An appropriate characterization of the Angela Merkel posturing. From an intelligent article by David Aaronovitch for The Times.
(…) This is not an argument for feeling smug about nuclear safety. It’s an argument about relative risk. As David Spiegelhalter (professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at Cambridge) has pointed out, we are content to endure whole-body CT scans, which will cause a number of cancers every year. We think it’s worth it but, of course, it’s our decision: the risk of fallout from a nuclear plant isn’t.
So the rational question then is: how risky is nuclear power among the various options that we have for providing the country with energy, and do we need to take the risk? …
(…) So before people dash down the 1980s paranoid route, brandishing their Edge of Darkness DVDs and chaining themselves to the fence at Sellafield wearing a luminous death’s-head mask, it seems to me they have to show their alternative is less risky than developing a new generation of nuclear power stations. And they have to do it quickly.
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