public resistance to new installations.

still wondering why ? :)