The common conception is that nuclear waste stays for a long time and thus 50K immediate deaths would be translated into 500K+ deaths later.
Also, 50K deaths all at once for any given energy source would also freak people out. I think that most people would unconsciously consider a coal mine disaster or a broken dam as "death from occupation" or "death from random accident" rather than "death from energy source". The unknown-ness of nuclear power tends to make people credit it directly with the deaths around it.
And yes, people have a psychological fear of the unknown. Evolutionarily, this is rather clearly justified.
If the education level in all industrial countries was raised to the point that the average person felt they had a strong understanding of nuclear power, the fear of it quite possibly would subside. But the cost of this might be considerably greater than the cost of converting to an "alternative" energy source.
>If the education level in all industrial countries was raised to the point that the average person felt they had a strong understanding of nuclear power
Considering the average person seems to be pushing the limits of their mental abilities differentiating between the debt and the deficit, for example, I for one am not optimistic it's even possible to have widespread understanding of nuclear power.
Well, the alternative to understanding a particular technology is blind faith in a particular technology.
The world's dictators show us only some of the problem with blind faith. The other problem with blind faith is that it tends to turn to blind hatred when disappointed, especially when a demagogue is close at hand to harness that blind faith in a different direction.
Choose whichever side of the political spectrum you consider ridiculously uninformed. Them in power is the alternative to a populace that encompass how the heck our society operates.
Also, 50K deaths all at once for any given energy source would also freak people out. I think that most people would unconsciously consider a coal mine disaster or a broken dam as "death from occupation" or "death from random accident" rather than "death from energy source". The unknown-ness of nuclear power tends to make people credit it directly with the deaths around it.
And yes, people have a psychological fear of the unknown. Evolutionarily, this is rather clearly justified.
If the education level in all industrial countries was raised to the point that the average person felt they had a strong understanding of nuclear power, the fear of it quite possibly would subside. But the cost of this might be considerably greater than the cost of converting to an "alternative" energy source.