From the Washington Post post: "What’s going to kill us in 2050? Air pollution — and lots of it": "Air pollution tends to get wildly underrated as a public health concern. Everyone knows malaria is deadly. Or that access to clean water is a problem. And yet, in the next few decades, air pollution will kill far more people than both of those things combined, according to a new report."

Here's a chart of the deal:


All burning fossil fuels-natural gas, oil, and coal- create carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, sulphur dioxide, and particulate emissions.  These things are also the precursors to the dangerous ground-level ozone.  Nuclear power only releases steam into the atmosphere.

Let's put these death numbers in perspective-
-the number of deaths from the Fukushima japan nuclear accident was zero (see Earthquakes and Tsunamis).
-The number of deaths from the worst worldwide nuclear accident, Chernobyl, INCLUDING thyroid cancer deaths by the year 2005 was 56 people- 47 emergency workers and 9 thyroid cancer deaths.*
Neither of these would register on the above chart which is in units of millions, even if they were 10 or 100 times larger.  They would barely register if they were 1,000 times larger.  To even compare, they would have to be over 10,000 times larger.  The comparative cost for fossil fuels is not worth it.

*UN report from the IAEA, Sept 2005 Chernobyl’s Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts.