I don't have a problem with the part of the argument that says, "we can do nuclear power more safely than the Soviets did". The part I'm saying isn't valid is the "it could have been worse" part. You could make that irrelevant point about *anything*. "Well, Pearl Harbor could have been worse." "Well, 9/11 could have been worse." "Well, the Nazi genocide could have been worse." "Well, having your daughter raped and murdered and eaten could have been worse." Yeah, so? This adds absolutely nothing to any argument for or against nuclear power. The only thing it does is let her play sleight-of-hand and make the disaster seem "better" somehow, when thousands of dead is still thousands of dead, you can't sugar-coat that by chirping, "well, hey, we were worried there were going to be a lot more corpses!" That's about as vapid as it gets, and constitutes no kind of "argument" whatsoever -- if anything, it only reminds people of the possibility that the next one *could* be worse indeed, which strikes me as an odd kind of thing to bring up when you're arguing *for* nuclear power.
Id adds something to the method of arguing with the boy who cried wolf - if you can get him to listen.
Shalom.