We put the nuclear "waste" in breeder reactors. Problem solved. What's left decays fairly quickly and needs a couple of warehouses every fifty years.

No form of energy generation causes zero deaths. Chernobyl was a reckless expirement that went wrong. Fukushima is in no way comparable to Chernobyl regarding the amount of radiation released. We could increase security by stopping to demonize nuclear power and make it possible to build modern plants instead of running decades old designs with known flaws.

"Chernobyl was just soviet mismanagement, the west is safe", "fukishima was an unexpected tsunami, everyone else is safe", "newer reactor designs are safe". The nuclear industry move the goal posts after every disaster.

Fukushima was not an unavoidable "act of God" as you seem to imply. Fukushima was a galloping series of well-documented fuckups and ignored warnings going back to its construction in 1967. There are no moving goalposts. And coal plants put more radiation into the atmosphere than nuclear, even accounting for the historical odds of catastrophic failure. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...

> Fukushima was a galloping series of well-documented fuckups and ignored warnings going back to its construction in 1967.

Exactly. Let me know when you fix humans, companies and governments, then I'll trust nuclear.

Have fun with global warming then. I think that humanity needs to come to terms with renewables and nuclear power (with fusion being the best case scenario) for the future of everyone on this planet.

Fortunately renewables are now becoming cheaper than either coal or nuclear. If we had our act together we could have reached the current point a decade ago.

No one I know is opposed to renewable energy, but advocates really do everybody a disservice when they try to argue that an intermittent power source is a replacement for base load power. As Bill Gates said in an interview "…They have this statement that the cost of solar photovoltaic is the same as hydrocarbon’s. And that’s one of those misleadingly meaningless statements. What they mean is that at noon in Arizona, the cost of that kilowatt-hour is the same as a hydrocarbon kilowatt-hour. But it doesn’t come at night, it doesn’t come after the sun hasn’t shone, so the fact that in that one moment you reach parity, so what? The reading public, when they see things like that, they underestimate how hard this thing is. So false solutions like divestment or “Oh, it’s easy to do” hurt our ability to fix the problems. Distinguishing a real solution from a false solution is actually very complicated."

If we had our act together, we could have worked out the problems with nuclear power fifty years ago. We don't, and I don't see why you think we suddenly will get it together for "renewables."

Because renewables are getting it together with a fraction of the government involvement and subsidies that nuclear takes. In my country they're succeeding despite the government trying to stack the playing field against them.

So what percentage of "renewables" does hydroelectricity account for? And why does Wikipedia's discussion of energy subsidies counter your claim, with hydroelectric alone receiving more than nuclear? By the way, renewables is in quotes as you could consider some forms of nuclear power renewable, yet you clearly don't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#United_States

Unfortunately renewables provide little in terms of base load alternatives that could replace coal and nuclear.

That's where storage can improve things. Also, wind is near enough to baseload if it's spread over a large geographical area. It works down to wind speeds of 5-10 Km/h, which is constant enough that humans don't even feel it at those speeds.

Wind power is nowhere near baseload, it's around 0.45 average capacity factor. Baseload means a capacity factor of >= 0.9. That and the fact thay you need 1400 windmills of 1 MW each (eg. Nordic N1000) to replace a single 700 MWe nuclear reactor (eg. CANDU6).

So you're okay with the working-as-intended continuous rolling catastrophe that is coal, but the rare and preventable fuckups of nuclear are too much?

This seems like the same risk-evaluation glitch that makes people drive long-distance instead of flying, because terrorism, even though driving is orders of magnitude more deadly even with terrorism factored in.

This is a false dichotomy, we have more options on the table than coal or nuclear.

Developing countries currently in the process of bringing a basic[1] modern standard of living to their people. They do not have the luxury of choosing any power source other than the absolute cheapest, which is currently and will continue to be coal for a long time. Many other options become available if you fix the local economy, reduce exploitation from foreign businesses, and grow local governments into a modern democracy that is interested in long-term problems. So

> [... l]et me know when you fix humans, companies and governments[.]

