No it isn't. It's fucking dangerous. Air pollution killing lots of people doesn't change this. Radiation kills people too.
That's a very important distinction, so I would ask you to please consider that.
In my country we're building giant wind turbines that will generate twice as much energy as our nuclear plant.
I'm not saying we should ban nuclear power forever, but it shouldn't become the main source of energy either, at least not until we're researched it enough to be 100x safer than it is today, and when it will deliver 100x more energy than solar and wind can, through actual fusion or whatever. Until then, I don't see why we should blindly keep building them when there are perfectly viable clean energy alternatives out there already, or just slightly behind, and just need a little push capital wise to become more advanced.
Wind and solar power are inherently unsuitable for providing base-load coverage - you need to have sufficient generating capacity spooled-up and available to cover any lulls in output. They can reduce the environmental impact of conventional generation, but they're useless on their own.
Nuclear power already produces 100x more than even the largest wind farm, because when you're working out how much base-load coverage you've got, you need to think about that wind farm at it's worst-case 0 MW output.
A single wind farm may have 0 MW output. But for a European grid of wind farms this is highly unlikely. Like 1% of the year. For that 1% we will have other energy sources pick up nicely.
They are "safe" in the sense that the probability of a catastrophe is 1 in 10,000 years (that is the statistic).
But they are exponential orders of magnitude more deadly, with the consequences thereof lasting for tens of thousands of years, when that 1/10,000th year comes around.
With 500 nuclear power plants operating, we can expect a serious nuclear catastrophe every 20 years.
These numbers are based just on nuclear power plants and exclude nuclear submarines, warheads etc.
I believe he is using the standard definition of safe, for a power source, which is expected deaths/Twh.
Applying deaths per TWH to nuclear is naive. It's an abstraction that in no way reflects the underlying reality, and which leads the general populace into mad ambivalence. It's the kind of rhetoric you hear on Animal Farm. This idea that some deaths are better than others. In fact, it's a question of asymmetric risk with outsized consequences. If you learn anything from Ben Graham or Warren Buffett, it's that that's not the kind of game you want to be playing, unless you're really smart like LTCM. You don't want to have anything to do with it, especially not if there is human mental apparatus, governments, and contractors involved. There are too many variables you cannot control, and they are not captured by deaths per TWH.
The second thing to learn from Graham and Doddsville, when dealing with asymmetric odds is that history is no reliable guide to the future. What happened last year or the year before, is no indication of what may happen next year or the manner in which we can expect it to happen. That nuclear catastrophes have historically not been catastrophic (according to the author), is no reason for the author to believe that they may continue to remain so.
Yet the Washington Post article has based its argument on the premise that you can even measure deaths per TWH. You cannot count deaths directly and indirectly related to a nuclear accident. We have learned that much from the history of these accidents, and it would be ignorant and insensitive to claim otherwise. Take for instance Chernobyl, does the author truly believe that only 50 people have already died as a direct and indirect result? Even the most conservative numbers reported (deaths actually incurred) are higher, and show significant variance between sources:
"Estimates of the number of deaths potentially resulting from the accident vary enormously; the World Health Organization (WHO) suggest it could reach 4,000 while a Greenpeace report puts this figure at 200,000 or more. A UNSCEAR report places the total deaths from radiation at 64 as of 2008." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
From those to whom much as been given, much will be expected.
Danger is relative, and relative to the rest of the power industry, nuclear is absurdly safe.
There must be some creative statistics at works behind those safety figures.
deaths/TerraWatt.
The only thing people like you accomplish is preventing modern reactor designs from being implemented, therefore effectively discouraging improvement in the industry.
You are handwaving when it comes to the dangers of coal power, and screaming at the top of your lungs when it comes to nuclear power, despite the fact that coal power kills people every year, despite the fact that coal power plants actually emit radioactive particles in the air, and nuclear plants normally don't.
The point is that most forms of power generation we have, today, is less safe and causes more environmental impact than nuclear power. And yet you are upset about nuclear power? You are not being rational, you are sensationalist.
It's not really a "discussion" when you're just saying the same thing over and over, without addressing the data presented by others or providing any data of your own.
The reason to focus on nuclear over coal power and other bad industrial practices is that nuclear still has a lot of support among educated people. Coal has been discredited. No one thinks we should build more coal plants (aside from those who profit from them). But the amount of cheerleading you see for nuclear among a population like HN's is incredible. I don't know if it's a testament to the industry's financial weight or what, but it's clearly getting a pass where other harmful industries are not. That's bad.