Two problems — even if it's much unsafer than we think, it's still very safe, and comparisons to other power technologies and the effects of climate change must be made.
Suppose nuclear power is ten or a hundred times more dangerous than we think it is. Then from the figures that have already been quoted show it is ten to a hundred times safer than coal power (in terms of excess deaths from production of energy.)
On the price of failure, the price of failure to deal with climate change in the low-likelihood scenarios is billions dead. In my opinion, any discussion of nuclear power and low likelihood risks requires being put against those numbers, since nuclear is one of the only options to avoid climate change. In contrast to the billions that will die in large-scale climate change, a modern reactor can have an uncontrolled meltdown 2 miles from my house for all I care. It'll be an expensive and annoying mess, but it's not going to kill billions.
My argument is not that nuclear energy is much less safe than other energy technologies. I am merely observing that (a) our understanding of the safety of nuclear power generation has been shown to be severely lacking and that (b) nuclear power generation has a very different distribution of adverse outcomes than do technologies without the potential for catastrophic failure. Together, those facts suggest that comparisons of the safety of nuclear power to that of other technologies are not very meaningful.
But since it seems most readers are actively disinterested in the details, I'll give up the argument.
Suppose nuclear power is ten or a hundred times more dangerous than we think it is. Then from the figures that have already been quoted show it is ten to a hundred times safer than coal power (in terms of excess deaths from production of energy.)
On the price of failure, the price of failure to deal with climate change in the low-likelihood scenarios is billions dead. In my opinion, any discussion of nuclear power and low likelihood risks requires being put against those numbers, since nuclear is one of the only options to avoid climate change. In contrast to the billions that will die in large-scale climate change, a modern reactor can have an uncontrolled meltdown 2 miles from my house for all I care. It'll be an expensive and annoying mess, but it's not going to kill billions.