It looks like proven track record of decarbonisation if there is one.
At the same time, concerns are way overblown about fission. You know, it is regulated to 1/10000 amount of radioactive increase that is known to ever cause harm.
This is causes the designs to be order of magnitude more expensive then they could be. For example, for BWR, fukushima, there is no graphite inside, and reaction is going on only when water is present. There is no reason to have super expensive air-tight building around it.
Moreover, in fukushima case, the fact that it was airtight actually caused it to explode, as hydrogen formed inside it. Should there be ventilation, there would not be chance for it to explode and disperse material further than otherwise.
Secondly, unneeded evacuation actually caused ~1k deaths when they were removing patiends from life support equipment, for example.
As for the waste - it is again purely political problem, you can totally reprocess it, as they do in France and they end up with a few slabs of glass for 30 years of powering Paris. Even if you dont reprocess it first, it takes ridiculously little space, and never harmed anyone.
Compare coal - 14000 tons of coal daily. Just imagine that, and compare this to the fact that it is possible to store _all_ nuclear waste right _on site_, ready for politicians to come to their senses. :)
To look at it this way, most dangerous nuclear plant is the one that does not get built, as it will be for significant part will be replaced with something burining dinosurs.
Entirely true. But unfortunately there are a lot of nuclear plants not getting built at the moment. Tragic as it is, developing working fusion is probably an easier way to change that than political persuasion.
even the most active proponents of solar/wind will continue to lag way behind in decarbonisation, as the bigger percentage of renuables on the grid the more difficult it is to manage.
at some point optics of the situation will catch up, and political persuasion will happen this way.. in my opinion it will happen much faster than cheap fusion
Maybe one of them will work out. Do you want to bet the planet on that?
> Plus, carbon capture for fossil fuel electrical generation is possible, just expensive, and not all fossil fuels are equally bad for the climate, so possibly carbon capture + cleaner fossils could be part of the future, too?
Again, maybe.
Yes, there are a bunch of other things that might work out. But fusion is the possibility that's closest to proven. Surely it's worth trying? If it turns out we figure out a storage mechanism that's good enough to make solar viable (say), great. But let's not abandon one of our most promising approaches until we're sure.