Pointing out that other stuff is "just as bad as nuclear" is not helping the argument for nuclear.
Yucca Mountain was bulldozed by the anti-nuclear faction. Hooray?
> Is Hanford a disaster or not?
Unquestionably.
> Pointing out that other stuff is "just as bad as nuclear" is not helping the argument for nuclear.
That's generally how decision-making works: you weigh the tradeoffs and make the best choice.
Well, that's how it's supposed to work, I suppose. If you refuse, well, nature just punishes you accordingly. In this case, we get an atmosphere full of CO2. Hooray?
> Unquestionably.
Hanford is a disaster... But just Hanford. Upstream and downstream are both fine. It's a few dozen square miles of contamination that affects people more than it does nature. (Look at the Chernobyl exclusion zone)
Compare to something like ocean acidification, caused by burning coal and oil, which is killing all the coral reefs, worldwide.
WIPP also had a leak issue with cost estimates of up to $1.4 billion to fix.
There are also dozens of sites orphaned and essentially the problem for the DOE to figure out. The cost of nuclear waste has been heavily socialized. The problem won't be going away anytime soon.
You weigh the tradeoffs and make the least bad choice. We've decided as a society that we cannot live without electricity. No method of generating that electricity is without negative implications. (yet?)
Coal particulates, acidic gasses, and CO2 are awful. Natural gas CO2 is awful. I hardly need to elaborate, yet this is the alternative we chose.
It's not just coal that has problems, though: hydroelectric power has an appalling history of accidents leading to enormous death and destruction, yet it maintains a sterling reputation in environmental groups, at least compared to nuclear. Why?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure (sort by fatalities, look for Banqiao Dam at 170000)
Wind and solar installations illustrate why it's important to count per unit of energy produced. They commit the "sin" of low density. With wind, you construct a gigantic edifice of concrete, steel, and fiberglass, likely in a remote location or even out at sea, and at the end of the day you can power a couple neighborhoods, some of the time. In a nuclear power plant, you construct a gigantic edifice of concrete and steel and you can power a couple of cities, all of the time. You have a handful of experts in a concrete bunker, compared to, say, residential solar with an army of contractors running around every roof in a city every few years. Slips and falls won't get a HBO miniseries, but they ruin lives just the same.
At scale, it all must be accounted for. It has been, but the results don't line up with public perception and as a consequence we collectively made a terrible mistake.
https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy