[roenxi]

Fukushima took a horrific natural disaster and from memory roughly doubled the economic cost. An area of land has been sterilised, which is not really that scary when you consider 71% of the surface of the earth is ocean and already uninhabitable - we manage fine.

There are massive social costs of displacing ~half a million of people all at once; added about 25% to the displacement caused by the original tsunami. Realistically, the government evacuation was probably the unacceptable part of the story. It was clearly excessively paranoid.

The health impacts of living next to Fukushima for 10 years and though the disaster appear to be less damaging than living in a coal mining region for 10 years.

As an engineer, theoretically I could in my life time screw up a decision and be responsible for killing 10 people. I'd much rather have Fukushima on my conscience.

To put it bluntly; if the situation is assessed without an anti-nuclear lens then yes Fukushima was acceptable. Not completely acceptable, as obviously they could have done better. And this is after scouring the history of the nuclear industry across the entire globe and picking the 2nd worst incident, ever.