Studies show nuclear power is the electricity-generation method least damaging to health

The disaster at a nuclear power plant in Japan has cast doubt on prospects for increasing nuclear energy's share of the U.S. power portfolio, encouraging coal interests, but "Making electricity from nuclear power turns out to be far less damaging to human health than making it from coal, oil or even clean-burning natural gas, according to numerous analyses," and those calculations don't even take global warming and climate change into account, David Brown reports for The Washington Post.

"Compared with nuclear power, coal is responsible for five times as many worker deaths from accidents, 470 times as many deaths due to air pollution among members of the public, and more than 1,000 times as many cases of serious illness, according to a study of the health effects of electricity generation in Europe," Brown writes.