Re:Fukushima leak is 'much worse than we were led to believe'
by reddit_clone on Thursday August 22, 2013 @12:14PM
(#6258031)
Its like motor vehicle accidents Vs airplane crashes. More people die on car accidents but infrequent airplane accidents get a lot more press and strict government regulation.
Oh, I should have added: this claim isn't really true either. The WHO estimates that a million people die each year due to air pollution from coal plants. This is many orders of magnitude higher than the annual average deaths related to nuclear energy.
The difference is, there isn't a worldwide push to ban coal because of this; instead, there's a push to scrub the plant emissions to remove the pollution. So again, nuclear is treated much more strictly than other power sources, relative to its actual risk.