The bar is the comparison with the other set of pertinent electricity-generating equipments: renewables.
The LNT debate isn't settled, effects of added background radiation is difficult to assess. Moreover the dust escaping from a nuclear plant may be inhaled, ingested... ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committed_dose ).
A "large portion" isn't all, and at Fukushima the nuclear accident-triggered evacuation officially made around 2200 victims.
> The bar is the comparison with the other set of pertinent electricity-generating equipments: renewables.
> A "large portion" isn't all
Setting the bar too high.
> The LNT debate isn't settled
Indeed the evidence for effects at smaller and longer term doses is at best weak. We also have a good idea of how DNA repair works. But LNT seems like the least unreasonable conservative way to treat radiation, which may be replaced by something in the up-coming ICRP modernisation.
> Moreover the dust escaping
What sort of dust is this?
> nuclear accident-triggered evacuation officially made around 2200 victims
The major underlying point is a comparison: renewables vs. nuclear. And on those accounts (effect of a major accident, waste...) renewables are clear winners.
>> The LNT debate isn't settled
> up-coming ICRP modernisation
Some escape during a nuclear major accident, and very few want it in the air they breath, the food they eat, the water they drink... Even most of those believing this will cause no harm may prefer clean air, food, water...
>> Fukushima nuclear accident
> In hindsight how many of these people needed to be evacuated?
Moreover even obedient Japaneses may, during a major nuclear accident, not be willing to obey to "please stay and wait!", especially from those who previously said "the nuclear plant is safe, there will be no problem.'.
In any case even magnificent armchairs' experts babbling 'they could and should stay and wait" years after the event cannot change History.
> How many people died from overheating due to a lack of electricity in the years after Fukushima?
This perspective also leads to preferring renewables as the will to shut down nuclear reactors during such accident, for the lack of an immediate full explanation, and also the imperative to do so after discovering some generic defect), all play for renewables.
The pressing (financial) necessity of building reactors in series (of units as identical as possible, in order to reduce unit costs) reduces their heterogeneity and thus the robustness of the fleet, to the point of making a "generic defect" one of the industry's fears, as the discovery of a defect can coerce int shutting down all reactors of the model concerned.
This is what happened in France at the end of 2021 with the shutdowns of N4 reactors due to as recently in France after discovering stress corrosion cracking ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Crisis... ) is specific to nuclear. If all the reactors in the fleet were N4, they would all have been shut down!
During and shortly after the major nuclear accident at Fukushima, all other nuclear reactors in Japan were shut down as a precaution and remained so for years. Most of them are still down in 2025, some claim that they are restarting but, 14 years after the accident, the hard facts are clear: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-nuclear... , reflecting the lack of enthusiasm of the population.
Let's check the trend. Share of produced electricity in Japan:
Wind, solar... sources do not pose such a threat because they cannot trigger a catastrophe, so discovering a problem does not mean shutting down all units of the type in question. The heterogeneity of renewable source types (solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, etc.), that of equipment manufacturers and models (wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, etc.), as well as the unit sizes of the latter, which are smaller than those of a nuclear reactor, and their geographical dispersion, increase the robustness of the renewable energy fleet: the probability that a large part of the fleet will break down, develop a fault, produce nothing, etc., is minimal.
No lack of electricity => nobody dies due to the lack of electricity.
> If all the reactors in the fleet were N4, they would all have been shut down!
If they were all N4 they would have been kept running and had a rolling program of repairs. So I do not agree with your desire to have a heterogeneous fleet of reactors.
> nobody dies due to the lack of electricity
we estimate that the energy-saving campaigns could have led to nearly 7,710
Indeed, however past accidents now forbid to claim that "this dust will never wander around, everything is under control".
> If they were all N4 they would have been kept running and had a rolling program of repairs.
Nope, as the defect was considered (by EDF itself, the company owning and operating it, chief of the nuclear industry in France, and AFAIK experts agreed) as too dangerous for the reactor to continue to operate.
> your desire to have a heterogeneous fleet of reactors
I don't desire any reactor. I'm only pointing out a major dilemma intrinsic to the "nuclear" approach.
> nobody dies due to the lack of electricity
I explained why a mix of renewables cannot lead to such ordeal, which was induced in Japan by the decision to produce electricity thanks to nuclear reactors and the decision to shut them off after the Fukushima accident.
Iberian blackout: nobody knows the cause for sure, experts are analyzing the event.
The LNT debate isn't settled, effects of added background radiation is difficult to assess. Moreover the dust escaping from a nuclear plant may be inhaled, ingested... ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committed_dose ).
A "large portion" isn't all, and at Fukushima the nuclear accident-triggered evacuation officially made around 2200 victims.