We have two INES 7 incidents 25 years apart. Nuclear is 11% of world electricity generation and is concentrated mostly in technologically developed countries. Spreading that into developing world and to 100% of power generation, we'd have a chernobyl at least every 2.5 years. And given the wars and civil unrest, probably more.
We'd likely release less radioactive materials into the air too - a lot of current coal plants pump huge quantities of uranium dust into the atmosphere.
(Edit for clarity: I'm not accusing you personally. I'm simply skeptical about where our received wisdom about the dangers of nuclear comes from.)
But talking about FUD, the article compares immediate deaths of nuclear accidents versus long term effects of coal pollution.
The directly attributable number of deaths from nuclear plant catastrophes is <100 worldwide over the history of nuclear power plants.
The vast majority of projected reduced number of life-years from Chernobyl (a number that's keeps regularly being adjusted down) is down to increased risks of cancer that have turned out to be overblown, but will certainly end up having contributed the majority of deaths.
I see an analogy to car and plane safety when comparing coal and nuclear safety. Car accidents are more frequent and damage can vary, while plane accidents are seldom but often severe. It is difficult to foresee the future, but we have the past that give us a good indicator of what will save most lives.
It's not a situation where shutting down nuclear just magically prevents deaths, because the demand for power is still there. It is a matter of shifting the risks elsewhere. And the numbers are clear that nuclear is far safer than most of the alternatives (most - it's not clear for example if that'd be the case for larger solar installations; it's rooftop installations that seems to be the biggest problem with solar).
This doesn't mean we should uncritically build a ton of nuclear plants, but e.g. delaying the decommissioning of coal plants to take nuclear plants offline, the way Germany did, is tantamount to mass murder given what we know of the relative risks.
Nuclear power continues to demonstrate a very low risk to human life per TWh of electricity generated, including Chernobyl and Fukushima. That said, it's probably best for nuclear advocates to acknowledge that sufficiently incompetent/malicious humans and/or exceptional natural disasters can lead to large unplanned releases of fission products from any reactor. And then to re-emphasize that the actual risks to human health are still lower for nuclear power than for any fossil-based power system.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-...