I think he’s speaking as someone whose family history is directly impacted by a nuclear disaster, the fear of which has greatly affected the politics of nuclear power.

Sure that doesn’t qualify as expert opinion, but that also only gets you so far. In a debate that gets emotional it can’t hurt to have someone stand up and say “yes, bad things can happen. It happened to me and my family, but I still support it because it makes sense overall”

Yes, this is anecdotal evidence. But having grew up there I obviously read up about it a lot and this is why I am speaking my opinion on this matter. Also, in my opinion, what I saw written about it in the US media is fear mongering or outright lies about death tolls, radiation levels in nearby areas, cancer rates, etc.

To give you an example. Did you know that CNPP was profitably working until 2000 while the disaster was in 1986?

Or another, fact - CNPP is an almost exact copy of an older nuclear plant which still profitably produces clean energy near St. Petersburg in Russia

Yes but the RBMK is still an irresponsible design: highly positive void coeficient, no containment, then the control rod misdesign which was fixed. VVER reactors (Russian PWRs) are much more safer by contrast. Of course it was profitable, it ran on natural Uranium and it was cheaper to build (no containnent).

You should watch the "A is for Atom" episode from Adam Curtis "Pandora's Box" series. It also talks about US designs and how they upscaled the naval PWRs to utility level which was not deemed safe by nuclear scientists of the time.

I am not advocating for building more CNPP - like plants. Those reactors are obsolete. There are much, much safer options now ( such as generation 3 reactors in US).

However, even those older designes are statistically much safer than coal - how many people died just in coal mines colapses?

>But having grew up there I obviously read up about it a lot

I disagree, what you read isn't obvious and still doesn't qualify you to speak on the matter unless it was legitimate and vetted information. Reading a bunch of infowars doesn't make me a legitimate political commentator.

How do you know what they read?

Exactly my point, I don't know, and it isn't "obvious" as he claims. For all I know its the equivalent of infowars, skepticism is my default position, like it or not.

It's a valid qualification to speak on the reasonableness of community fears.

As someone who grew up near a Lockheed factory and a father that worked for NASA, you are qualified to speak about the community impacts of building and operating flying machines.