> if you look at the number of "close calls" that we had and if you look into the causes behind various incidents, a different picture emerges
Surely you're not comparing the rate of near misses in nuclear to the rate of actual deaths in coal? Every industry is full of sloppy practices, and that's why ships occasionally sink and bridges occasionally collapse. That's not unique to nuclear.
Part of the fear might be that a nuclear accident could harm "innocent" ordinary people who don't work there, but mining accidents feel more acceptable because we're not miners and it's their decision to do dangerous work, and we don't have to worry for them because it'll never affect us.
You are implicitly comparing nuclear to the status quo.
I'm curious, how much have you read about the fossil fuel industry? Near misses or not, the actual death rate per unit of energy produced is far higher for fossil fuels than nuclear [1].
Surely you're not comparing the rate of near misses in nuclear to the rate of actual deaths in coal? Every industry is full of sloppy practices, and that's why ships occasionally sink and bridges occasionally collapse. That's not unique to nuclear.
Part of the fear might be that a nuclear accident could harm "innocent" ordinary people who don't work there, but mining accidents feel more acceptable because we're not miners and it's their decision to do dangerous work, and we don't have to worry for them because it'll never affect us.