All that, and how many people are dead as a consequence of the meltdown? Zero.
Wikipedia says:
"Major news source reporting at least 2 TEPCO employees confirmed dead from "disaster conditions" following the earthquake.[368] "The two workers, aged 21 and 24, sustained multiple external injuries and were believed to have died from blood loss, TEPCO said. Their bodies were decontaminated as radiation has been spewing from the plant for three weeks."
45 patients were reported dead after the evacuation of a hospital in Futaba. Some of them "were suffering from dehydration because they had not eaten anything for three days"."
Is nuclear power perfectly safe? No.
Is it safer than coal?
Precisely. It's also crisis like Fukushima—using generations-older tech—that impedes development of safer nuclear generation technology (i.e thorium reactors, or even just better light-water reactors).
> I find it callous for you to brush aside the suffering of thousands of people by "The situation isn't good".
Perhaps I should have used stronger language. The situation is bad, most definitely, and Japan will be reeling from the effects for decades to come. Especially in the immediate area, and more depending on the extent of ground water contamination.
I'm just saying that the lack of education about nuclear power prevents us from moving forward with it, when deaths or disasters linked with other forms of power generation don't get the same media attention.
You have to compare casualties by number of people involved in both industries and also compensate for tight regulation.
My counter-question: How safe would coal be if it had the same kind of regulations as nuclear power?
http://www.inscc.utah.edu/~tgarrett/Projects/Economics.html
http://www.quora.com/Is-thorium-a-viable-replacement-for-ura...
* My statement, based on econophysics, remains true for perfect solar or wind collectors.
* Stop using the term "renewable". It's antiphysical.
* Learn something about fission - we can invest in it too, and there's a factor of 500 on the table.
This factor of 500 you're talking about... I don't even need to read anything to guess that'd only be available maybe 50 years from now, and then only theoretically. But pro-nuclear activism will get you lots of today's crappy tech, and you'll be stuck with it for 50 years. And the worst part is you'll have spent a ton of money on it, diverting from much quicker advances in renewables (a term I'll continue to use because everyone knows what I'm talking about when I say it).
Amortized over 40 years, the nominal cost of nuclear is very low - on par with coal. The barrier to rapid buildout is the high upfront cost. Operation is almost free. Standardized plant designs like the AP1000 should cure most construction delays. The Chinese builds currently underway were ahead of schedule last I checked.
The externalities of energy sources are poorly studied, nuclear being by far the best-studied. In the US, waste disposal is fully paid per kWh and has been since the early '80s. Mining and everything to do with the fuel chain is far cleaner than anything else, including wind and solar (it was my job to study these things for a certain fruity company that has no vested interest in any particular technology). Regulation in the US is also paid-for by the industry (NRC charges astronomical fees).
As you probably know, safety per GWh is found to be on par with wind and solar by every study out there.
The factor of 500 corresponds to burning Th232 instead of U235 (490 precisely). Burning U238 will give you a factor of 140 instead. Either will additionally save the need for enrichment, though turns out to be a tiny factor. High-temp operation with either fuel will get you 5/3 in the thermal efficiency dept. Atmospheric pressure operation gives you something like a factor of 10 on plant materials, which is not terribly significant on a per-GWh basis.
All of these have been demonstrated - most decades ago. There's no basic physics, just engineering. 10 years to market for any serious effort. Where you might need 50 years is something like a dusty plasma reactor. Those directly convert fission energy to electricity (thus reaching efficiencies over 90%) and can also enable interstellar travel. Still easier than fusion.
For solar efficiency there's a factor of 3 to the Carnot limit and wind is less than a factor of 2 from the Betz limit. Further improvements can come by making the collectors lighter. But solar cells are already thinner than can weather the elements and so are mounted on substrates, under cover glass, on stands and tracking motors etc. About the best that can be done is mirrors with a central thermal tower, and this is being done today. Tethered wind has potential for reducing the utterly absurd material requirements of current turbines - Makani says a factor of 5.
Those are available improvements, since you mentioned it. Absolutes are what count. For solar, plan to cover about the same amount of land as has been paved to date (assuming ideal location).
I don't know what renewables are. Do they include geothermal? Howabout induced geothermal? What about fission (supernovae aren't renewable)? Biofuels (are fresh water, fertilizer, arable land etc. renewable)? Is wind renewable? http://www.earth-syst-dynam.net/2/1/2011/esd-2-1-2011.html What about hydroelectric (we seem to have run out of rivers to dam)? Is there really agreement on which of these are included? I've been working in the field for five years and I haven't figured it out.
Eventually you'd run out of lives...
If you mention the children born in the Ukraine and Belarus with horrific mutations and short lifespans, it will be either attributed to coal or spun to have nothing to do with the Chernobyl meltdown at all -- maybe the mother was playing with Uranium.