> "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.

>Nuclear is insured.

You should read the article you linked to. It actually explains that nuclear is defacto not insured, and that is the reason why they have only paid 15000 euros in total.

The TLDR is that basically no matter what happens, the cost is covered by the government of the country the plant is located in, and secondly other governments.

This is course also true even if nothing goes wrong with the plants, future tax payers pay for decommissioning, maintenance, storage etc.

None of this addresses the points made. It is talking around the subject by trying to shift the focus or narrow the perspective.

The cleanup bill is real.

The inability to get insurance is real.

The precautionary evacuation of entire cities is real.

The possibility of Fukushima scale accidents all depend on local conditions. And it may be as trivial as upgrades and component changes over the decades leading to safeties protecting the component rather than the larger system causing defense in depth to fail. Like happened in Forsmark in 2006.

Renewables and storage are the cheapest energy source in human history. There's no point other than basic research and certain niches like submarines to waste opportunity cost and money on new built nuclear power today.