I say we should look into this.
Since I was born, 92 million peoeple have died from fossil fuel burning (likely more as it's gotten cleaner) and if the nuclear bombings happened every year only 4.4 million people would have died from 400 nuclear bombings.
The World Health Organisation figures put the death toll at 3 million people a year for air pollution due to vehicles, power plants and industry. Another 1.6 million people die a year from burning solid fossil fuel (coal) in their homes for heat. So 4.6 million people die from fossil fuels a year.
The death toll reported by Greenpeace, which has been criticised for being too high, since Chernobyl places the total deaths at around 200,000 in Ukrane, Belarus and Russia. However, going by official figures the total is only 4,000 people.
I'm sorry, but it's complete bullshit to say "show me the numbers" like the evidence hasn't existed for decades. More people die yearly in the US from -SAFE- burning of fossil fuels than have died from the worlds -WORST- nuclear -DISASTER-.
In fact, to compare the yearly death rate of nuclear reactors to coal reactors. Well 100 million people have died since chernobyl happened from fossil fuel pollutions and those are figures from the WHO, and 4,000 people have died from chernobyl that's 25,000:1 ratio in favour of nuclear power. -HOWEVER-, I'll be kind and I'll use unofficial figures from Greenpeace, and oh it's still 500:1 ratio in favour of nuclear power.
At its worst nuclear power is 500 times SAFER than fossil fuels, and official figures make it 25,000 times safer than fossil fuels. Those are the figures!
In fact, the World Nuclear Assosiation did a study on the safety of nuclear reactors and compared death rates between, Coal, Natural gas, Hydro and Nuclear plants. Nuclear had 31 fatalities between 1970 and 1992 in the US and UK, however Coal had 6,400 fatalities between the same dates. Those are people just doing their jobs.
So those are the numbers. The official ones clearly show that nuclear power is by far the safest energy source in the world.
Also the big horrendus disaster (how the media portrays it at least) at Three Mile Island, injured no one who didn't work at the plant. In fact, everybody in the 10 mile radius of the plant was exposed to the equivalent amount of radiation as a chest x-ray. That doesn't even go near how much damage a CT scan does to the human body, and you can have several of those a year without even having an insignificant (yes insignificant) chance of cancer.
Oh, before I forget. Coal plants release around 100 times the amount of radiation per watt than a nuclear plant does. The radioactive dust released from Three Mile Island was essentially insignificant, as said people in 10 miles only recieved a chest X-ray, however coal plants release 155 times that a year when operating safely compared to a major nuclear accident.
I'm so amused by those figures. Nuclear accidents are catagorically far safer than coal plants that operate safely!
I would like to add that there is a problem with the safety of nuclear power because of the way humans react to danger.
When nuclear power fails and kills people it kills a relatively large number of people. Coal is constantly killing people over a large area. Coal deaths don't make good new events, but nuclear deaths do. This makes people more aware of the dangers of nuclear power. This makes people more afraid of nuclear power, even though it is statistically safer.
It's the same thing with airplanes. People die in car crashes everyday, but it's world/national news when a plane crashes. Thus, people are more afraid of planes than cars.
I wouldn't say that it's the news' fault either, they are simply reporting on things people are interested in.
Modern computer aided design, pebble bed reactors, and reusing nuclear waste as fuel make nuclear power far safer than anyone in their right mind would require. People working to advocate nuclear power would do better to shift focus from safety to fighting this perception problem.