I agree on that I don't like having a completely random event like nuclear meltdown in my games. Random event like losing a 98% battle is a different thing - I can prepare for the possibility by having more units. But there's nothing I can do about meltdowns. So, I don't build nuclear plants.
I'm not completely sure about the unhappiness for nuclear plants either. There have been protests about everything you can think of, as people generally fear the new things they don't understand. What might be closer to truth would be that you need gold to run a nuclear plant. If you set it to run without funding, it has a meltdown risk. If you pay some small maintenance cost (some small gpt figure), then it doesn't have meltdown risk.
Coal plants should indeed be a cause for global warming (actually also for global cooling). For now, they cause unhealthiness, which isn't that far off the mark either.
Overall, the global warming issue in civ is a hard one. It's quite hard to figure out a method for global warming that would be reasonably balanced. Diplomatic effects should indeed be part of the whole, but that's pretty recent issue.. Global warming would affect the game only post-industrial age anyway, probably only in the modern age (during industrial age the pollution wasn't even on the same scale as during modern age), and considering that diplomatic effects are a very late development ('90s at earliest, maybe could say that not really even then) the late techs for understanding global warming are quite justified.
I'm not completely sure about the unhappiness for nuclear plants either. There have been protests about everything you can think of, as people generally fear the new things they don't understand. What might be closer to truth would be that you need gold to run a nuclear plant. If you set it to run without funding, it has a meltdown risk. If you pay some small maintenance cost (some small gpt figure), then it doesn't have meltdown risk.
Coal plants should indeed be a cause for global warming (actually also for global cooling). For now, they cause unhealthiness, which isn't that far off the mark either.
Overall, the global warming issue in civ is a hard one. It's quite hard to figure out a method for global warming that would be reasonably balanced. Diplomatic effects should indeed be part of the whole, but that's pretty recent issue.. Global warming would affect the game only post-industrial age anyway, probably only in the modern age (during industrial age the pollution wasn't even on the same scale as during modern age), and considering that diplomatic effects are a very late development ('90s at earliest, maybe could say that not really even then) the late techs for understanding global warming are quite justified.