Very few people die in nuclear accidents, but quite a lot of construction workers end up falling off roofs while installing solar panels.

That's an interesting point. I think my view on this is that I think we've been pretty lucky with nuclear accidents thus far, and that we don't have nearly enough to data to conclude that we will continue to operate them as safely as we have thus far. A single bad nuclear accident affecting a major city would turn that statistic entirely on it's head for centuries worth of solar panel installation.

That amount to saying "I'm going to ignore all the evidence because I don't like the conclusion."

It's simply interpreting the data differently. Statistical conclusions always depend on your priors. We may also have a difference in risk tolerance. I'm willing to accept "accidents almost never happen" for something like air travel because the consequences are much less severe even if a worst-case accident does happen. I'm not nearly so willing accept even a small risk of nuclear accident because the consequences are so potentially awful (the worst case is not death IMO, but slow, painful radiation poisoning).

The worst nuclear power accident ever, Chornobyl took: knowingly unsafe design and a lot of very-very bad decisions to kill a few hundred directly and a few thousand indirectly.

The only two others that even come close: Fukushima - one death, TMI - 0 deaths.

So that's at most a few thousand deaths for something like 100 Million reactor hours (napkin math, don't cite).

There is plenty of data and the data says it's safe.

> So that's at most a few thousand deaths for something like 100 Million reactor hours (napkin math, don't cite).

Sounds about right, but when you factor in current designs and requirements it's 100x better.

LRF (large release frequencies) are required to be less than 1 in 1 000 000 per year of reactor operation [1], so roughly 10 billion reactor hours. The calculation of this considers at least 1 in 10 000 year levels of high winds and earthquakes [2].

Since the typical reactor is 1GW, so ~8TWh per year, and global energy consumption is ~23 000 TWh per year, we could use roughly 3000 reactors globally to meet most of our needs, which would put an event like this roughly every 100-1000 years.

[1] https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0909/ML090910608.pdf

[2] https://archive.opg.com/pdf_archive/Nuclear%20Licencing%20Do...

Also if your threat model is a one-in-10000 year freak event, you can have as many reactors as you want and it doesn’t increase the likelihood of a catastrophe.

Note, in comparison, dams have killed several orders of magnitude more people.

Just solar panel installers falling off roofs have killed more people so far.

Banqiao Dam failure alone killed an unknown number of people. The lower estimate is 26 000. The upper estimate is 240 000 people.

For Chernobyl the number is 4,000 deaths as the total number of projected deaths caused by the accident over the long term.

For Fukushima it's one direct death, and 2000 deaths due to evacuation.

Had we approached dams the way we approach nuclear power, not a single dam would be built in the world.

Also, ironically, the amount of greenhouse gases produced by the production of solar panels or wind turbines is quite large. And neither one recycles very well, so that can't be an amortized cost over multiple reuses.

Nuclear has this same issue too, although almost entirely from the concrete poured for the containment building. Small modular reactors should mitigate this.

When I built my system the greenhouse gasses released during manufacturing and transport were offset by 1.9 years worth of production. Out of a lifetime of 20-25 years. In my quite unfavorable latitude of 59. Since then I've seen data being quoted at somewhere between half and one year.

Those numbers seem low. I don’t doubt that’s what was quoted, but I don’t think they were fairly calculated. For example, a lot of times the greenhouse gases used in refining materials used to make panels are not included, on the assumption that they will be recycled. Turns out recycling is not economically worthwhile (mostly because of these externalized costs). But that’s most of the greenhouse gas emissions: turning silicon dioxide into pure silicon using coal.

Regardless it’s apples to oranges. You are comparing your solar output to the mix of fossil fuel power the grid supplies. But a small modular reactor would be a carbon-zero power source.

I don’t get why there is polarization between solar/wind and nuclear? I can’t put an SMR in my basement but I can put solar on the roof. Why not? It’s not even likely that my country will get an SMR.

Nuclear is also a very risky business (not in the sense of safety but in the sense of project delivery/nimby). So solar and wind are derisking weaning off fossil fuels.

Wrong comparison. You are neglecting the systemic risk of nuclear and ignoring that roofing is dangerous and needs to be done regardless of solar panels.

> Solar panels in particular are about as dangerous as an inert rock

just wait until they are abandoned by bankrupt companies and start to break down and all of the highly toxic substances they are made of leech into the ground water.