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Even so, more people die from fossil-fueled particulate pollution every single day than have in the entire history of nuclear power. There is no alternative with perfect safety, and an objective examination of the numbers reveals that nuclear remains the safest energy source.

I'm not going to worry about China's construction quality. Even in the event of accidents, the threat of radiation has been vastly overstated, and the flawed hypothesis used to terrify people of even the tiniest amounts of radiation was built on a scientific fraud. Growing coal combustion is the threat people should be concerned about.

China is also seriously pursuing a number of 4th gen reactors, in a true all-of-the-above approach to clean energy. We are in this mess because the "greens" preferred coal over nuclear, and delayed the transition by many decades.

Regulations are the foundation of hysteria surrounding nuclear, that enabled opponents to ratchet costs to overwhelming levels. The "no safe dose" based regulations are not supported by science or evidence, and the environmentally-conscious should read about the sordid tale of how they came to be. TL;DR: the Rockefeller Foundation is largely responsible.

Very powerful fossil interests founded the campaign of fear, and are still funding it through the large "green" groups, which have accepted hundreds of millions of dollars to fight nuclear on their behalf. Calling these organizations "environmental" groups is farce; they are anti-nuclear groups, and they successfully derailed our most effective low-carbon technology for over half a century. They are the very cause of the explosion in fossil energy use poisoning the world today, and now threatening the climate.

Radiation science is dominated by a paradigm based on an assumption without empirical foundation. Known as the linear no-threshold (LNT) hypothesis, it holds that all ionizing radiation is harmful no matter how low the dose or dose rate. Epidemiological studies that claim to confirm LNT either neglect experimental and/or observational discoveries at the cellular, tissue, and organismal levels, or mention them only to distort or dismiss them. The appearance of validity in these studies rests on circular reasoning, cherry picking, faulty experimental design, and/or misleading inferences from weak statistical evidence. In contrast, studies based on biological discoveries demonstrate the reality of hormesis: the stimulation of biological responses that defend the organism against damage from environmental agents. Normal metabolic processes are far more damaging than all but the most extreme exposures to radiation. However, evolution has provided all extant plants and animals with defenses that repair such damage or remove the damaged cells, conferring on the organism even greater ability to defend against subsequent damage. Editors of medical journals now admit that perhaps half of the scientific literature may be untrue. Radiation science falls into that category. Belief in LNT informs the practice of radiology, radiation regulatory policies, and popular culture through the media. The result is mass radiophobia and harmful outcomes, including forced relocations of populations near nuclear power plant accidents, reluctance to avail oneself of needed medical imaging studies, and aversion to nuclear energy—all unwarranted and all harmful to millions of people.

(abstract from Epidemiology Without Biology: False Paradigms, Unfounded Assumptions, and Specious Statistics in Radiation Science)

LNT encourages the hysteria surrounding nuclear, and transforms harmless levels of radiation exposure into real deaths. The tragedy at Fukushima was not the nuclear accident, but the misinformed response: a forced evacuation which claimed ~1600 lives, the monumental cost of an absurdly excessive cleanup, and the entire nation regressing to imported fossil energy. Oh, and the tsunami itself, which was all but ignored while the media focused on fearmongering and conflating the unrelated refinery explosions with the damaged reactors.

See X-LNT for a more accessible background on low dose radiation. Set aside your ideologies and inform yourself; it may save your life someday.

It's not an either or situation; even if we reduce regulation to the point that we have one fukushima-scale disaster every decade it would still be better than the amount of harm we're causing with fossil fuels. This is a case of selective risk aversion; you would rather have more cumulative harm caused on a daily basis than have one really big disaster every generation or so. It's stupid.

The real problem with nuclear accidents is the mass hysteria that follows and the extreme overreaction to harmless amounts of radiation. It takes a lot of radiation exposure to do harm.

Luckily we don't even need to lower regulation that much though; there are plenty of things which could be done to massively reduce all the regulatory and legal hurdles without compromising safety.

Present regulations are based on the dis-proven LNT hypothesis, and responsible for the tragedy that followed the Fukushima accident. The excessive forced evacuation that killed ~1600 people could have been avoided entirely if the regulations were based on sound science. There may be another accident eventually; how many times must we repeat this?

The data (and there is a lot) clearly shows that low level radiation is harmless or even beneficial. The LNT model in common use isn't conservative, it is actively harmful.

Radon is also harmless.

(Need I mention natural ground radiation, which actually can do chromosomal damage?)

Natural background radiation is harmless, even in places where it is unusually high. This is because life evolved under such stresses, and developed mechanisms to repair cellular damage. Moreover, almost all damage is chemical in nature, and that caused by radiation is vanishingly small. Interestingly, a wealth of data shows that low levels of radiation are actually beneficial in reducing cancer, as they stimulate the immune system. Please learn about the discredited "Linear No Threshold" model which still serves as the basis for regulation today, and is obstructing advances in medicine and nuclear energy.

In reality, those stoking the fear of radiation have had an agenda. Initially, the fear was used to discourage nuclear weapons, and later as a motivation for increasingly onerous regulations meant to cripple a competing energy source.

less cancer-causing radiation than conventional techniques

This is an irresponsible statement which costs lives by discouraging harmless diagnostic imaging. Even high dose radiation saves lives today, and low dose radiation therapies can potentially save many more.

Unfortunately, the simplistic and baseless "Linear No Threshold" model holds that all radiation causes cancer, and has prevented research and application of low dose therapies, even as mountains of counter-evidence have accumulated over the decades since the adoption of LNT.

One may also learn more about radiation from the Scientists for Accurate Radiation Information.

While increasing CO2 in the environment is a concern, addressing it with regulations is utterly futile; if the fix isn’t economical, the developing world will ignore it. Coal use there is growing rapidly, and continues to be the preferred source, because it provides low cost reliable energy. It may not be clean, but the benefits of access to energy far outweigh the costs, even for coal. To the people without, potential climate change will never be taken seriously.

Many people seem to have forgotten, but pre-industrial societies have always used “renewable” energy, and even the modern variants rely heavily on burning trees. The sun and wind may be “free”, but harvesting them requires stupendous amounts of land and resources, and is not remotely friendly to the environment. To limit impact, development should focus on sources with greater energy density, that can be located near demand, and that don't require coordination on a continental scale. Molten salt reactors are amenable to mass manufacture, and could deliver energy cheaper than from coal, providing an environmentally friendly solution that will be embraced on economics alone.

The EPA could encourage nuclear, by revising radiation regulations to be based on science and evidence, and applied uniformly. Present regulations are based on a lie, and except much larger (yet still harmless) sources of "natural" radiation, such as geothermal and fossil fuels. Regardless, the EPA should stick to regulating pollutants, and stop making exceptions.