Interestingly, there are few deaths attributable to the radiation issues at Fukishima. Over time it is clear there will be more deaths, mostly due to cancer. on the other hand, the death toll will not likely reach the 15,000 that died in the actual earthquake.
Fukishima is a great example of the worst disaster that could happen, with stupidity abounding and multiple separate failures, and yet while it will be enormously expensive, it doesn’t make the list of major disasters (a lot more people died when the planes ran into the WTC, which I guess would argue for banning planes as you mentioned).
Fukishima was not anywhere near as bad as Chernobyl, which of course was the result of a police state which cared nothing about safety.
in terms of theoretical damage, nuclear is up there, but conceivable disasters with nuclear plants do not show casualties rates near the conceivable disasters that could befall our major dams. If I had to pick a place for a 50-foot diameter meteor to hit, I would choose a nuclear power plant over a major dam.
Reid’s out of the senate. Time to open the nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain and build more safe nuclear power plants. This Hanford story gets the headline of the day because it says “nuclear” and scares people. Nobody will be injured.
WTC site was able to be reoccupied, unlike the DaiIchii or Chernobyl sites which have to be isolated for, probably, forever.
The problem with this technology is that the consequences of an accident are orders of magnitude more profound in not just the loss of life but of the loss of land, contamination of groundwater, increase in radiation and so on. Our species is not yet sufficiently able to execute this technology without mishaps.
Not that we shouldn’t try to master this technology, but its not very forgiving of poor planning/execution or acts of God.