It's only recently that renewables have become a realistic alternative in some (but not all) cases, but for decades we've had people dropping like flies due to coal, entirely because the public is too science illiterate to understand that nuclear isn't anywhere as big of a deal by comparison.
1. https://sites.google.com/site/yarravalleyclimateactiongroup/...
1. http://www.rmi.org/RFGraph-health_effects_from_US_power_plan...
The jury is still out on which will kill more in the end. Though so far nuclear is looking really, really good.
See https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d... for some statistics on how dangerous things are so far.
If this your contention, then you immediately want to stop all coal and oil plants pending regulatory overhaul. Coal plants release 100x more radioactive material than any other source in the world.
And that's not even to mention the operating dangers, from poor work environments to accidents. And that's not even mentioning the environmental disasters. Fossil fuel accidents have routinely devastated entire ecosystems, from Exxon Valdez to Deepwater Horizon.
Nuclear power has the 'airplane safety' problem, people are terrified of air travel despite repeatedly being proven to be the safest form of transportation. The same is true for nuclear power. It is by far and away the safest form of energy generation, with the common myths repeatedly debunked time after time.
You have a rather large flaw in your logic.
The statement that you are quoting is directly supported by the data in my link. Fatality rates in the US are generally an order of magnitude lower than in the rest of the world, because of US regulations. This is a statement of fact, and not an argument for any random regulations that you just thought up.
On your statement about radioactivity, coal plants distribute more radioactive material than nuclear, but nuclear produces more nasty waste per gigawatt than coal. So far nuclear has been astoundingly safe, but the eventual damage from nuclear depends on our ability to safely store that waste for longer than human history.
Science illiteracy has nothing to do with it. The industry has a history of non-trivial reasons for mistrust.
Regarding coal plant deaths, I'm not in favor of coal either. The sooner we can move away from fossil the better.
It's arguably the most harmful kind of science illiteracy because it has the biggest impact on public policy. Everything from people opposing mandatory seat belt laws, to being overly concerned about e.g. genetically modified food or cell phone tower radiation.
I'm sure you mean well, but really, people who hold exactly the opinion you hold are in the aggregate the reason for literally millions of deaths that didn't need to happen worldwide since WWII.
We had all the data to indicate that burning fossil fuels was causing massive diffuse harm, nuclear was realistically the only alternative in most cases, but people didn't go for it because they were afraid, even though all the science showed that there was little to worry about in comparison to what we were already doing.
Sure someone installed a reactor backwards, but how are minor incidents like these at all relevant compared to literally tens to hundreds of thousands of deaths per year because we keep using the alternative?
Regardless of the law, people are wearing seat belts at roughly the same rates. This is to say, at least in my corner of the world--seat belts save lives, but seat belt laws don't. People oppose these laws on philosophical grounds; the role of the state, acceptable levels of police discretion, etc.. Policy is messy, but at minimum must accommodate the values of those it represents.
[1] http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalit...
E.g. Germany's rush towards decommissioning after Fukushima has had a massively detrimental effect in Europe for this reason.
The death toll as a direct result of fearmongering against nuclear is by this point likely to be far larger than the total death toll of all nuclear incidents. If we hadn't had nuclear in first place, the cost in lives lost to other forms of plants would have been far greater than that again.
The government official estimated cost of shutting down all German nuclear plants is 55 billion Euros over the next decade. Although the (frankly more credible) 'unofficial' estimate puts the cost at 250 billion euros over the next decade.
Not to mention the fact it's resulted in their co2 emissions increasing in both 2015 and 2016 (https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-greenhou...). This also means increased deaths from air pollution. The German environment ministry now predicts they will probably not make their 2020 co2 reductions targets.
So other than the enormous cost, increased co2 emissions, and needless human deaths, good policy.
EDIT: And as for the whole "let's just replace everything with wind and solar", I'm not sure people fully appreciate what will be involved. In Germany's case, on a monthly basis, their wind plants manage an average capacity factor of ~20% (std. dev. 7.65 percentage points) and their solar plants manage an average capacity factor of ~10% (std. dev. of 6.41 percentage points). They have had months where solar only managed a measly 2% cap factor and wind 11%.
So let's say demand is 1TW/hr per month. This means they need to build about 11 times that in nameplate solar capacity, or around 5-6 times that in nameplate wind. So you also need to build 11/6 times the transmission infrastructure. And even then you will still have random blackouts due to the high variance in generation, so you also have to spend a bunch of money on grid-level storage.
https://gist.github.com/anonymous/f1a6d064890d67fbfc98d66dbd...
This says that German emissions from electricity generation were down, but that was offset by heating increases from a cold winter and emissions from increased good transportation:
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-reiterates-g20-...
