[kelnos]

I don't think "deaths per TWh" is the only measure we should be looking at, though. The Chernobyl exclusion zone is around 1000 square miles. It's certainly arguable if that is the correct size, or how long it will need to be in place.

If you shut down a coal plant, the pollution dissipates in a fairly short amount of time. (Unfortunately the same is not true of the carbon that has accumulated in the atmosphere over time.) If there's a disaster at a nuclear plant, some amount of land area becomes uninhabitable for some long amount of time (amounts dependent on the severity of the disaster).

For the record, I am in favor of building new nuclear plants, especially in areas where they can replace coal or even natural gas (it's absurd that this EU parliament action is considering natgas "green" as well). But let's not pretend that they are 100% safe, that the worst case can't happen, that the effects of a nuclear disaster aren't that big a deal, or that we've solved the waste disposal and storage problem. I agree that many anti-nuclear folks are driven more by overblown fears than science and statistics, but pro-nuclear people seem to also cherry-pick stats to better support their position.

[Manuel_D]

Radioactive fallout can be cleaned. Most of the Fukushima exclusion zone has been resettled. Pripyat was not resettled because it was a planned town specifically created to support the power plant and its workers. So there's no reason to spend the money to rehabilitate it.