| I think you are vastly underestimating the amount of damage coal power generation causes. If nothing new and catastrophic happens in the near future (it looks like the worst is being contained, but if another earthquake and/or tsunami hits the plant right now, the damage will be massive), the most casualties caused by the Daichi nuclear plant will be in Germany. This is because Angela Merkel caved to political pressure and ordered the seven oldest nuclear reactors in Germany shut down for at least 3 months. During those 3 months, the plants would have generated 17 TWh, which will now need to be supplied from other sources. The most likely candidate for most of it is coal, because there is currently plenty of underutilized capacity. Coal power releases lots of SO2 and NO2 to the atmosphere, which directly kills people. By current data, 1 TWh of coal power produced in the western world kills roughly 15 people -- so when Merkel signed that moratorium, she signed death warrants for 250 people. (This estimate is probably seriously low -- notably, the coal plants currently running are the newer and cleaner ones, and the capacity that will be brought up to replace them will be dirtier. Also, I have not counted CO2 emissions in any way.) If every nuclear reactor in the world operated constantly at the level of leakage and operator casualties that are happening at Daichi, nuclear would still be preferable to coal. If there was a Chernobyl every year, nuclear would still be preferable to coal. The normal operation of a coal plant over it's lifetime is more costly in human lives than the worst case nuclear accident of a modern nuclear plant. The problem is that people are not afraid of dying -- they are afraid of dying in disasters. Nuclear accidents are concentrated. The casualties and the environmental damage caused by coal are diffuse. |