> I've yet to see a nuclear safety argument that doesn't reduce to 'nuclear energy provokes emotional fear'

Yep. It's called radiophobia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiophobia

And it is far, far deadlier than nuclear energy itself.

>How about coal ash ponds or indefinite mine fires or infamous oil spills or dam failures or even the mining scars...

When did a dam failure in the Ukraine affect wildlife in Sweden for 30+ years? It's kind of a several-orders-of-magnitude larger area being affected for orders-of-magniture longer timespans.

Exxon valdez and even deepwater horizon is ancient history, Chernobyl is not, in fact it's current events. And will be, for the foreseeable future, as will Fukushima.

No Japanese alive today will stop paying for Fukushima for as long as they live. Are any other costs from the tsunami still ongoing?

>Happy to be proven wrong, but

Won't prove you wrong but maybe it will make you reconsider the link as a support of your argument:

Danger is what could happen, not what has actually happened.

A loaded gun is dangerous even if it hasn't been fired yet, nuclear plants are dangerous even if they haven't been bunker-buster-bombed yet. More so than any coal plant, tanker ship or hydro dam.

> it occasionally irradiates a swath of land and renders it uninhabitable

The big fear for me would be that this happens to a nuclear power plant that is located in a densely populated area (of which there are many). Chernobyl was bad, but imagine the impact if the exclusion zone contained a major city.

> it occasionally irradiates a swath

That has happened exactly once.