> Western society in general is a bunch of future cancer and heart disease victims all freaking out that they're going to die in a nuclear meltdown […]

Also, COVID (to round out the top three in many places).

COVID has killed 7 million people since 2019. Airliner* crashes killed 80 people in 2023.

These risks are not of the same class.

* admittedly I'm exaggerating slightly by not considering private and military aviation, but I'm too lazy to find that total.

The difference is you can trivially avoid death by airliner crash. You can't practically reduce your chance of death by COVID unless you simply never go outdoors or have visitors

Cancer is the dominant risk of a nuclear meltdown or dirty bomb/explosion, yes.

Compare the relative probability of dying of cancer as a result of a nuclear meltdown to dying of cancer as a result of cigarettes or chemical carcinogens.

How about dying from cancer due to all the fallout from the nuclear tests still circulating around?

Probably less than fallout from 0.001% uranium contained in gigatonnes of carbon being burned every year.

True overall (regarding overall alpha emitter load), the issue with fallout is radioactive Iodine, Stronium, Cesium, etc. Those elements have short half lives and won't be as present in significant quantities in flue emissions because of the age of coal (just as daughter products in much lower concentrations than the Uranium).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fallout]

For actual studies on the impacts, see [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11109179/]

Notably, Stronium-90 levels in deciduous teeth of kids born in the 80's.

"Strontium-90 concentrations in deciduous (baby) teeth of 515 children born mainly after the end of worldwide atmospheric nuclear bomb tests in 1980 are found to equal the concentrations in children born during atmospheric tests in the late 1950s. Recent Sr-90 concentrations in the New York-New Jersey-Long Island metropolitan area have exceeded the expected downward trend seen in both baby teeth and adult bone after the 1963 ban on atmospheric testing. Sharp rises and declines are also seen in Miami, Florida. In Suffolk County, Long Island, Sr-90 concentrations in baby teeth were significantly correlated with cancer incidence for children 0 to 4 years of age. "

Stronium in teeth is a proxy for Stronium in bones too, and those don't fall out.

> Western society in general is a bunch of future cancer and heart disease victims all freaking out that they're going to die in a nuclear meltdown, or by the hand of a terrorist, or by a lone gunman "mass shooter," or in a plane crash, or any number of other threats that are scary but statistically highly unlikely.

> Human beings are just utter crap at intuitively estimating risk.

Technically, yes, but you have to admit it was an amusing inapt example.

I think it just reinforces the point. It isn't even a significant proportion of a person's cancer risk.

It's like worrying about the KGB covertly planting listening devices in your house while tech companies are openly planting listening devices in your house. It's not at all unreasonable to be concerned about invasion of privacy, but the people who think they're at significant risk of being individually targeted by the security service of the former Soviet Union because of what they saw on TV have got a screw loose.

I agree that people are bad at estimating risk, but I would also argue that the reason many people live long enough to become cancer victims is because of this freaking out.

The reason people live so long is because we went all-in on fossil fuels through the 1800s, 1900s and early 2000s. Our long lives and high living standards are pretty much all flow-ons from cheap energy.

The people who prioritise 0-risk living over energy security are self defeating; but the problem is they keep trying to take the rest of us down with them. Their victory of nuclear energy might technically be one of the biggest catastrophes to ever hit humanity. We have never been hit by something else with so high an opportunity cost in absolute terms. Blind and ignorant fear is no basis for making policy decisions.

Oh, I do not disagree at all. I'm very pro nuclear!

Defaulting to extreme skepticism and caution towards any technology that dangerous is not a bad starting point though.

Right, but you're describing the process of an open-minded person.

For the fuckwits in any given electorate, your maxim would be better phrased as "default to not having any fucking opinion at all on that of which you know not"