> Nuclear energy is so insanely safe that of the three worst accidents in its history, only one actually killed people and its on the order of hundreds of people
You're leaving out the cancer and birth defects part for generations to come.
Considering how few reactors there are in the world, I'd say the failure rate is unacceptably high. A single failure is enough to contaminate an area for hundreds and thousands of years.
> A single failure is enough to contaminate an area for hundreds and thousands of years.
A single coal seam fire can do that too. A dam failure can even render an area uninhabitable forever.
Nuclear isn't quite as green as many of its advocates claim but its environmental skeletons in the closet aren't born out of plant accidents (which are few, far between, and generally well contained in Western plant designs), they're born out of the chemical horror show that is the rest of the uranium fuel cycle.
That is complete nonsense. The UN Scientific Commission, Harvard Medical School, Kyiv University found no evidence for increased cancer after Chernobyl.
Radiation simply isn't as dangerous as everyone has been led to believe. We live in a radioactive world and the most basic aspects of our biology is designed to deal with it. Even in a hypothetical world with zero radiation, every single one of your cells on average experiences between ten thousand and fifty thousand DNA breaks a day. Because of the Oxygen our cells need to produce energy. You have to be exposed to significant amounts of radiation before you start to even approach the damage from normal wear and tear of life.
You're leaving out the cancer and birth defects part for generations to come.
Considering how few reactors there are in the world, I'd say the failure rate is unacceptably high. A single failure is enough to contaminate an area for hundreds and thousands of years.