Beware the fear of Nuclear fear

I think it's an amazing testament to the safety of modern nuclear plants (and the plant in question was commissioned something like 40 years ago) that in spite of being hit by both the largest earthquake in Japanese history AND a tsunami, the worst-case scenario is probably not going to be all that bad. Sure, it will be very expensive to fix, but it looks very likely that even in the case of a complete meltdown there will not be a catastrophic release of radiation into the surrounding environment.

Contrast this to Chernobyl when an OPERATING reactor suffered an explosion INSIDE the containment vessel, and you see that this does not even come close.

This is a great article, which restates the obvious, the people are lousy at understanding 'risk'.

Time, after time, after time. Every single study on every single metric shows that energy from Nuclear power is the safest and cleanest source of energy we currently know about, and yet the 'risk' boogie man is always at the forefront.

And in a weird way, by stopping implementation of power plants, we have sort of 'frozen' the perception of the risk based on experiences from the 70's. Have you ever compared the safety of a car you drove in the 70's with a car you drive today? Any different?

How do we 'grow up' past our 20th century fears and step up to save people, the planet, and our sanity by taking a more 'grown up' view of the risk / benefit analysis of nuclear power?

I really give Bill Gates credit for putting significant funds into the travelling wave reactor concept. He's looking at being able to take advantage of a safe way to generate power and consume left over waste products. How cool is that. But we have to get past a collective fear that the idea has the words 'nuclear' and 'reactor' in the title.