what other industry gets to benchmark social license against this tsunami? What other unacceptable risks should be weighed up against 15,000 deaths "to put it in perspective"? On the scale of badness, how many deaths does an industry need to be responsible for until its "a scale tipper"? This is a very poor way of weighing up the very real ongoing risks and hazards presented by the nuclear power industry.
My main point in putting it "in perspective" was not to dismiss the statistically projected increase in cancer rates, but to show that if there is anything to panic about first in Japan, it is the systemic failures that may have lead to a higher death toll in the earthquake and tsunami, such as tsunami walls of insufficient height, and "safe zones" that were not safe enough for the surge height. The surge estimation, modeling, contingency and responsiveness "faults" for the general population were of the same kind that affected the unanticipated failure modes of the power plant.
The plant did not fail because "nuclear was bad", it failed because it wasn't designed to be hit by a tsunami of that magnitude; which if the same reason for many of the direct tsunami-related deaths. With that in mind, Japan needs to get better at tsunami planning and engineering, like they generally have with direct earthquake planning and engineering.
Now, as to comparing energy producing industries, the mortality metric would be deaths per kilowatt hour; in which nuclear fares extremely well compared to mainstays like coal, even if 200 additional cancer deaths out of a "normal" 4400 for the given population are added in.
Other industries would of course be considered on merit. I don't know if any so thoroughly under attack from people with a poor grasp of the topic (or supported by people with such a poor grasp of the topic...)
What other industries would it be relevant to benchmark like this?
