The thing is that I doubt one can blame the fear evoked by radiation and things-nuclear on the anti-nuclear movement - its the opposite really. The event of the atomic bomb, the invisible and long-term qualities of radiation damage and so-forth have pretty much seared the fear of radiation into the psychies of modern people.
The anti-nuclear movement is a result of this rather than a cause.
But the thing is, unless there's a magic wand to make the fear go away, the anti-nuke folks have a point. Something that evokes this kind of fear in people will have a certain danger.
Human beings aren't rational. In some circumstances, they are less rational than others. Sometimes just avoiding the situations where we are less rational is more cost-effective than imposing the "most rational" course of action (Especially since it is only "what would be the most rational course of action if it weren't for these unfortunate irrational behaviors").
Oil and coal and nitroglycerin have caused similar destruction, yet you don't see comments like yours about them, so I find it specious to suggest that nuclear acquired its stigma honestly. At any rate, we have no better long-term option for power than nuclear AFAIK.
The negative outcome for someone outside the nuclear industry has a name: cancer. The negative outcome for someone outside the coal industry (respiratory illness) is less well-defined, less likely to be attributed to coal, and less likely to cause someone to die unusually young. That last is important - old people and people with asthma die from air pollution. Otherwise healthy people can contract radiation-induced cancer.
The mechanism by which nuclear plants produce negative outcomes (radiation) is also poorly understood and imperceptible, whereas one can see smog and kinda tell when it's a code red day out.
It's not just that there's some destruction - it's that the destruction can't be understood, perceived, or planned for until it's too late.
People's fear of nuclear power is irrational, but it doesn't necessarily depend entirely on propaganda.
You can say exactly the same set of things about smog, the soot that blackens a grilled hamburger, the hamburger itself, and the breakdown products of the oil that fries the french fries that go with the burger.
They are not only carcinogens, but carcinogens that (from what I can tell) are almost by definition worse than 100msv radiological exposures, in that radiological exposure is one of the purer sources of carcinogenesis we can measure, and 100msv is the floor of our ability to measure it.
Compare that to eating four or more serving of red meat in a week (hardly a crazy amount in the US or Argentina); that corresponds to a lifetime cancer risk comparable to having been a former longtime active smoker. Smoking will reliably give you cancer. 100msv of radiation will give one out of some huge number of people like you cancer. Probably.
I'm having a hard time digging up the figures, but last time I looked, only about 5% of smokers die from lung cancer, and much smaller numbers from a few other smoking-related cancers. Another chunk get cancer but don't die from it. Unless I'm badly misremembering, though, the majority of smokers — more than 50% — never get cancer from smoking.
I don't think that a mechanism that fails more than half the time, or even, say, 1% of the time, should be considered reliable.
I concur that people should worry more about smoking, red meat, and browned oils than about 100mSv exposures to radioactivity. Outside the US, I would add automotive exhaust and indoor wood fires as major causes of cancer.
It puts a lot of stress on the heart, too, and I think a fair number of them die with smoking as a contributing cause to that.
Anyhow, if you do get cancer from smoking, it's pretty ugly. My grandfather had it, in spite of quitting immediately once it was generally known that smoking was a Bad Thing (TM). He had to use Prednisone and it weakened his bones until they started breaking all the time. He was very upset with Grandma for calling the paramedics once, too, because he was just ready to die :( It made for a really miserable way to spend his last ten+ years of life.
Of all peoples in the world, honestly I would cut the Japanese the most slack for being fearful of nuclear. We did drop two nuclear bombs on their cities, after all.
That's a very good observation. If the fear of nuclear power came about because of the harm it had done, the Japanese should have hated it like crazy. And yet AFAIK they're generally much less cowardly than we are.
"Oil and coal and nitroglycerin have caused similar destruction, yet you don't see comments like yours about them.."
Well, perhaps because my comment did not concern the very real dangers of these things but rather concerned the very real and irrational fear evoked by nuclear power.
What does "honestly" mean in these circumstances???
---> However nuclear power acquired it's stigma, the question is whether any proponents of it has a plan for removing that stigma.
"Honestly" means "without a strong effort to incite fear." People fear nuclear because they are told nuclear is scary, not because it has caused a relatively small amount of destruction.
He is (very reasonably) expressing frustration at your attempt to reify an irrational fear. If measurable increases in carcinogenesis merit public policy discussions, it is reasonable --- probably imperative, in fact --- that we begin our discussions with things that actually cause cancer. Before you get to talk about the cost/benefit of producing electricity without nuclear power, we have to ban red meat.
In my mind there is a significant gap between someone who get's cancer from choosing to eat red meat, and someone who get's cancer from a coal power plant 200 miles away. Each coal power plant in the US kills a little over 1 person per day yet because you can't track the death to a specific power plant nobody get's sued etc.
Alcoholics are often better off avoiding alcohol than trying to maintain a light buzz when partying. It's also easier to setup and use safe transpiration before people start drinking.
It takes less willpower to avoid buying soda/chocolate/candy/etc at the supermarket than it does to keep some in the refrigerator but drink it in moderation. It's easier to avoid driving recklessly in a normal car than a sports car. People are more rational when shopping for a car online than in showrooms.
The entire risk in alcoholism is that you won't be able to stop drinking once you start. It isn't a disease where a single glass of wine damages you. Avoiding the wine isn't an irrational act; it's the most sensible form of risk mitigation available.
The thing is that I doubt one can blame the fear evoked by radiation and things-nuclear on the anti-nuclear movement - its the opposite really. The event of the atomic bomb, the invisible and long-term qualities of radiation damage and so-forth have pretty much seared the fear of radiation into the psychies of modern people.
The anti-nuclear movement is a result of this rather than a cause.
But the thing is, unless there's a magic wand to make the fear go away, the anti-nuke folks have a point. Something that evokes this kind of fear in people will have a certain danger.
Human beings aren't rational. In some circumstances, they are less rational than others. Sometimes just avoiding the situations where we are less rational is more cost-effective than imposing the "most rational" course of action (Especially since it is only "what would be the most rational course of action if it weren't for these unfortunate irrational behaviors").