The Fukushima plants were completely destroyed by the meltdowns and subsequent Hydrogen explosions that were caused by the Tsunami.

There was never any chance of "restarting" them, so not sure why you brought that up.

> it occasionally irradiates a swath of land and renders it uninhabitable

The big fear for me would be that this happens to a nuclear power plant that is located in a densely populated area (of which there are many). Chernobyl was bad, but imagine the impact if the exclusion zone contained a major city.

> it occasionally irradiates a swath

That has happened exactly once.

It's always hard count indirect deaths.

We could for example argue that Japan, by stopping it's nuclear power plants for long time and replacing it's cheap nuclear electricity with expensive imported gas electricity caused more deaths than by direct radiological impact of Fukoshima accident.

"Be Cautious with the Precautionary Principle: Evidence from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident"

https://docs.iza.org/dp12687.pdf

"In an effort to meet the energy demands, nuclear power was replaced by imported fossil fuels, which led to increases in electricity prices. The price increases led to a reduction in electricity consumption but only during the coldest times of the year. Given its protective effects from extreme weather, the reduced electricity consumption led to an increase in mortality during very cold temperatures. We estimate that the increased mortality resulting from the higher energy prices outnumbered the mortality from the accident itself, suggesting that applying the precautionary principle caused more harm than good."

In term of money, you have look at the sums that Japan has been pouring into importing gas, which was needed to replace the missing nuclear power generation.

"With the Japanese government’s blessing, these companies are encouraging other countries to use more gas and LNG by investing US$93 billion from March 2013 to March 2024 in midstream and downstream oil and gas infrastructure globally."

https://energyexplained.substack.com/p/japan-1-how-fukushima...

> Coal has lead to basically zero direct death, and a lot of indirect deaths. That's a bad way to measure the damage done

By that definition housefires also lead to very few direct deaths if most people die due to smoke inhalation instead of burning alive.

Unlike with nuclear that, even if we entirely ignore CO2 emissions and climate change the remaining "indirect" damage due to pollution and long-term effects on the environment are largely know and quantifiable and are astronomically higher per MHw produced compared to nuclear power.

> Coal has lead to basically zero direct death,

There have been plenty of direct deaths caused by coal power. Coal dust can be quite explosive and has caused a lot of deaths over the years. And plenty of coal fired boilers, both stationary and mobile (locomotives) and failed causing plenty of deaths.

> > ~20,000 people died due to the Earthquake

> That's a non-sequitur.

I think this is to establish that the large number of deaths from the disaster weren't due to the nuclear plant, which people seem to assume.

> Coal has lead to basically zero direct death, and a lot of indirect deaths.

Huh? Are you not counting coal mining, which historically caused thousands of deaths per year and presumably still causes at least hundreds per year (not sure what info we have on that from China).

> Coal has lead to basically zero direct death

This is not true at all.

Direct Occupational Deaths (Mining & Accidents)

Even in a highly regulated environment like the United States, coal mining is not a zero-fatality industry. United States: According to the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), there were 8 coal mining deaths in 2025 and 10 in 2024. This is a massive improvement from 1907 (the deadliest year), which saw 3,242 deaths.

In countries with less stringent safety oversight, the numbers are much higher. For example, China's coal industry—though improving—has historically recorded hundreds to thousands of deaths annually.

In 2022 alone, hundreds of people died in global coal mine accidents.

Chronic Disease: "Black Lung" (pneumoconiosis) is still a leading cause of death for miners. In the U.S. alone, thousands of former miners die every decade from lung diseases directly caused by inhaling coal dust.

> "Basically zero" is a funny way to spell "a few dozen".

The actual death toll of the accident itself is zero.

There was one incident of cancer that was ruled a "workplace accident" by an insurance tribunal that went through the press without much vetting.

However, this was for his overall work at the plant, largely preceding the accident.

The WHO says there has been and will be no measurable health impact due to Fukushima.

What caused a lot of deaths was the evacuation that almost certainly should not have happened.

"The forced evacuation of 154,000 people ″was not justified by the relatively moderate radiation levels″, but was ordered because ″the government basically panicked″" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiophobia

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095758201...

> If nuclear is so safe, how come nobody is willing to insure it?

Nuclear is insured. The German nuclear insurance so far has paid out €15000,- since it was created in 1957.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Nuclear_Reactor_Insuran...

For comparison, just the German nuclear auto-insurance pays out north of €15 billion per year.

There is a reason both Japan and Ukraine maintain and are actually expanding their nuclear programs.

>>1. Lead to basically zero direct deaths

>"Basically zero" is a funny way to spell "a few dozen".

Wikipedia asserts one "suspected" death, which I think is within bounds to call "basically zero". It does list a couple dozen injuries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident

> Irrelevant.

