So killing or having adverse health effects on far more people is OK, as long as the effects are diffuse? I'm not following the logic here. The number of people affected by Fukushima, even on the worst-case estimates, is less than the number of people affected in a year by the various aspects of coal plants that posters here have mentioned.

And I'm saying that this local perspective (which I understand might not be yours, you might just be trying to articulate the perspective of the NIMBY folks) is flawed, because it doesn't treat equal impacts on self-interest equally. It protests against nuclear plants, while not protesting at all against coal plants that have a greater impact on the same person's self-interest, simply because the impact of the coal plant is "diffuse": it pollutes their lungs over time, all the time, instead of bringing some probability of being in a Fukushima zone, but the total impact on expected years of life (or expected quality of life) for that person is still greater for the coal plant.

I understand that this perspective is common, but that doesn't make it right.