Nuclear fuel is made by physically mining the elements that go into it then processing them in an energy intensive process.

It does of course cost far less energy to extract than it produces. It’s extraordinarily energy dense. It only takes 19,000T give or take per year to produce 20% of US energy. The US alone consumes 731,000,000T of coal per year (40,000X).

With breeder reactors we can cut that down by several hundred times - it’s just that uranium is quite abundant and very energy dense so we haven't really bothered to.

Further there’s a few billion tons in the ocean we’re working on extracting.

If we’re willing to accept extracting rare earth metals from Mongolian hellscapes like Baitou and calling wind green, it’s pretty disingenuous not to extend the same treatment to nuclear. [1] There is no free lunch.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-...

Nitpick: the place is apparently the city of Baotou 包头市; pinyin: Bāotóu; Mongolian: Buɣutu qota, not Baitou; source: linked article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baotou

Fukushima

An unfortunate accident, and basically the worst case scenario for that reactor design. Not to mention there was an earthquake and a tsunami.

And the fact that the current death toll stands at 1 (likely to increase though) and Fukushima is perfectly habitable now (and has been for a while now). Almost 20000 people died due to the earthquake and tsunami. Only 1 due to the nuclear disaster.

Fukushima disaster should be a footnote in history. It’s not a valid representation of safety of nuclear power.

As a European, I’m far more concerned about the dependence on Russian natural gas (Germany completely abandoning nuclear; Nordstream 2) than I am about a reactor blowing up.