If your house explodes due to natural gas, your property and that of all your neighbors and their neighbors and the surrounding community isn't contaminated for a period of time exceeding your natural lifespan. If you have a radiation accident instead, it very well may be. The two scenarios are quite different.

They are identical scenarios. The only difference is the scale.

In both scenarios I am "rolling the dice" on a catastrophic failure in exchange for energy - and if I am home when it happens it will shorten my lifespan significantly.

Saying the scenarios are identical doesn't make them so. And scale matters.

But... I'd say with truly modern nuclear power, safety is less of an issue. Perception of safety is still an issue. So your home value will go down. No biggie; you may be ok with that.

The issue that really bugs me though is that with nuclear, a large government or corporate entity has decided to roll the dice for you on your behalf. With something like solar, there is more possibility for local and individual control. So instead of bond issues, taxes, state-mandated insurance fees, contracts, and control by faceless entities with names like TEPCO who make decisions like "no let's not do the safety retrofit" you get to decide for yourself.

And, no gas explosions either! So, the best of both worlds.

I prefer local control. Nuclear is too centralized.

The scenarios are the same.

Gas explosion: house destroyed, possessions gone, death if I am home, move to a new home.

Nuclear incident: house is uninhabitable, possessions gone, possibility of shortened lifespan if I receive excessive radiation, move to a new home.

Actually you are right: they aren't the same because the nuclear incident has a better outcome.

>I prefer local control. Nuclear is too centralized.

I'm willing to bet that you don't actually believe this about any other type of government.

In the first case you can sell the land in some cases for more than 1/2 the value of the house, thus making them different.

Not to mention the number of homes destroyed in a gas explosion world wide is tiny by comparison.

You're comparing two different things.

If your house explodes, fix the source and rebuild the house. Maybe it's time for a major remodel anyway.

If there's a nuclear incident, what are you going to do?

The scenarios are the same.

Gas explosion: house destroyed, possessions gone, death if I am home, move to a new home.

Nuclear incident: house is uninhabitable, possessions gone, possibility of shortened lifespan if I receive excessive radiation, move to a new home

Gas explosion: House destroyed, you still own the land, you can rebuild on the land. Even if you move to a new home, you can sell the land for the going rate in the are (which will likely drop because more land is coming on the market, but perhaps not too much).

Nuclear incident: You own irradiated land. Good luck, maybe the government will buy it off you, or the power company if stipulated as some penalty.

One destroys some of your local property, the other destroys the value of all your local property.

Risk X exists has nothing to do with risk Y. Nuclear powerplants increase risks so the local population should be compensated.

Hard to assess that risk. No modern plant has had catastrophic failure like that. Essentially there's no data to extrapolate from.

TEPCO had a modern plan to fix the issue before it happened. They decided not to act. Nuclear power takes the decision out of your hands, and puts it in the hands of organizations like that. I prefer something like solar which keeps power in my own control, local, decentralized, not decided by some huge behemoth that is driven by money and actuarial charts.

Yet the topic is, will future nuclear plants be needed to slow global warming? Future plants (indeed all current plants) will include safety plans and devices. Such plants have not had catastrophic events.

Fukushima exclusion zone disagrees with you. Sure, if we limited reactors to 'safe' locations that reduces risks, but we still put them in stupid areas such as near fault lines.

"No modern plant"

"No true Scotsman." There are recent powerplants built with similar designs that would have had similar failure modes.

The core issue was the sea wall not the powerplant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onagawa_Nuclear_Power_Plant was closer to the quake but it's giant sea wall made a huge difference.

Foul! The Fukushima plants were among the oldest in service. They were indeed not modern in design by any definition.

The two direct deaths where from an insufficient sea wall not the reactor design. Saying future reactor designs fix the problem is a mistake. Because again it was not the reactor design that caused their deaths.

So again, saying some hypothetical perfect design exists and it would obviously have a large enough see wall, and that is what your defending is a true Scotsman argument.

PS: Remember, future designs also have future defects.

When people think of the Fukushima disaster the two direct and unfortunate deaths caused by the insufficient sea wall are not what come to mind. The meltdown of the reactor is the primary concern. If a meltdown had never occurred the Fukushima incident would have never been mentioned on this thread or in any other conversation about the safety issues with nuclear power. So I'm sorry but bringing up the inadequate sea wall is a complete straw man argument when talking about safety issues from nuclear power.

Now, back on topic, the nuclear reactor meltdown at Fukushima was caused by a faulty reactor design. Really it was a poorly designed safety system. The Tsunami that came after the initial earthquake took out the backup power generators at the plant. These backup generators were responsible for powering the cooling pumps that are supposed to prevent a meltdown. This is the main fault in the design and one that is not present in modern reactor designs. Modern reactors now have passive safety systems, i.e. if the power fails the safety measures will be triggered automatically and will not depend on outside power to complete their task. One example of this is using an elevated water tower to store the cooling water with a valve that is kept shut electronically. In the case of a power failure the valve would automatically open (since that is where it's in a stable equilibrium) and gravity would 'pump' the cooling water onto the reactor preventing a meltdown.

Without the damage from the tidal wave Fukushima would have been far less of an issue. With a proper wall there would not have been significant issues with the Tsunami, thus making that wall a critical safety feature that failed.

As to passive safety systems, many modern designs can't be left unattended for a month. Because they are not passively safe only being able to go longer without issues.

Anyway this is all abstract pick a design that would have been safe without a sea wall or direct intervention after the fact. While being both proven and cost effective.

PS: On second thought as you said modern design, the worst plant built in the last 10 years is still a 'modern design' and close to where many people live.

I will admit that had there been a better sea wall the Fukushima incident would have much less severe. But I still think it's beside the point.

As to your point about passive safety systems only working for a finite period of time before causing issues, would you mind providing some sources for this claim? As far as I know this is completely false. The very nature of 'passive' safety system is that the laws of physics provide a negative feedback loop that stop a chain reaction and dissipate heat away from the core. This isn't the case for every reactor design of the past few decades, but that's not my argument, I'm simply stating that there are reactor designs out there that are completely passively safe (in terms of preventing a meltdown). You will still be left with the radioactive remnants of the (non-active) core but this can be easily shielded by water for an indefinite period of time.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_nuclear_safety goes through the a list, but basically you have active vs passive designs based on a range of features. Generally, passive safety refers to the primary loop.

A nuclear battery can be 100% passively safe for decades but they don't produce a lot of power. A pure passive system that's producing 1GW of electric power is producing 2.5GW worth of heat. Which is really hard to dump into the environment passively without connections to external systems. In the event of a tidal wave your pipes to and from the sea are likely blocked which means there is some pool that is going to boil.

Even cooling tower designs often actively cool the tower through the use of water curtains. It's not needed but significantly reduces costs. Now, that that is building up the internal passive designs starts to reduce power. But thus only operates over a range. Further it is going to produce as close to 2.5 GW of heat as it can.

So, now there is no external pool or connection to the sea and here is where you see problems.

PS: Which all comes back to passive designs costing more and being less efficient. Sure, it 100% passive is possible physically just not economically viable.

Sure, but I live underneath an air traffic corridor. I want to be compensated for the chance that a plane crashes into my house.

I doubt the odds of that are anywhere close to the ~2/1,000 odds of a significant nuclear accident over 50 years of operation.

Granted, it's hard to get real numbers and future designs may be safer. But, if you include military reactors there have been more than 2 significant accidents per 1,000 reactors. So while some people say they are very safe, people also said that about the Titanic.