I'm not really sure what your point is here. And the reason to be pro-nuclear is the vast quantities of environmentally friendly energy. The argument isn't that Fukushima or Chernobyl won't happen again (although they probably won't) - the argument is that after including Fukushima and Chernobyl nuclear power is
still, according to the evidence, safer and more environmentally friendly than solar or wind. The damage solar and wind does in terms of habitat damage, waste and effort required is underplayed.
This compares very poorly with a surveillance state, where there is no particular theory that a surveillance state ever does anything good. The nuclear industry base-case positive is 2.5 Petawatts of power a year enabling hundreds of thousands to millions of people to live first world lives. The nuclear industry downside is evacuating Fukushima once every 20 years, no fatalities.
The best-case positive for a surveillance state is people lose any expectation of privacy but a few hundred criminals a year get caught who wouldn't otherwise. The downside is enabling groups like the Chinese to genocide Uighers and effectively suppress resistance, or supressing political resistance in Soviet Russia, or hunting down Jews in Nazi Germany, or all the examples that weren't history-defining catastrophes in various dictatorships. Who knows what sort of damage it will cause in the Five Eyes countries next time a moral hysteria sweeps through the public, but I'd rather not find out.
The issue here isn't the form of the argument, it is the magnitude of the positives and negatives.
This compares very poorly with a surveillance state, where there is no particular theory that a surveillance state ever does anything good. The nuclear industry base-case positive is 2.5 Petawatts of power a year enabling hundreds of thousands to millions of people to live first world lives. The nuclear industry downside is evacuating Fukushima once every 20 years, no fatalities.
The best-case positive for a surveillance state is people lose any expectation of privacy but a few hundred criminals a year get caught who wouldn't otherwise. The downside is enabling groups like the Chinese to genocide Uighers and effectively suppress resistance, or supressing political resistance in Soviet Russia, or hunting down Jews in Nazi Germany, or all the examples that weren't history-defining catastrophes in various dictatorships. Who knows what sort of damage it will cause in the Five Eyes countries next time a moral hysteria sweeps through the public, but I'd rather not find out.
The issue here isn't the form of the argument, it is the magnitude of the positives and negatives.