On 26/06/2013 16:27, news wrote:
I think most of this has been said already but if you have 5 minutes it
is an interesting article.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blog...o-nuclear.html


A quote from it.

One recent paper estimated that nuclear power has prevented 1.84 million
air-pollution-related deaths globally.

and from one of the responses

More people have died in America installing rooftop solar, than have
ever died from commercial nuclear power.
(although there is no reference quoted for this)


As the article says, there were (small) working molten salt reactors
back in the '60s. The fact that no-one building large commercial plant
ever went down that route should tell you something.

It's not trivial to work out total deaths associated with nuclear power.
You need to include lung cancer in uranium miners, and these are not
sudden deaths like falling off a roof, it's about reduced life expectancy.

I'm confident that nuclear has provided big benefits in air pollution,
but splitting air pollution "deaths" (or more exactly reduced life
expectancy) between transport, the chemical industry, and electricity
generation is complex.

Your analogy with facebook is flawed; facebook was a startup at a time
when there was nothing else quite like it, whereas there is a large and
relatively mature nuclear industry now.