Shutting down fossil fuel electric plants

[Dr H]

Tell that to the people who lived in Fukushima Daiichi

Any power generation source could be damaged or taken out by a natural disaster.

What do you imagine the photos would look like if an earthquake took out the Grand Coulee or Hoover dams?  Or if a tornado took out Yingli Solar, releasing tons of sulfur hexafluoride and nitrogen trifluoride into the atmosphere (greenhouse gases tens of thousands of times more potent than CO2)?

Risk/benefit analyses are a good thing.

* Six people died as a direct result of the 2011 Fukushima disaster, with an estimated additional 573 deaths listed as "disaster related."

* The 1975 destruction of the Banqiao hydroelectric dam, by Typhoon Nina, killed at least 171,000 people, just from the initial dam failure.

* An average of 350,000 people die annually per trillion-kilowatthour of electrticity produced by fossil fuel plants; for nuclear the annual average per trillion-kWh is about 90.

You don't get something for nothing, but the costs for some things are lower than for others.