Because constructing nuclear power plants and mining uranium don't have toxic carbon byproducts?

What are the toxic byproducts you are talking about specifically?

> The toxic fission byproduct is tiny and goes underground in the middle of the desert and disrupts zero people's lives.

Haha, if it were that easy. Nuclear waste can be radioactive up to 1 million years. Can you give me an example of a successful long-term nuclear storage facility that exists today? All we're doing currently is storing nuclear waste in temporary storage and rolling over the need to deal with this problem to future generations.

> Can you give me an example of a successful long-term nuclear storage facility that exists today?

Sure. The earth is full of radioactive material (also known as rocks) that have been 'stored' successfully for millions of years.

Nuclear power may be kicking the can down the road, but burning coal is just leaving the can for our immediate offspring already in their 20s and 30s.

The article says least-cost, we're fresh out of perfect solutions.

What are you talking about? Of course coal is worse than nuclear power. The discussion is about renewables vs. nuclear.

The discussion should be about all the ways we need to act to meet our energy needs (including efficiency measures to reduce overall demand). Pitting nuclear against only renewables offers the “nothing different can be done; continue to burn coal, natural gas, and other fossil fuels” conclusion.

There is no fight between renewables and nuclear. They need each other. It's a fight against coal.

> Can you give me an example of a successful long-term nuclear storage facility that exists today?

There are natural deposits of radioactive material and there have been natural nuclear reactors on our planet.

Finland is building a long term storage facility[0] that is estimated to open in 2023–2025.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...

If it's active for a million years it has to be less dangerous per unit mass out of mathematical necessity. At some point you wind up with something that's about as dangerous as a banana, at which point you can dispose of it however you want.

> Nuclear waste can be radioactive up to 1 million years.

You do understand that "long half-life" = "less radioactive", by definition?

Sure, but Plutonium and Uranium have a very long radio toxicity time span still: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#/media/File:Spen...

That graph shows it as being less toxic than the original ore, which makes sense as it's purified uranium without any of the nasty fission products that are hanging around in the ore.

It gradually approaches the ore level over time, which again makes sense, as the fission products are going to build back up.

The point here is that the uranium is going to decay no matter what you do, whether in the controlled environment of a reactor with some attention paid to proper disposal, or in the completely uncontrolled environment of the original ore bed, where it's quite possibly going straight into the water table.

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.

Chernobyl and Fukushima disrupted more than a few people’s lives.

So did tons and tons of oil spills poisoning fishing grounds and coral attractions , gas leaks, rise in sea level causing many people to migrate, blasts of fuel containers, respiratory diseases from air pollution, crop destruction from acid rain, etc, etc.

I'd wager their impact will be less than that of climage change if we look a few hundred years into the future.

Regardless, both those disasters were more or less man-made. Chernobyl was caused by serious design flaws, and (as far as I know) people who refused to admit something was wrong until it was too late. Fukushima was built below the line indicated by stones setup to warn about tsunamis. I don't think there's any doubt such considerations need to be taken into account when building the next-generation nuclear reactors.

And still disrupted (dead) lives per energy generated nuclear is one of the safest options. There was hydroelectric fail with 160000 lives lost, and it is not even mentioned when discussing dangers of energy generation.

[0]. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure