Do you have an opinion about nuclear power? About the relative safety of one form of power over another? How did you come to this opinion?

Here are the stats, and here's the image. A non-exaggerated but simple version of his data:

For every person killed by nuclear power generation, 4,000 die due to coal, adjusted for the same amount of power produced... You might very well have excellent reasons to argue for one form over another. Not the point of this post. The question is: did you know about this chart? How does it resonate with you?

Vivid is not the same as true. It's far easier to amplify sudden and horrible outcomes than it is to talk about the slow, grinding reality of day to day strife. That's just human nature. Not included in this chart are deaths due to global political instability involving oil fields, deaths from coastal flooding and deaths due to environmental impacts yet unmeasured, all of which skew it even more if you think about it.

This chart unsettles a lot of people, because there must be something wrong with it. Further proof of how easy it is to fear the unknown and accept what we've got.

I think that any time reality doesn't match your expectations, it means that marketing was involved. Perhaps it was advertising, or perhaps deliberate story telling by an industry. Or perhaps it was just the stories we tell one another in our daily lives. It's sort of amazing, even to me, how much marketing colors the way we see the world--our reaction (either way) to this chart is proof of it.

The fact remains, nuclear power is still a safe, clean, renewable form of energy. Is it dangerous if things go wrong? Of course... But so is any other power plant or chemical factory, or almost anyplace where dangerous materials are being handled and consumed. Fact is, I'd rather live next to a nuclear reactor than a coal-fired plant, or oil burning plant.

Sure there's a super-small chance that the thing could have an issue like what we're seeing in Fukushima right now... But on a day-to-day basis, there are no carbon emissions, bad smells, scorched lungs, coal mine accidents (remember Chile?), oil price jumps, wars fought due to oil field claims, doing business with dictators to get oil, etc.

Let's put it into perspective... The plant at Fukushima was hit by a M9.0 QUAKE... and IS STILL STANDING. Then it was hit by THE TSUNAMI OF AGES. ...AND IS STILL STANDING. In fact, if the backup power supply hadn't been hit by all that water from the tsunami, then we wouldn't be having this discussion now... Remember, the reactors had been automatically SHUT DOWN way BEFORE the tsunami hit. We're still looking at a feat of engineering here, because there are several conventional power plants that were knocked offline, and SWEPT AWAY by the tsunami that YOU ARE NOT HEARING ABOUT.

What about the toxic waste from those? Didn't anyone see the tsunami footage that showed a BURNING tidal wave because there were OIL FIRES on top of the water as it was rushing in? Where'd that come from, and more importantly, WHERE DID IT END UP? That's more of an environmental concern to me now, than a few microsieverts of radiation that dissipates in 4 days...

I'm from Missouri, where we had this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Beach,_Missouri
I fear that kind of man-made disaster over anything natural.