(Excerpt from Motherf*ckin’ Monday 4 Nov 2019 edition by Mark Manson)
Quite simply, nuclear power would save lives. For every nuclear power accident, hundreds of thousands of people die due to fossil fuel-related pollution. Millions are affected (pollution interferes with brain development, affects attention and focus, among many other things ). In fact, a new study just came out estimating that the closing of the Fukushima plant in Japan actually caused more deaths than the meltdown of the reactor itself in 2011.
Yet people are widely opposed to nuclear power because their perception is that the risks are catastrophic, often due to outliers like, well, Chernobyl.
A lot of things in life are like this. Guess what the safest mode of transportation is, by far? That’s right, air travel. Yet, because the idea of a plane crash is so terrifying, people insist on driving and over-regulating air travel. Similarly, do you know what the biggest dangers of guns are? Suicide. Suicides account for the vast majority of gun-related deaths. Yet most of our policies revolve around mass shootings or terrorism—rare, yet horrifying occurrences.