Nuclear Power? Yes please!

Even after Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was hit by one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded, and then 20 minutes later is hit by one of the most destructive Tsunamis ever seen, no one died because of radiation. Even after the loss of it's primary, secondary and emergency cooling systems, no one died because of radiation, and even after the plant was rocked by two hydrogen explosions, no one died due to radiation (although one person was killed in a crane accident).

And lets not forget that we're talking about a 40 year old power plant here. The US managed to cause a core meltdown in one of Three Mile Island's two reactors less than three months after it went into commercial operation.

With the exception of Chernobyl, no one has lost their life due to radiation release at a nuclear power plant. In comparison, 52 miners were killed in a coal mining accident today. The idea that nuclear power is dangerous fails to take into account the cost in lives and environmental damage of getting fossil fuels out of the ground.

Fear of nuclear power is like fear of plane crashes. Even thought car accidents claim more lives each year than 10 years worth of plane crashes, people are more afraid of dying in a plane crash than a car crash, and fossil fuel power generation claims more lives every year than nuclear power ever has.

Nuclear power may have the potential for great disaster, but if you look at the actual history of power generation it is remarkably safe. I'm particularly amused at those Irish people who point out that the problems in Japan are a good example of why Ireland is right not to have nuclear power, while forgetting that we buy in power from Europe generated in nuclear power stations.

"We'd like 20 Megawatts of you finest organic power please, none of that cheap nuclear power, have you seen the conditions it's grown in?".

Even when you include the aftermath of Chernobyl (and let's not forget that the Russians were conducting a poorly managed experiment on the reactor, and what staff they did have didn't know what they were doing), nuclear power has caused less damage to the planet, and killed vastly fewer people that fossil fuels, and that's before you start to look at the political effect fossil fuels are continuing to have on the middle east and Libya.
 
You might be scared, but that doesn't make it dangerous.