Admittedly, I don't know the actual data, but as far as I understand, people have made attempts to factor in these kinds of side costs, like estimating deaths caused by Chernobyl, and even with those factors, nuclear still comes out looking a lot safer.
https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy
Can you actually prove anyone died as a result? The American Nuclear Society concluded:
>"The average radiation dose to people living within 10 miles of the plant was eight millirem, and no more than 100 millirem to any single individual. Eight millirem is about equal to a chest X-ray, and 100 millirem is about a third of the average background level of radiation received by U.S. residents in a year."
>"Several health studies found there were no long-term adverse effects on the health of the population living around TMI."
http://www.ans.org/pi/resources/sptopics/tmi/whathappened.ph...
More studies:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2389745
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1405170/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2029040
I welcome any evidence to the contrary.
>The author clearly has access to far better information than defenders posting here.
If that's the case, why doesn't he share them? Just sounds like an appeal to authority. Regardless nuclear is safer by a massive margin, and again I'd be very surprised if that still wasn't the case even factoring all of that in. Even if you did have evidence of thousands of people dying, it'd still be safer than all other forms of generating power, not to mention much cleaner.
>with no requirements or plans for improvement,
The only reasons we're not improving plants and building new ones is government regulations preventing it.
The author clearly has access to far better information than defenders posting here.
Just the fact that all nuke plants in operation were designed to withstand much less severe weather and flooding events than are now expected, with no requirements or plans for improvement, justify shutdown.