People have all sorts of deep seated fears about fission. They don't have to be accurate to be afraid.
Knowledgeable people are aware that more people have died falling off of roofs trying to install solar panels than have ever died from a nuclear power plant.
The problem is insufficient propaganda from the nuclear fission industry. The tech works fine, but people don't believe it.
[1] http://www.dw.com/en/belgium-says-its-nuclear-plants-are-saf...
Because of the time required to evacuate people from the impacted areas, one of the objectives of a response plan would be to minimize radiation exposure due to contaminated food and water.
Providing iodine tablets before an accident is intended to minimize radioactive exposure due to contaminated food and water sources from the time the hazard is discovered to the time you are evacuated, and allows planners to apply those resources that would otherwise be spent distributing those supplies to helping evacuate more people, or responding to the incident.
And since that's normal and predictable, it should never happen except in cases of major force, like earthquakes and tsunamis. A government should be able to resolve the situation would letting the risk rise to this point.
If you can offer cheap power people will usually take it.
The point is that the risk of death with nuclear plants isn't nearly as high as people feel it is, even when factoring in the high-profile accidents that have occurred. Right now, a lot of people have an irrationally over-inflated perception of the risk posed by nuclear power.
This doesn't engage with the real world consequences of nuclear accidents that are devastating to life and the environment, long lasting and extremely expensive and complex to cleanup.
It kills less people, it uses less land, it uses less resources, it uses less mining and so on.
Areas of nuclear fallout and in protection zones are actually reclaimed by nature and animals don't give a shit about living there.
Environmentalist should love nuclear. There is that movement called 'eco-modernist' who subscribe to that.
> nuclear accidents that are devastating to life
Hardly. Most of the people that were evacuated were not in danger, devastating to their live was government action because of fear mongering.
Far more people died of the evacuation then of the radiation.
People are again living in cities near Chernobyl and their cancer rates are not unusual.
There's a real discussion to be made on the trade-offs between the potential environmental damage caused by an accident versus the looming threat of climate change. Unfortunately that discussion isn't really being had because nuclear power's public perception hurdle is so great.
They aren't the same thing at all, obviously. But that said, it is much more likely that someone die from installing or servicing solar panels than someone die from a nuclear incident.
We tend to be afraid of abnormal but possibly fatal or maiming events - the ones that are newsworthy - compared to the risks we face on a daily basis. Which is why we are cautious when climbing a ladder twice a year but not when we get into the shower as an older adult, even though shower accidents, including broken hips, are incredibly common. The poster is putting the actual risk into perspective.