> Said in other words, if you wait long enough, a catastrophe is inevitable.
But the catastrophe in nuclear is substantially less damaging than business as usual in coal. I've lived in a coal mining region, I'd have better health outcomes if I'd lived next to Fukushima when it was melting down. And I don't feel threatened by the risk of either.
The damage done by solar/wind is also flying under the radar, but they are being scaled up to industrial levels of production. Nothing done at industrial scales doesn't produce a lot of waste and environmental damage. It is likely that nuclear is still safer and more environmentally friendly than the renewables.
Nuclear is safer than a hydroelectric dam, for example.
These risks are so firmly within the tolerable zone it isn't funny. And the negative exampels are all talking about 50 year old technology which is obsolete. Even Japan is re-opening their nuclear plants, presumably bowing to the reality that their Fukushima response was overly paranoid.
And it is a tired argument I always make, but "handle our nuclear waste for the next 10k-100k year" - be serious. We have waste that lasts forever and we have plans to store it for 30 years. There is nothing there that matters and the people getting worked up about it are mistaking opportunity for cost. We have the potential to manage waste from an industrial nuclear process. That makes it unique, most other processes we dump dangerous waste, forget & hope. We produce much scarier waste than nuclear byproducts and the volumes involved are tiny.
I don‘t get why you‘d bring up any other means of power generation while my reply solely discussed nuclear, but I‘ll take the bait …
> substantially less damaging than business as usual in coal.
Never doubted that and never will. Though here we are talking two different scenarios (as you said): Accident vs. nominal operations. Strictly statistically speaking, nuclear „wins“ because of that, I‘ll gladly agree to that. That still does not mean nuclear is to be preferred, it‘s just the less worse option of the two in terms of one (of many) measure.
> Nothing done at industrial scales doesn't produce a lot of waste and environmental damage.
While I agree to that statement, there is more to be considered than just waste and environmental damage, e.g. for nuclear (and fossil power) esp. health risks.
> nuclear is still safer and more environmentally friendly than the renewables.
Source? Can you at least state how you would define „safer and more environmentally friendly“? That‘s a bold statement you make …
> Nuclear is safer than a hydroelectric dam
In what measure? Maybe if you look at Risk * probability (I‘d need a source, though) but unlikely if you look at Risk * probability * cost (except maybe the 3-gorges-dam but that‘s due to a number of unique factors).
> These risks are so firmly within the tolerable zone
Maybe for you but not the next person. Or insurer. Or government.
> negative exampels are all talking about 50 year old technology which is obsolete
Power generation from water is much older, even thousands of years (if you are willing to accept a slight redefinition). Saying the technology is obsolete doesn‘t fly if said technology is still heavily used every day and not being replaced (i.e. decommissioning of all old nuclear plants).
> Japan is re-opening their nuclear plants, presumably bowing to the reality that their Fukushima response was overly paranoid
It‘s a political decision by the Abe government. They were always very pro-nuclear.
> be serious. We have waste that lasts forever and we have plans to store it for 30 years.
Which is bad enough. (BTW: This is handled much better in the better part of Europe / Germany than the USA.) The unique problem with nuclear waste is that it requires special handling for 10k-100k years unless you want to die. While this may be true for other, highly toxic waste, this does not apply to the vast majority of waste.
> We have the potential to manage waste from an industrial nuclear process. That makes it unique, most other processes we dump dangerous waste, forget & hope.
Having the potential does not equal using it, rendering your argument void. (BTW: While I agree we should be doing this for all nuclear waste no matter the cost, reprocessing nuclear waste (like burnt fuel) consumes a significant amount of the energy that has been produced by the plant, rendering the process uneconomical.) Even then, it‘s not unique, for most other waste we know how to manage it but it‘s too often not done due to economic reasoning. (BTW: This is also an issue of externalized cost that we‘d have to solve. And again: This is handled much better in the better part of Europe / Germany than the USA.)
> the volumes involved are tiny
… but very deadly and toxic, rendering it a much bigger problem than most other waste. And we‘re not yet talking decommissioning a nuclear …
Presumably in the measure of "lives lost" if you look at the Banqiao Dam failure. In 2017, the Oroville Dam in California was also at imminent risk of collapse and prompted the evacuation of 180,000 people.
That puts hydro at one catastrophe with lives lost at the worst estimates of Chernobyl, and one mass-evacuation on the order of the evacuation of Fukushima
But the catastrophe in nuclear is substantially less damaging than business as usual in coal. I've lived in a coal mining region, I'd have better health outcomes if I'd lived next to Fukushima when it was melting down. And I don't feel threatened by the risk of either.
The damage done by solar/wind is also flying under the radar, but they are being scaled up to industrial levels of production. Nothing done at industrial scales doesn't produce a lot of waste and environmental damage. It is likely that nuclear is still safer and more environmentally friendly than the renewables.
Nuclear is safer than a hydroelectric dam, for example.
These risks are so firmly within the tolerable zone it isn't funny. And the negative exampels are all talking about 50 year old technology which is obsolete. Even Japan is re-opening their nuclear plants, presumably bowing to the reality that their Fukushima response was overly paranoid.
And it is a tired argument I always make, but "handle our nuclear waste for the next 10k-100k year" - be serious. We have waste that lasts forever and we have plans to store it for 30 years. There is nothing there that matters and the people getting worked up about it are mistaking opportunity for cost. We have the potential to manage waste from an industrial nuclear process. That makes it unique, most other processes we dump dangerous waste, forget & hope. We produce much scarier waste than nuclear byproducts and the volumes involved are tiny.