Why is it that one disaster every other decade for nuclear is enough to terminate progress and innovation altogether? It's unreasonable. When rockets explode or planes crash, even when people die during launches or takeoff, we don't stop trying to improve on them. We don't give up on the tech. Something about nuclear strikes irrational fear in the general public.

Usually when a plane crashes there isn't a risk for a ecological disaster that could lasts centuries if not more.

Millennia. Epochs. Modern humans have been around for less time than some of this waste will still be hot.

If the half life is that long, it's not very dangerous as energy / time is very low.

Only if the decay product is not itself radioactive. I could alternate between alpha decay and something nastier. And if it’s radium then even alpha decay is a problem because it can be aspirated.

Like oil spills?

Because when there’s a disaster they’re huge in cost to the point that you can’t even insure against them

How much did 9/11 cost? Did we ban airplane travel as a result?

This is completely comparable. The proper reaction to disaster is to reform, not to retreat.

911 was about $30B. Fukushima was about $1T and counting.

We have alternatives to nuclear that don't make the state-backed insurance worthwhile, not so much to air travel - where state-backed last resort insurance is available.

I don't know where you're getting your estimates:

Reuters claimed in 2016 that Japan claimed a cost of $188B for Fukushima: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tepco-fukushima-costs-idU...

This NY Times article claims 9/11 total costs were $3.3 trillion, including $55B in physical damage, $123B in economic impact, $589B in Homeland security spending, $1.6T in war funding, $867B in veterans care and future costs associated:

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011...

At any rate, Fukushima was caused by a tsunami. It's clearly not the same risk factor to place nuclear reactors in say, the deserts of Australia, Nevada, or New Mexico versus the shoreline of Japan. We don't launch rockets from heavily populated downtown areas either for the same reason. As an engineer, you gotta think in trade-offs and reality.

Nuclear is a truly unlimited energy source. As a species, we have to master this technology in a safe way if we ever want to advance to the next level. We're never going to be a space-faring species on wind and solar alone. Solar and wind are fair-weather friends.

Who decides it is irrational? Also "Something about nuclear strikes....". Poor choice of words :)

I'd pick the occasional localized radioactive hazard over global destruction caused by anthropogenic climate change. That is if we even had such disasters again with current generation nuclear tech.

Go live in fukushima's radioactive zone for a couple of months and then be so glib about nuclear disasters.

You'd get about a 1 mSv dose, and be fine. I'm more worried about the 200,000 or so daily premature deaths due to fossil fuel pollution.

Go live in an airplane crash for a couple of months and then let's talk again about whether we should continue to operate them? Or is the exhaust of a coal plant -- oh wait, that's worldwide, you're already more likely to get all sorts of stuff from air pollution -- a better comparison? This line of reasoning makes no sense to me.

Have you seen how much radiation from Fukushima has sailed out to sea? It's bad.

I really think we need to ban building heavy industry next to bodies of water or high in critical watersheds. We have enough transit infrastructure now that we should be looking at the precautionary principle when zoning for things that can get a free ride on the wind or waterways and therefore spread over heavily populated or critical nature corridors just due to inability to stop a problem the moment it is detected. It's designed for making a company's biggest mistakes into everybody's problem instead of theirs.

> Have you seen how much radiation from Fukushima has sailed out to sea?

Actually, Wikipedia tells me they've resumed fishing the sea next to Fukushima as of three years ago

> In February 2018, Japan renewed the export of fish caught off Fukushima's nearshore zone. According to prefecture officials, no seafood had been found with radiation levels exceeding Japan safety standards since April 2015.

And looking at a graph, it looks even less bad:

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

Seawater contamination seems to be back to safe levels two months later.

I'm no expert on seawater contamination or anything, perhaps it's the case that the two big nuclear disasters known to mankind had a combined effect on sea life greater than the fossil fuel plants and dams for hydro. But then please do make that argument rather than a vague exclamation about "have you seen how much".

You're talking about Fukushima harbor. I'm talking about the rest of us:

https://whalesandmarinefauna.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/nuc...

https://earthsky.org/earth/tracking-fukushima-radiation-acro...

When your externalities are global I don't think people really care quite so much about what happens to the locals.

Cesium ends up substituting for potassium, which means you ingest it and then have to worry about alpha decay.

[edit: although it seems the two isotopes are beta decay, but it's still being digested]

Considering the amount of concrete the goes into making a nuclear reactor, nuclear power is not a solution to our climate crisis.

No, nuclear has much better Energy Return on Investment (EROI) than any other energy source.

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

Don't get me wrong, it has other problems but EROI ain't one of them.

Nuclear was in ill repute before Fukushima. The only reason Fukushima even happened was because we stopped building new nuclear plants to replace the old ones decades ago.

Nuclear was already considered a risk before Chernobyl by a portion of the population. Fukushima just reaffirmed that.

What Fukushima mainly highlighted is that humans are too stupid to self-regulate, which is a necessary requirement to running these nuclear reactors safely. There were many prior safety concerns that were ignored, and all that in a country experienced with nuclear power.

If they didn't manage to ensure that they were operating their plants safely, I don't know why I should trust my local regulatory bodies to.

That is common tone, isn't it? The Soviets were quite experienced with nuclear reactors as well, and yet Chernobyl violated their own rule and regulations during design and construction. And operations. And since this happened already it will happen again.

I changed my mind on nuclear power so, now I see it as an important stop gap to transform our electricity production to renewables. Existing nuclear power plants would allow us to phase out fossil fuel now. And they would buy us time to figure out storage for renewables. New nuclear plants won't help, so, their construction time is simply too long.