Everyone seems to forget that it took a freaking tsunami that displaced hundreds of thousands of people to take out a 60 year old reactor design. While coal is killing people every day.
Of course it should take a freak event to take out a nuclear power plant, it shouldn't happen every second Sunday. But I would also expect it to be an event that doesn't happen regularly every few hundred years [1].
We should hold nuclear to the standard of hydroelectric power. The potential energy of elevated water behind a dam is on par or greater than nuclear accidents, and past dam failures has costed way more lives than nuclear has.
In 2017, California had a major accidents with their Oroville Dam and evacuated of 188,000 people living downstream. This can be compared to the 154,000 evacuated from Fukushima. The United state and the state of California can be compared to Japan and the Fukushima Prefecture. Why did both countries, wealthy as they are, fail to meet the safety standards that a required of them? Both occurred during unexpected natural events.
One occurred during the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan, and the fourth most powerful earthquake in the world since modern record-keeping began 100 years ago. The other occurred during Northern California's wettest winter in over 100 years. I suspect the first one to be more rare, through both include "hundred years" as a key factor.
I suspect however that the wrong conclusion to make is to define both dams and nuclear to be inherently unsafe technologies that we can't use because people might die. They are dangerous, and historically a lot of people has died, but they are also significant safer than burning fossil fuels. More people has and will die because of fossil fuel, and until we stop burning fossil fuels we should deploy any and all alternatives.
> a major accidents with their Oroville Dam and evacuated of 188,000 people living downstream. This can be compared to the 154,000 evacuated from Fukushima
You're being disingenuous here. The waters would have flowed to the sea and most people would have been back inweeks if not days. No one's going back to Fukushima's neighborhood in decades.
You have it wrong if you think people could return back to their homes in a few weeks after a catastrophic dam failure. Flooding like those don't leave any homes or cities to return to. Land slides and wave takes everything in its path, buildings people and animals alike.
In 1975 when Banqiao Dam failed, 26,000 died from flooding, 145,000 died from subsequent famine and epidemics, and 11 million became homeless. When the waters flowed back to the sea, it took a bit longer than "been back inweeks if not days". The flooding did not leave any radiation, but the human toll was still very high.
Yes two generations ago (that's how old the China disaster you're referring to is) especially in developing economies, there were major dam disasters. You don't really quite see them today - especially in developed largely economies which are also likely to have Nuclear as an option
It is only with hindsight that we can say that loosing control of the Oroville dam did not have a catastrophic result. They lost control and issued a evacuation exactly because they did not know what would happen at that point. In hindsight it only caused minor flooding and debris that was addressed downstream, and then the weather improved.
I have not heard of a nuclear accident where they lost control of the reaction, issued an evacuation order, and then later managed to regain control with only minor damage. If it happened we should still not describe such accident as acceptable since people could literally return a few days later. Loosing control of a destructive force is unacceptable regardless of outcomes, and anything else would just result in deviation of acceptable risk.
If anything this can be ascribed to resilience of nuclear generation. The tsunami in question killed (in a first world country, no less) many thousands of people.
The outdated nuclear plant located in the midst of the disaster killed none.
More than displaced, the tsunami killed 20,000 people.
It was also the biggest Earthquake in 1000+ years of recorded Japanese history, and hit a small area where it could produce a tsunami overflowing the tsunami walls.
In the 99.99% likely world where this didn't happen, we'd have a much healthier nuclear power situation. But now we're in this world...