[1] e.g. washing machines that allow ~half of their population (usually women) to have the free time to get an education and contribute to the economy instead of spending all day hand-washing clothes/etc.

Not at 10 cents a kWh, and if we want the lights to turn on when we want.

The regulators also move the goal posts after evey disaster, even if it isn't not nuclear related. New reactor containments have to be designed to withstand airplane impact due to 9/11. Existing reactors also have to comply with this rule since 2008.

http://www.troutmansandersenergyreport.com/2009/02/nrc-requi...

Furthermore, neither of those accidents were anything like the worst case scenarios possible. They required heroics individual beyond what was imagined necessary in their designs to keep the disasters so small.

I think the issue is further complicated by the under siege mentality that many nuclear energy proponents feel. If they think that opponents don't appreciate the benefits and exaggerate the risks, then they will tend to publicly downplay risks, and possibly believe their own rhetoric rather than looking for vulnerabilities to the system and engineering in additional safety measures.

Finally, how many designs that we call relatively dangerous now, were called dangerous while being constructed and put on line?

Were they not the worst case scenarios?

My understanding is that Chernobyl and the Fukushima reactor were both built by cutting huge corners, and that these flaws ended up leading to the disasters.

On the other side of the spectrum, things like planes get built and work because we know that planes falling out of the sky is super bad! Would it not be possible to ,for lack of a better word, be more careful?

That would require money. Energy companies are in the business of making money. Nuclear plants cost HUGE money to build, they deliver terrible value for money henceforth, and after a couple of decades they have to be shut down (in theory), so what's a company gotta do to make money? Cut corners.

This is my own objection to nuclear energy. It's arguably very safe. It could be made clean, even the by-products.

But a mistake doesn't cost one generation, it costs many. The odds for an incident are supposed to be ridiculously low, yet I've seen two catastrophic meltdowns just in my lifetime. I don't feel any energy need is worth even risking the rightful inheritance of so many descendants, ...

> I've seen two catastrophic meltdowns just in my lifetime.

In that same time:

-- Chinese businesses improperly dumped into a of silicon tetrachloride (and other nasty pollutants) waste from photovoltaic production.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt-...

-- Multiple fly ash spills spread heavy metals (arsenic, chromium, mercury, etc) over large areas of land and into major rivers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly...

-- An incredible amount of CO2 was released, leading to accelerating risk of catastrophic climate problems.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14085030

That's just a handful of problems I can find links for in a few minutes. The impact even from nuclear isn't anywhere close to the same scale of damage that other types of power already did to the environment.

> But a mistake doesn't cost one generation, it costs many.

Even if this was a concern - it's not - we're still talking about a temporary problem, that gets much smaller each half-life. The metals from fly ash are a permanent problem.

Your sense of "temporary" is clearly much longer than mine.

No matter, I'm not sure why we're comparing Chernobyl against these and other environmental disasters when they should be lumped together--these are all sins of our species.

> Your sense of "temporary" is clearly much longer than mine.

The point is not how long "temporary" is. It's incredibly hypocritical to complain that nuclear power has some sort of serious "nuclear waste problem" that must have some type of 10,000 year solution while conveniently ignoring the actual problems in other power sources.

There should even be much nuclear waste in modern breeder reactor designs, but even with the older style reactors that currently exist, the waste still tiny thanks to uranium having millions of times higher energy density[1]. That waste gets less dangerous as it decays, so the "temporary" isn't a consistent danger - it's bad initially, but the long tail is significantly safer.

> why we're comparing

deaths / kWh [2]

Far too many people panic about the "dangers" of nuclear power, while conveniently ignoring the larger dangers from other power sources. Even including Chernobyl, nuclear power is still safer than any[3] other source of energy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Energy_densitie...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents#Fatalities

[3] Solar and wind are also very low, although dam failures and the dangers of working on rooftops to install solar cells make them slightly more dangerous than nuclear. We should obviously use these sources as well when possible. I'm sure we can also improve the safety of solar, such as installing during regular building construction instead of retrofitting existing roofs.

