Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problems at Fukushima had to do with design and siting of the overall plant, which is, in fact, very much an element of engineering. Truth is, there are lots of ways for a nuke to fail, and the small comfort that Fukushima didn't fail in the same way Chernobyl did doesn't make Fukushima any less of a failure. The Japanese have also exhibited some spectacularly poor nuclear management in the past (a criticality in…
poor management -- it's a major risk factor This is true of any field in which, in the words of Feynman in his report on the Challenger disaster, "reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled". the man who made that happen argued strongly against nuclear power. As the Rickover quote you give shows, Rickover thought of "radiation" as having magical powers, like many members of the un…
There are some technologies which are inherently riskier than others. A solar meltdown or wind fuel spill isn't going to risk tens of thousands to hundreds of millions as a nuke plant incident could.
[Rickover's] arguments on such grounds are not cogent.
Y'know, blithely saying that of someone who spent 35 years in the nuclear industry, pretty much creating it, shows ... a certain hubris. I'm unpersuaded by your argument.
Your nuclear alternative universe omits the one glaring limitation of conventional nuclear: there's not enough fissible material to run nukes for more than a few decades, and much less than that if the fraction of energy produced from nuclear is increased. The alternatives are breeders (weapons, proliferation, and processing risks) or thorium MSR (MOX designs don't achieve the fuel utilization rates necessary to achieve a long-term sustainable energy source status). Thorium MSR suffers from the slight limitation that some 40 years after initial and very preliminary exploration, it's still at least 25 years from commercial deployment -- by the assessment of the usually optimistic Chinese: http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1uy239/energy_c...
I'll omit the other glaring omission: that oil provides fuel for transport, while nuclear doesn't. Synthesis of transportation fuels is a challenge of engineering, complexity, and scale.
Rickover actually addressed aspects of this in a 1956 speech:
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-12-02/energy-resource...
I'd recommend reading it in full (he articulates and builds his argument well), but:
For it is an unpleasant fact that according to our best estimates, total fossil fuel reserves recoverable at not over twice today's unit cost, are likely to run out at some time between the years 2000 and 2050, if present standards of living and population growth rates are taken into account. Oil and natural gas will disappear first, coal last. There will be coal left in the earth, of course. But it will be so difficult to mine that energy costs would rise to economically intolerable heights, so that it would then become necessary either to discover new energy sources or to lower standards of living drastically.
(Global Warming wasn't yet a thing in 1956).