I seriously do wish someone would write a book called "The case for a Chernobyl plant in your neighborhood!".
Such a case wouldn't concede the point about the safety paranoia surrounding nuclear power, but instead suggest that we literally power the entire word with pre-Chernobyl RBMK reactor designs. Or hell! Something even more dangerous if we can find it.
We can then assume that we'd have N meltdowns per year somewhere in the world, i.e. a "Chernobyl-level incident", and we'd still be far ahead in terms of safety compared to where we are today.
And that's not just comparing nuclear to coal, just the deaths and injuries from rooftop solar installations are in the ballpark of a Chernobyl incident every year.
Discussions about nuclear are paralyzed by safety concessions[1] beyond all reason. That's the problem with nuclear, not that it's comparatively unsafe or expensive when the costs and risks are fairly evaluated against the alternatives.
For the record, I am profoundly pro-nuclear, happy with living in France and if i was given a choice between living next to a nuclear reactor and a coal plant I would choose the former immediately (all other things equal).
I think there are basically two problems with nuclear safety:
- one is that a single incident is broadcasted everywhere, no matter if there are causalities or not. This is similar to planes: when one crashes and 200 people die it makes the news. We have in France about 10 people dying every day in car accidents.
- the second one is the nature of the accident. When you fall from a rooftop, well bad luck. The place you fell on is not unuseable for millenia. This may be (and only "may") be the case with nuclear incidents. Now, the newer plants do not explose like Chernobyl did, because physics is going to drive down the reaction. There can be leaks, even dangerous leaks, but they will be quite localized.
I think that the comment was ironic, to show a parallel with how coal waste is "utilized"