> The point is not how long "temporary" is. It's incredibly hypocritical to complain that nuclear power has some sort of serious "nuclear waste problem" that must have some type of 10,000 year solution while conveniently ignoring the actual problems in other power sources.

Yes, it would be hypocritical if that's what I was doing. Except, instead, I was simply submitting what I felt was an important concern with nuclear energy. Similarly, it's disingenuous to talk of breeder reactor designs and their "tiny" amounts of waste when these remain mostly experimental and undeployed. The original links you posted for some other environmental disasters are very real, otoh.

Does it really? Do you have any evidence of it costing more than one generation anything? Not even Chernobyl disaster did that.

If you were born and raised in Chernobyl city or Pripyat, your prospects for having a normal life in those places would be dashed almost beyond comprehension. Maybe these places are not especially significant to you or me, but is this not "evidence" enough?

(Addendum: And, yes, a good amount of money is still being spent to keep this disaster contained: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_New_Safe_Confinement)

For 170,000 dead who had the misfortune of living downstream of Banqiao Dam, their prospects got dashed as well. That's, what, 3.5x of Pripyat population?

Yet I don't see a scramble to shut down all hydro plants.

170k dead, and millions displaced. And, honestly, I think the outcry would be furious if such a dam disaster occurred today in the USA, rather than China in 1975.

Without sounding like I'm belittling the scale of that disaster, I still think of flood recovery as being relatively "short term" (a decade or two) compared to the aftermath of a nuclear meltdown (decades, possibly hundreds of years). That Chernobyl wasn't(/isn't) a bigger problem is partly due to reasonably effective intervention by an international team. The potential here is frightening enough that I don't think we should need high body counts to weigh the consequences.

> That Chernobyl wasn't(/isn't) a bigger problem is partly due to reasonably effective intervention by an international team.

Chernobyl wasn't a bigger problem because of the personal sacrifice of the thousands of liquidators that cleaned it up. I strongly recommend watching "Chernobyl 3828"[1], a short (~30min) documentary about that cleanup, by people that were involved in it.

> The potential here is frightening

Which is why the danger - even at Chernobyl - is usually severely overstated. I'm not saying the situation at Chernobyl wasn't a huge problem (see [1]). It just wasn't the insane danger that many believe it to be. For example, many of the liquidators involved in the cleanup are still alive, fighting Russian bureaucracy for the healthcare coverage they were promised in the Soviet era. Cancer is a long term consequence of working as a "bio robot", but modern medicine is making that increasingly survivable.

Fear tends to suppress rationality, so remember to stick to the facts, and remember that reputable sources can be hard to find for any topic.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV45AFCwcUc

> Chernobyl wasn't a bigger problem because of the personal sacrifice of the thousands of liquidators that cleaned it up.

While slightly clumsy wording on my side, I was trying to say exactly this while trying to encompass the able help of outside experts and agencies that all worked (and still work) to contain this disaster.

>Which is why the danger - even at Chernobyl - is usually severely overstated.

Perhaps by others, but not by me. I was simply saying that the disaster area is still and will likely long remain an unlivable place. I find that an unacceptable risk. You are welcome to disagree.

>Fear tends to suppress rationality, so remember to stick to the facts, and remember that reputable sources can be hard to find for any topic.

This goes both ways. Arguing from the standpoint of reactor designs we're not using and setting arbitrary thresholds for "huge" versus "insane" to decide what's really worthy of our concern and using "modern medicine" as a catchall for improved chances for survival as if it were a solved problem aren't good talking points. The variation in survivorship among the liquidators has as much to do with how much exposure they had working on site. Most of those with larger exposures aren't fighting for healthcare--they're already dead.

Besides, this all stemmed from my original reply about whether there was any evidence for the disaster costing more than one generation. I'll "stick to the facts" by saying it did, it does, and even the very battle against Russian beaucracy for healthcare coverage you mentioned shows that even the care of survivors remain an issue for later generations.