There are people that don't believe global warming is happening. Some of these people are otherwise sane and rational and just don't think the evidence is trustworthy (and sometimes, they've got a point).
Nuclear power, on the other hand, has clearly killed people within living memory.
So if you don't think "AGW" is happening, then nuclear power is clearly scarier.
It's worth noting that the fossil fuel industry kills really quite a lot of people, but they tend to be a) foreigners and b) miners or oilrig-workers, so they obviously don't count.
Well, yeah, but they tend to be over a period of time, and rarely make the news, complete disasters with deaths don't hit headlines often.
Because they're fairly common on a small scale.
Even the gulf oil spill was mostly about all that oil, the deaths were mentioned a few times then forgotten.
Whereas Chernobyl was global news, Iran building a reactor is global news (and, really, I can't see what the fuss about that is, if we're allowed them, and China's allowed them, why can't Iran have them?).
People think air travel is dangerous, but road travel isn't, despite the latter being a lot more lethal.
My tick in favour of it being scarier implies yes, I do. I'm not utterly convinced, but then I'm rarely sure about anything, the evidence points to it being true, and the best estimates is it'll sink my hometown, amongst other not nice effects.
Ergo, it scares me and I'd rather try to stop it, and the opportunity cost represented by the resources spent on other things is an annoyance. Renewable power is probably a net good even if climate change science is wrong.
Twenty four years after the catastrophe, restriction orders remain in place in the production, transportation and consumption of food contaminated by Chernobyl fallout. In the UK, they remain in place on 369 farms covering 750 km² and 200,000 sheep. In parts of Sweden and Finland, restrictions are in place on stock animals, including reindeer, in natural and near-natural environments. "In certain regions of Germany, Austria, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Lithuania and Poland, wild game (including boar and deer), wild mushrooms, berries and carnivorous fish from lakes reach levels of several thousand Bq per kg of caesium-137", while "in Germany, caesium-137 levels in wild boar muscle reached 40,000 Bq/kg. The average level is 6,800 Bq/kg, more than ten times the EU limit of 600 Bq/kg", according to the TORCH 2006 report. The European Commission has stated that "The restrictions on certain foodstuffs from certain Member States must therefore continue to be maintained for many years to come".[6]
Edit: Of course, I had the link to the radioactive boar on my LJ in the last few weeks.
Exactly, if it goes wrong, it really goes wrong. But such events are very rare, and normally due to incompetent design and procedures.
Apart from their deliberate positioning fairly close to where I grew up, the French don't seem to have had any problems with their stations, not major ones anyway.
Oh, agreed. I believe newer designs are much better. I just also understand why people are scared of it going wrong, and if some people felt that nuclear power going wrong was worse than global warming then I wouldn't be surprised.
They might have interpreted the question as "inspires more visceral fear" rather than "objectively more dangerous in the long run", perhaps?
The word "nuclear" is impressively scary in the former terms, including as it does the twin failure modes of earth-shattering kabooms that level a city and invisible death fields you don't even know you're walking into until it's far too late. (I realise the former is unlikely in terms of nuclear power in particular, but it will still be associated in people's minds with the word "nuclear".) Either of those on its own would be fairly scary; associating both with the same technology makes it entirely plausible that that technology would inspire a lot of gut-level fear.
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Nuclear power, on the other hand, has clearly killed people within living memory.
So if you don't think "AGW" is happening, then nuclear power is clearly scarier.
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Because they're fairly common on a small scale.
Even the gulf oil spill was mostly about all that oil, the deaths were mentioned a few times then forgotten.
Whereas Chernobyl was global news, Iran building a reactor is global news (and, really, I can't see what the fuss about that is, if we're allowed them, and China's allowed them, why can't Iran have them?).
People think air travel is dangerous, but road travel isn't, despite the latter being a lot more lethal.
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Ergo, it scares me and I'd rather try to stop it, and the opportunity cost represented by the resources spent on other things is an annoyance. Renewable power is probably a net good even if climate change science is wrong.
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Edit: Of course, I had the link to the radioactive boar on my LJ in the last few weeks.
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Apart from their deliberate positioning fairly close to where I grew up, the French don't seem to have had any problems with their stations, not major ones anyway.
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The word "nuclear" is impressively scary in the former terms, including as it does the twin failure modes of earth-shattering kabooms that level a city and invisible death fields you don't even know you're walking into until it's far too late. (I realise the former is unlikely in terms of nuclear power in particular, but it will still be associated in people's minds with the word "nuclear".) Either of those on its own would be fairly scary; associating both with the same technology makes it entirely plausible that that technology would inspire a lot of gut-level fear.