[Kon5ole]

>The harms of radiation are massively overhyped.

>Nobody from the Fukushima accident died from radiation sickness or radiation syndrome, and so far there's been no evidence of long term elevated cancer rates either.

You say these two things as if the second statement supports the first, but it doesn't.

The dangers of radiation are very well known and don't change at all based on what happened at Fukushima. If you fire a gun and miss, the gun is still dangerous.

>Meanwhile the nuclear industry has been drowning for 50+ years from egregious layers of overregulation.

Here's an account of two gruesome deaths caused by poor regulation of nuclear materials in Japan. It happened 12 years before Fukushima.

https://science.howstuffworks.com/hisashi-ouchi.htm

[Hammershaft]

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...

People die from the operation & externalities of every energy source, it's just that Nuclear power has orders of magnitude fewer deaths per kilowatt-hour than the dirtier energy sources these regulations have pushed energy production towards.

I'm sure some lives would be lost if Nuclear Power faced the same regulatory costs that other energy sources do, rather than the egregious and absurd costs they face today.

But many many more lives would be saved by deregulating nuclear energy and making it more cost competitive with coal and natural gas.

Many children wouldn't contract asthma & the other respiratory illnesses they do today if nuclear energy hadn't been killed via overregulation and replaced by coal and natural gas.

[herewulf]

Interesting but people die (or are severely injured) in all kinds of industrial accidents all the time. Unfortunately, with or without regulation it comes with the territory of a modern industrial society.

[Kon5ole]

>Interesting but people die (or are severely injured) in all kinds of industrial accidents all the time.

Very few other industrial accidents cause effects that have to be dealt with for decades over 1000 miles away, even across oceans.

Nuclear power really is in a league of its own when it comes to risk. I am not aware of anything that comes close. Dam accidents have killed many more people and devastated towns, but the day after that happens, the area can be reused and the risk is entirely gone. The risks of nuclear power remain for decades or even centuries.

Finding ways to deal with that risk is fine, arguing that it can be managed is fine, but pretending that the risk is exaggerated based on the accidents that have happened so far is a mistake.

The risk is things that could happen, not what has actually happened.

[leonidasrup]

You probably mean the Chernobyl accident.

There are estimates that pollution from European coal power plants cause more deaths EACH year in Europe, than the total estimated deaths from Chernobyl accidents (most pessimistic estimate 4000-8000 deaths).

For example, just the Great Smog event that affected London, England, in December 1952 caused by modern estimate 10,000–12,000 deaths.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London