The economics of the present fission plants has been their downfall, not nuclear "whiners". I have tried to make this point by referencing an article in Forbes explaining just that; Forbes is one of the most pro-industry right wing mags there is. I suppose that subtlety was lost to folks here. In our world, the old adage of "follow the money" works pretty reliably. Of course humans are irrational and emotional but that has not a lot to do with what industry or governments do except when they can exploit it for their own mean$.
As for the Chernobyl butchers bill, the figure of 29 people is an early figure from the Russian government of immediate fatalities. The range of people killed over time looks more like 4000 in the near term, and much, much higher for people made seriously ill. Increasing radiation is much like other toxic exposures in that specific causality is impossible to prove. And of course, it is a very good point that the true butcher's/toxic exposure bill of energy production system should be considered, and that relative risks and costs need to be evaluated objectively.
From Wikipedia:
"During mid-1986 the official Soviet death toll rose from 2 to 31, a figure that has often been repeated. Following the disaster itself, the USSR organized an effort to stabilize and shore up the reactor area, still awash in radiation, using the efforts of more than 600,000 “liquidators” recruited from all over the USSR. Some organizations claim that deaths as a result of the immediate aftermath and the cleanup operation may number at least 6,000,[8] but that exceeds the number of workers believed, by the National Committee for Radiation Protection of the Ukrainian Population, to have died from all causes (including, for example, old age and traffic accidents). The UNSCEAR report cites only evidence for thyroid cancers among children and teens (adults are quite resistant to iodine-131 poisoning) and some small amount of leukemia and eye cataracts among the most irradiated of the workers; no evidence for hard cancers has been found, despite waiting beyond the elapse of the usual ten year latency period.[1] For further information on the indirect health implications, see Chernobyl disaster's effects on human health.
The total number of deaths, including future deaths, is highly controversial, and estimates range from "up to" 4,000 (by a team of over 100 scientists[9][2]) to 93,000 or even 200,000 (by Greenpeace[10]). The controversy arises because most of the deaths cannot be measured: any cancer deaths that may be caused by the accident are negligible compared to background rates of cancer. Therefore, estimates must rely instead on controversial models such as LNT.[11]"
I'm all for continued research work on fusion, but I'd like to see advanced development (refinement) of safer and less waste producing fission such as molten salt thorium as well, since sustained fusion has been elusively "just around the corner" since around 1970. Since adopting enriched solid fuel fission, virtually no progress on anything else has happened.
We went down the wrong path with enriched solid fuel fission reactors, and we should not ignore the lesson that a system requiring a massive active cooling system to prevent a radioactive pollution disaster is a bad design choice when other proven, safer designs have existed since the early 70s.
Japan got lucky that the radioactive plume from the plant at Fukishima went out over the sea (and US Navy sailors on disaster relief ships) instead of populated areas. That radiation event was so serious that those ships were subsequently taken out of service for a serious decontamination effort. That lesson got Japan's attention, and others, as it should. Calling a near miss a triumph of nuclear safety seems illogical to me. Despite considerable effort to regulate this industry, the plant at Fukishima (by the sea) had it's backup generators located in a low level room that immediately flooded from tsunami. This after the public is told that this plant is a safe modern design, well operated, etc. This was NOT a Homer Simpson OR George Burns type event, where operator error or ignoring safety for profit was done; it was a failure by incredibly bad design that was missed by the plant design engineers, the operator TEPCO, and by the regulatory agencies.
That error of design was compounded by the inherent design flaw of the present solid fueled fission reactors; a massive active cooling system MUST operate for an extended period during "shut down"; there is no f'ing OFF switch.