From the sources:

"But what about Chernobyl ? The World Health Organization study in 2005 indicated that 50 people died to that point as a direct result of Chernobyl. 4000 people may eventually die earlier as a result of Chernobyl, but those deaths would be more than 20 years after the fact and the cause and effect becomes more tenuous.

He explains that there have been 4000 cases of thyroid cancer, mainly in children, but that except for nine deaths, all of them have recovered. "Otherwise, the team of international experts found no evidence for any increases in the incidence of leukemia and cancer among affected residents.""

My point is that you or your child getting thyroid cancer, even if you or she recovers, is a pretty horrific outcome, and might deserve to be considered somehow -- not just fatalities.

True, but if you're counting that, there must surely be many other equally bad externalities worth counting; e.g. environmental damage due to oil spills and incidence of lung cancer due to air pollution from coal mining.

You have to draw the line somewhere to make the chart, and drawing it at fatalities seems sort of reasonable. It certainly doesn't seem overly gracious to nuclear power.

The elevated rates of asthma occurring in inner city kids is also pretty shitty. One of the better things they did in NYC was to shut down most of the power plants that were actually in the city.

that's what nuclear fanatics here don't seem to get.

as I argued in other thread about the original numbers, what matters aren't direct deaths attributed to one or the other energy source.

what matters (to me at least) is how different energy sources affect our quality of life. I suspect nuclear isn't the worst offender here, but it isn't all butterflies and roses either.

For the record: I am responsible nuclear fission proponent.

Wikipedia[1] cites a claim that France (which generates on the order of 80% of it's power from Nuclear) has the cleanest air of any industrialised nation, due in large part to the lack of fossil fuel burning plants.

I for one think that's a reasonable trade to make for a few nuclear waste dump designated areas being radioactive until we can get some breeder reactors or similar to break them down more quickly.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power

really? Some better [citation needed].

2002:

Scandinavia and the Baltic countries had the cleanest air in Europe this summer while Greece, France and Italy faced the worst smog levels, said the European Environment Agency (EEA).

http://www.am.gov.lv/en/?id=574

And BTW, I am fully in favor of replacing coal plants with nuclear.

Scandinavia is mostly driven by nuclear and hydro power. So the point still stands.

Hydro - yes. Nuclear - no.

Denmark and Norway - no nuclear.

Sweden - 45% nuclear.

Finland - 30% nuclear.

Uh, you're saying nuclear no, but then nuclear 45% of Sweden and 30% of Finland, so you must mean nuclear yes.

Smog is generated by petro chemicals, heat and sunlight.

That's why LA gets smog and Alaska doesn't - now why would hot sunny France with lots of people (and cars) get Smog but sparsely populated cold Scandanvia not?

Residents of what, the world? How did they measure that?

Neither do the vast amount of respiratory ailments caused by pollution. Coal kills a lot of people, but it cripples more than it kills.

I read through the article explaining how the numbers were calculated and the thyroid cancer is noted. The analysis provided could be disputed on methodology but at least there are references you can check if you want to improve upon it.

There are studies from the russian science acadamy that there are 270.000 cancers caused by Tschnernobyl and 93.000 are expected to end deathly.

http://www.n-tv.de/panorama/93-000-statt-4-000-Tote-article1...

It also doesn't include the destruction of a huge territory for thousand of years and the thousand's personal dramas caused by that. Counting only direct deaths is wrong. One has to take the whole risk into account not only one.

All of those points apply to coal as well. Increased risk of cancer, asthma, all sorts of health difficulties. Strip-mining literally destroys land, not just makes it uninhabitable (which is what you meant, not "destruction of a huge territory").

In that case you should also include all the people breaking their bones etc from falling down the roof without dying while installing solar panels.