Hiroshima, Chernobyl, Fukushima and Stuttgart are markers on a nuclear line: respectively bomb, power plant explosion, power plant leakage, and last Sunday’s triumph of Germany’s anti-nuclear Green party in state elections. Each event is quite different. The first was devastating, the second terrifying, the third shocking. The last is a triumph of fear over reason.

Although the reactors at Fukushima are not yet under control, even pessimistic experts expect far less damage than from the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl. Yet, by the harsh standards of natural disasters, Chernobyl was not especially catastrophic. It probably caused no more than a few hundred additional deaths, according to the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation.

The voters of Baden-Württemberg who showed their approval for an anti-nuclear agenda may have been frightened by the headlines from Japan but Germans need not worry that their own reactors will be damaged by earthquakes or tsunamis. More generally, while the comparison of nuclear with other sources of energy is complex, this accident should hardly change the calculations. The kit at Fukushima is so old that its problems are almost irrelevant to future investments in today’s safer nuclear technology.