The same will be true of fusion. Set a target level of service and make electric generation a government service. The government is better at capital projects anyway and if energy were a taxpayer funded service it would transform society in many ways.
It doesn't work because nuclear is the only power where all the externalities are accounted for. The average coal plant kills more people with radiation released from burning coal every year than all nuclear accidents combined.
But because it's nicely diffuse no one cares.
Amazing.
When people said we'd be using renewables I somehow didn't think dinosaur farts would be the largest slice of the pie.
https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radioactive-wastes-coal-fired-po...
The link you provided indicates the level of radiation is negligible, so I'm not sure what your point is.
Comparative costs to other OECD countries for similar infrastructure - there really isn't one, as the US is way out of line in terms of cost and quality.
My family member communicated with counterparts in other countries, impressed with what they were doing. When asked what the research was that they based their projects on, they all said it was the US funded research (which the US doesn't take advantage of).
I’m sure the interstate highway system is the best the 1950s has to offer.
- Alaskan Way Viaduct
- Tappan Zee bridge replacement
- Billions in highway projects.
https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/mario-cuomo-bridge-s...
I mean, these people basically gain popularity when government is shown to be inefficient, but at the same time, they're the ones tasked with running the government.
Why don't you leave the thinking for the ones better at it.
The accident, that single accident on its own, probably doubled the cost of nuclear power to Japan. It is hard to tell because the costs have not all been paid and are mounting still.
This is the Achilles heal of nuclear power, that the boosters want us to ignore: The risk of catastrophic failure. One reactor can be looked after carefully (not economically - others have pointed out here the eye watering costs) and safely. But lots of reactors? No. We will keep have catastrophic failures until we stop.
The military have fielded many reactors for a considerable amount of time. We've got a bit over fifty years of fielding nuclear reactors in submarines. Where are all the inevitable disasters, if that is the case?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sunken_nuclear_submari...
Three from the USA navy. It is a lie that the nuclear reactors on submarines have been safe. Two have been lost at sea (one was sunk in harbour)
Nuclear reactors on ships generally, submarines in particular, are a terrible idea. As evidenced by the fact that the US Navy has sunk three, two catestrophically. If the US Navy cannot do it, who can?
We've had over 120 shipping disasters in that same timeframe, resulting in many thousands greater loss of life, and greater environmental disasters.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_maritime_disasters_i...
Should global shipping be abolished?
If you care at all for the future.
But the present trumps the future...
Compare that, to the Exxon Valdez, and the Deepwater Horizon.
1 of 9 (Soviet K-37) was scuttled with no loss of life due to reactor issues spanning years. 1 had an undetermined cause of sinking with theories having to do with the usual submarine issues (fire, torpedo accent, ballast/pressure issues), not its reactor. All others were lost for reasons having nothing to do with nuclear reactors.
All the other incidents listed had nothing to do with their nuclear reactors; they would have all sunk just the same had they been powered by diesel fuel.
I'm not sure what you mean by the US Navy sinking two "catastrophically": none of the deaths listed on the page you link have anything to do with the fact that nuclear power was used.
However, you probably should have linked this section of the overall article on nuclear submarines:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_submarine#Reactor_acci...
It's weird that the section starts off with "Some of the most serious nuclear and radiation accidents by death toll in the world have involved nuclear submarine mishaps", as the following list doesn't seem to support that, only cataloguing 28 deaths and 162 cases that probably included lifelong health problems. (These numbers are not great, but still not as bad as for land-based reactor incidents, and tiny compared to deaths and health problems caused by burning fossil fuels.) They do claim "substantial radioactivity released" in several of the incidents, but don't quantify the effects, or what the effects would have been if it had been a land-based reactor (so maybe very bad!).
I hesitate to mention this (as I don't want to sound dismissive), but it might be notable to consider that all of these incidents occurred on Soviet subs, and that there hasn't been an incident since 1989. The navies of the US, UK, France, China, India, and post-Soviet Russia have never (at least as far as we know) had a reactor incident with their nuclear-powered subs.
I tend to think the bottom of the ocean is a reasonably good place for the nuclear reactors in those subs.
You would probably agree with me—and most other people—that a nuclear power plant, the was caught throwing their waste into the ocean, would be an environmental disaster. The US navy doing the same thing is also an environmental disaster.
So the reactor is a high corrosion resistant stainless vessel in non-critical state at the bottom of many tens (hundreds?) of metres of ocean.
All told, that doesn't seem an entirely unreasonable place for it. Even if it was critical, in the active state before the sub sank, it'd probably just heat water for a decade or too before it eventually cools down.
Even if it suffered a meltdown, that's not ideal, but I'm not gonna lose any sleep over it.
We are dealing now with barrels of DDT dropped in deep water off the Californian coast
According to the wiki article, several issues from the inception of the plant through the failure were ignored, all of which either made the failure worse or would have arguably prevented it. My understanding is that the plant itself was already supposed to have been shut down, but duty was extended; I'm not sure if this was to move towards break-even on cost, or just to prevent a power generation gap, or make more money. Note that the plant in question is one that had been shut down previously because TEPCO had been caught falsifying inspection and repair records.
IMO (as a total non-expert) nuclear is probably safe, it's the people running it that screw it up for everyone. Maybe that's not a meaningful distinction? I'd sure like to have a discussion about nuclear that doesn't conflate failures of leadership with failures of technology, though.
The short version is, you need to have enough generations of reactor building to allow later projects to benefit from previous learnings. Because of various outside effects (this is a euphemism for the anti-nuke lobby) that type of iterative improvement and workforce skilling didn’t happen in other countries.