> is there a solar disaster on that scale that I'm not aware of?

And that's exactly the problem! Solar (and coal, etc) kill people slowly, here and there. No big disasters. Nuclear is always a big very public disaster.

Yet the other energies kill in total way more people, but the perception is less. As evidenced by what you wrote.

That makes people think incorrectly about the pros and cons. You have to force yourself to use the numbers, not the perception, if you want to logically make a decision.

> I'm actually struggling with your assertion that nuclear power has killed more people than solar.

You have to calculate deaths per Watt. Solar just hasn't made much energy, yet had a disproportionate amount of deaths (relative to nuclear), roof falls mostly. Nuclear has generated something like half the power on this planet, so proportionally is not as much.

> (counting the problems of fossil fuel pollution and the environmental problems / lives lost due to the extraction process).

Actually, nuclear is better even without counting the environmental problems!! (But yes counting extraction.) If you count pollution, even ignoring global warming, youch, it's not even close.

> Even a hydro disaster won't necessarily make 1000 square miles of land uninhabitable

You'd be surprised at how much land is uninhabitable because of open face coal mining - it's way more than nuclear. And river acidification, and entire areas of land poisoned and basically useless because of 75 year old mines?

Don't forget Chernobyl still has forests and lots of animals. It's just useless for people. It's the same with coal mining - there are plants and animals, but the whole area is useless for people.

Even by this metric nuclear still wins over coal.