You can filter the output of coal plants and that does help a lot. In the US coal only kills 15 people per terawatt-hour compared to 150 in China. But a coal plant generating as much power as Fukushima did will still tend to kill about 20 people even with safer US style plants. If you add up all the coal power in the US that's about 20,000 deaths per year. More or less the same order of magnitude as the damage from Chernobyl. But of course that's normal and doesn't make the news.