(Sorry for replying to your points out of order.)<p>&gt; is there a solar disaster on that scale that I&#x27;m not aware of?<p>And that&#x27;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.<p>Yet the other energies kill in total way more people, but the perception is less. As evidenced by what you wrote.<p>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.<p>&gt; I&#x27;m actually struggling with your assertion that nuclear power has killed more people than solar.<p>You have to calculate deaths per Watt. Solar just hasn&#x27;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.<p>&gt; (counting the problems of fossil fuel pollution and the environmental problems &#x2F; lives lost due to the extraction process).<p>Actually, nuclear is better even without counting the environmental problems!! (But yes counting extraction.) If you count pollution, even ignoring global warming, youch, it&#x27;s not even close.<p>&gt; Even a hydro disaster won&#x27;t necessarily make 1000 square miles of land uninhabitable<p>You&#x27;d be surprised at how much land is uninhabitable because of open face coal mining - it&#x27;s way more than nuclear. And river acidification, and entire areas of land poisoned and basically useless because of 75 year old mines?<p>Don&#x27;t forget Chernobyl still has forests and lots of animals. It&#x27;s just useless for people. It&#x27;s the same with coal mining - there are plants and animals, but the whole area is useless for people.<p>Even by this metric nuclear still wins over coal.