Ditch both.
(no, you don't avoid all deaths with hydro, wind or solar either; in fact hydro has historically been one of the deadliest power sources thanks to the Banqiao accident where a dam failure killed 171,000 - even excluding that, though, hydro is far from free of deaths)
EDIT: Since I was being a bit snarky: The point is last I heard the number of deaths from installation of rooftop solar is higher than the number of deaths from nuclear power plants for equivalent amount of energy. Nuclear gets the headlines because the nuclear incidents we hear about are big and scary and rare and get hyped up.
You don't get massive worldwide news coverage because some guy fell off a roof while mounting solar panels and died. But he's just as dead, and it adds up.
You can't ignore the small incidents if their rate is high enough.
Overall, you could have meltdowns on a regular basis and nuclear would still be one of our safest alternatives. Chances are it will also be one of the alternatives with the lowest environmental impact: Less radioactivity released than coal, by orders of magnitude; far less land area affected by development than hydro, wind and solar.
That's because nothing on the scale we need is safe.
The are both far worse for coal than for nuclear.
But no matter what you include for nuclear, you won't get the numbers very high.
> Not to mention the economic damage of the incredibly expensive reactors (nuclear)
It's not at all clear that nuclear is any more expensive than the alternatives if you accounts for the externalized costs of e.g. the huge bodycount from the alternatives.
You must be reading some pretty rosy estimates on nuclear energy compared to renewables if you think the costs make nuclear look good. And by costs I include dollars (the wastage of such having an impact on all our wellbeing as well by diverting from better solutions).
This is off topic but I always find statements like the above rather bizarre. Why must humans insist on living in places where the environment is hostile to human life?
I guess its because I grew up in a place where heating is very rarely necessary, without cooling of any kind and have spent most of the last three years traveling around countries where you could theoretically walk around naked all year if you so desired but I increasingly find it bizarre how attached people are to living in locations that are ill-suited to humans.
As a species we lack fur, so we are really vulnerable to cold.
No one is talking about resettling anyone. My question was just about why people individually choose to remain in places that feature temperatures well outside of the range compatible with our species. Others have covered it pretty well. Some combination of habituation, laziness and disliking hot summers basically.
Also, moving is not easy: you have to learn new languages, acquire skills you did not have use for previously, and get a work permit.
(And for the hilarious part, we often see people from warm countries moving to more temperate ones because those are economically and politically better off)
An example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_people
If we only lived in locations that are a good temperature year-round we would barely live anywhere.
Because by an unlucky twist of nature (physics and chemistry combined) the richest soils are found in temperate regions, so the lands that historically were capable of sustaining a high population density are in the colder regions, the ones where you need heating at least in winter.
Even now, with advances chemistry and fertilizers we'd not be able to sustain the worlds population if we all moved closer to the equator and gave up on regions that require heating at least in winter.
Europe is far more densely populated. The cities are generally much closer to each other. There often isn't the equivalent of American "suburbs", instead there are more (and smaller) cities. Most people living in cities get around by walking or use the public transit.