TLDR: regulation
The best evidence suggests there will be no cancers related to Fukushima due to both the low levels of exposure and the long time horizons of the relevant cancers. The population effected will in all likelihood die of other causes before the cancer would occur.
Chernobyl is obviously harder to parse because of confounding lifestyle issues and poverty in the region, and now the war. But I’m not sure a badly designed and run soviet RBMK should be the basis for western nuclear policy anyway.
I also always wonder whether mining deaths are correctly accounted. Even just add the number from a single east German mining company alone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wismut_(company) should change the picture somewhat.
This isn't the case at all. The same epidemiological modeling definitely shows that no one exposed to radiation from Fukushima will live long enough to develop cancers associated with exposure.
It's just short term thinking.
When managed well (i.e. Adm. Rickover's US Navy) nuclear power produces zero health-related incidents over some 14,000 reactor-years. When managed super-badly (i.e. Soviet Navy) you get multiple deadly incidents per facility per decade.
By orders of magnitude.
The worst hydroelectic catastrophe killed over 200,000.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure
Coal has killed magnitudes above that.
Multiple 100+ fatality dam accidents happened in the US and other Western countries about the same time, lower fatalities owing to lower population density rather than some different level of diligence.
Dams are more dangerous than reactors in general, but really we should be looking at the risk of specific projects given all those factors.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/french-utility-giant...
I was struggling to find English language reporting on that topic, I'll keep it for further use. Thanks!
Nominally, but I suspect that may have been translated. "Planification"?
> This can be traced to a constantly shifting regulatory environment, which has continuously changed plant design requirements, and added more and more safety features, which often were required to be implemented on plants under construction.
> By stabilizing regulations, making them clear, and making changes to them predictable, we can prevent cost overruns associated with expensive and time-consuming on-site rework.
And one example of intrinsic issues:
> Meeting these requirements for a site-produced material is difficult. Nuclear concrete typically has multiple closely-spaced reinforcing bars that can be difficult to arrange properly (the Royal Academy of Engineer’s 30-page Guide to Nuclear Concrete mentions “congestion” 13 times). Concrete placement issues have plagued every recent nuclear project and are frequently the source of delays and cost overruns. Examples abound: a 6 month delay from incorrectly placed rebar on Vogtle 3 and 4 in Georgia, a 4 month delay on the VC Summer plants for similar reasons, and a 9-month delay from poor concrete composition at the Olkiluoto 3 in Finland.
> The difficulty of meeting requirements, combined with the lack of construction expertise due to long periods without constructing new plants, means that any new construction inevitably struggles as the builders learn how to meet the high level of stringency required. Delays at Vogtle Units 3 and 4 were partially due to a contractor unprepared for the difficulty of nuclear construction. Similar issues seem to be responsible for delays and cost overruns on Flamanville in France and Olkiluoto in Finland.
Some of the other QA/QC issues are likely due to over-regulation, but you're probably not going to find any person in a management position in overseeing these projects who would agree to reducing those regulations. Nobody wants to be the person making the call to "cut corners" which then creates an accident, and there's good money to be made in adhering to the regulations.
The author concludes that while stabilizing regulations would make construction cheaper, it still wouldn't be cheap. And to further reduce costs, we would need to find ways to apply economies of scale in the build process.