How can that be irrelevant. The disaster was directly caused by a very specific external factor that was not properly accounted for when it was built i.e. it's not generalizable to all nuclear plants in different areas.

> If nuclear is so safe, how come nobody is willing to insure it?

Because it doesn't make sense from a risk management perspective, the risk is astronomically low and impossible to estimate, just like the potential damage which might be huge and again impossible to estimate. How do you even calculate the premiums or anything else for that matter?

> It also led to a $187 billion cleanup bill - which is expected to grow by a few more tens of billions over the next decades.

Apparently wildlife is thriving in the radiation zone.

Intensity of radiation fades over the years (exponential decay). The bad stuff is gone fairly quickly. Decades means pretty low levels.

Just leave the radiation zone as a nature preserve, like the Chernobyl zone.

> ~20,000 people died due to the Earthquake

> Irrelevant.

Well, that needs more nuance.

You have to understand that Japan is unusually well prepared for natural disasters. From earthquake resistant building codes, to alarm systems, education, to building, to earthquake refuges. I would venture to say that it is the most earhquake-prepared country in the world (although I have no proof of that point and I don't feel like looking for evidence on that it). Earthquakes that would have killed hundreds in other countries are footnotes in the news in Japan.

The earthquake alone was not enough to bring down Fukushima; the reactors shut down, as designed. The earthquake wasn't the direct cause of many deaths. It is difficult to estimate given the circumstances, but tens or maybe hundreds.

So in in that sense, yes, the earthquake is irrelevant.

However, after the earthquake, came the tsunami. That did shut down the Fukushima backup generators. No generators means no cooling, which means meltdown.

The tsunami also killed the most people. Now, why is this relevant?

Because the Japanese have had drills and tsunami education for decades. They have seawalls, strong buildings, and prepared infrastructure. The tsunami hit the least populated areas of the coast. In short, they were aware, trained and prepared, and they were not hit where most people live.

And still, ~15000+ died. That gives an idea of the magnitude of the event.

The impression I've gotten is that almost all of the massive bills associated with nuclear power are because of an irrational fear of the radiation. Factoring in all the nuclear disasters and the radiations released from them, nuclear causes something on the order of 10,000 times fewer deaths than coal per megawatt generated.

> If nuclear is so safe, how come nobody is willing to insure it?

Almost every plant is bespoke, leading each plant to have unknown failure modes and rates. Additionally, insurance works by pooling risk amongst a large group of individuals but the statistical uncertainties of failure rates (too few events) and low total rate of plants leads to an incredibly uncertain risk profile.

Yes.

Or not having your plant destroyed by the biggest Tsunami in recorded Japanese history, much larger than the size they planned for when they built the plant.

Or upgrading the seawall to the size mandated after scientists found out that Tsunamis of that size could actually happen, despite having no historical record of them. One of the reasons TEPCO was culpable.

A sister plant of the Fukushima plant actually survived a slightly higher crest and was even used as a shelter for Tsunami victims, because one engineer had insisted on the sea wall being higher.

German plants for example, despite facing no immediate Tsunami risks, have bunkered and distributed backup generators as well as mandatory hydrogen recombinators. Any German plant at the same location would have survived largely unscathed.

Everything is "simple" with hindsight in mind.

After SL-1 we realized that that we needed to allow a reactor to fully shut down even with the most important control rod stuck in a fully withdrawn position.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1#Accident_and_response

> How much money does it really cost?

The problem is as much time as it is money. We have reactors producing energy now, it will take a decade plus to replace them, and due to both climate policy and supply issues around the wars in Russia and the Middle East, we can't afford to do without the energy for that decade...

Nuclear is already at a much higher safety standard than 99.99%!

About costs: it is actually cheap. 95% of the average total cost of a MWh is in building the plant. Comparisons sometimes show the cost of a MWh from wind or solar, but is a fallacy because they assume an infrastructure on the side to ensure 24x7 power generation (i.e. they point out a marginal cost instead of average total cost).

Chernobyl happened, but it’s irrelevant to calculating risk for any other operational nuclear power reactor.

That RMBK was built by those crazy Russians who thought it was reasonable to not even bother with a containment vessel / building.

> severe contamination of ocean water

No it didn’t

Like I said at the time, you could melt all of the cores down at the Fukushima Daiitchi site and dissolve them all in to the oceans and it would be undetectable in sea water.

The oceans weigh around 10^21 kilograms, and the six reactor cores at Fukushima Daiichi would weigh, what, several hundred tons and contain, what, several tens of tonnes of radioactive products.

We’re talking beyond parts per trillion.

> Which was really just pure luck.

It's the opposite of luck. They were very unlucky. The objectively extremely unlucky outcome occurred. Yes it could have been worse, and I suppose it could have been struck by a meteor too.

> it resulted in severe contamination of ocean water

Citation please. I suggest reading the relevant Wikipedia article in full.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discharge_of_radioactive_water...