If you want the answer, here's the data. Solar is slightly safer than Nuclear, Nuclear is slightly safer than Wind. The three are WAY safer than fossil fuels.
When a car crashes, there's usually a magnitude less people impacted then when a plane crashes. But you know what? Air travel is still much, much safer than car travel. Large but infrequent incidents can be much less dangerous than smaller but more common incidents in the aggregate.
They're just looking at death rates, not the reduced economic activity due to restrictions in usable land, and the transition costs for moving.
They also looked at, say, the mortality rate for the thyroid cancer and count the 2-8% death rate only
The other 92% suffered nothing I guess. . . /s
But i'll grant them that coal seems way way worse.
Though basing on 2007 study is a time before the IED kicked in and a lot of LCPD plants were running limited hours instead of scrubbers - modern coal has to be cleaner by the directive - unfortunately the article is paywalled so hard to tell what their sample was based on time-wise and tech-wise.
Hydro estimate is interesting because it shows the impact of the one off major catastrophic event.
Yeah it looks bombed-out as fuck to anything more complicated than plant-life. I'm not saying we shouldn't be pursuing nuclear energy, just that this argument feels very poorly constructed and intentionally misleading.
It having an inconclusive effect on wildlife, but wildlife clearly being able to survive in the region, doesn't really detract from what I originally thought.
From the article you linked:
"No matter what the consequences of lingering radiation might be, there were massive benefits to people leaving."
Yeah I think we both agree that nuclear is worth pursuing, it's not 100% safe but nothing is; even windmills catch fire or spin apart. It's far safer than fossil fuels.