Quoting such is grasping at straws. The mining on Navajo Nation – are the higher cancer rates included in that calculation? How about the Depleted Uranium resulting from processing and that DU “re-application” in Iraq/Afghanistan/Kosovo/other places – is that part of the calculation?

When wind fails – a tower falls over or a blade comes off. When solar PV fails – someone gets cut with glass. When a Dam fails – buildings and lives are washed away.

But the area around the failure is able to re-occupied. Any dead can be buried.

When fission fails – the land and infrastructure is no longer able to be used. The people exposed will end up with shorter lifespans, some with suffering.

The “promise” of splitting atoms for electrical power have not been met – fission is a failure. Time for man to move on and quit quoting bull about “deaths per KWH”.

Re the “There’s no place marked unusable”: White Sands, Semipalatinsk (Kazahkstan test site), some of the Polynesian atolls, regions of Hanford National Labs and various other US and (then) USSR national labs all have hot zones.

Re: the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs vs Spent Fuel Rods. My folks worked for Harold Urey (nobel laureate) in Manhatten, at the Columbia University Chemistry building in 1942. Their hand isolated U235 and the subsequent product of their work, the Hiroshima bomb, was a relatively low yield Atomic bomb (not an H bomb). It’s initial destruction was the plasma generated shock wave, something hasn’t happened and is very unlikely to happen at Fukushima. But it ABSOLUTELY WAS A RADIOLOGICAL KILLER. In addition to the remaining U235, the transmuted decay products included the biologically active radio-isotopes, like the isotopes of Iodine. The Plutonium bomb used at Nagasaki has similar modes of immediate and prolonged destruction, with the added morbidity of Plutonium’s metal toxicity and carcinomics. Thermonuclear weapons have higher energies and make a broader species of decay products, but both the A and H bombs share many commonalities.

When I do the math on the mass of material in just one Spent fuel Rod pool, it’s compelling. It’s reported that the 6 month old rods that have gone dry (according to the USA’s NRC staff on site) weigh 200 tonnes. When they went into the reactor, they were 20% U235, and various bits of lighter materials, like zirconium. They weigh a bit less after being in the reactor, and much of the U235 has transmuted to other highly radioactive elements, including Plutonium, Strontium, Cesium, and Iodine. I recall that rods are generally pulled when they draw down to about 2% U235. So, starting with 200 metric tons of mass, and lowballing all the estimates as follows, it’s a very large body of highly radioactive material. Starting with 200 tonnes, lets say half the mass is Uranium, at 20% U235, I.E.: 100 tonnes . That becomes 2% U235 after running the reactor. 2% of 100 tonnes is 2 tonnes of 100% U235. The average A or H bomb has on the order of 20 Kg of HEU, (90% U235) fissile material.

2 tonnes x 1000 Kg/tonne of 100% U235, divided by 20 Kg per bomb (ignoring the 90% HEU vs 100% U235 from above), gets you the fissile equivalent of 100 bombs just in one pool of spent fuel rods, and this is a low estimate, I think. This measure ignores the more radiologically dangerous fractions. U235 is relatively (!) benign compared to some of the fast decaying isotopes in the spent fuel.

One hopes that no significant mass escapes from these open containers.

The clear fact here is that if the Spent Fuel Rods are dispersed over land, air or sea in any significant quantity, they could carry much larger masses of highly radioactive isotopes than any single nuclear detonation.