A nuclear plant that doesn't explode, that is. Pretty sure Tschernobyl released more radiation than a coal plant over its lifetime. Probably more than all coal plants in Germany in their lifetime combined.

I was going to reply that that has only happened literally twice ever, but decided to fact check that first. Apparently small steam and hydrogen explosions happened a whole lot at nuclear reactors in the 1950s and 60s.

And new reactor designs are meltdown proof, so what's the problem exactly?

Can you cite your claim? Meltdown-proof? So a huge earthquake and tsunami won't cause nuclear waste leaks in the slightest? Nothing will?

Meltdown is a specific type of catastrophe (overheat and fuel rods literally melting). So being proof says nothing about other kinds of leaks.

I'll give an example of molten salt reactors [1]; other designs have different but comparable safety properties. The nuclear fuel is suspended in a molten salt which is separate. If the reactor is breached, you'll have what's effectively a contained chemical spill that has a very limited spread. Current water reactors trigger a steam explosion that spews out radiation into the atmosphere, which is why it's so catastrophic.

If you get a runaway reaction, it has a fail-safe described in the article that drains the reactor into containment vessels underground.

[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/09/04/166330/meltdown-...

Gen III+ reactors are pretty fucking close to meltdown proof.

Any reactor in use today will have a negative void coefficient. Which means, if you don't put power into it, the reaction naturally stops. Then you've got control rods and neutron moderators that will fall back upon the core if there's no power. Then Gen3+ includes a core catcher in which, should it breach its reactor, it just falls in there and cools down.

All five large reactor disasters occurred with reactors that also had fail-safes that rendered them theoretically safe. In the case of Three-Mile-Island, unlucky technicians had to work very hard against the reactor's system to sustain the failure.

TMI is a success story. Despite everything that went wrong, the impact to the surrounding population was virtually nil.

I think the fear of black swans, that is, unknown risks. I think most people don’t understand that the experts can really rule out something like a meltdown in modern reactors

Pretty sure the nuclear still comes ahead after averaging those out with all the nuclear plants that have gotten quietly decommissioned with no explosions, though?

There aren't many nuclear plants that are fully decommissioned. Perhaps around 10 and that still includes management of the waste.

if you really weigh against all coal plants in germany, the numbers are not far off

and radioactive material is like a fraction of the problem with coal. they have much worse health impact in other areas. they're linked (directly or indirectly) to 10000s of thousands of deaths a year.

Let's say a metric ton of coal has around 1 kBq and around 10000 PBq were released at Chernobyl.

That would mean around 10 quadrillion tons of coal would need to get burned to emit the same amount of radiation. China is currently burning 4 trillion tons of coal per year, which is a 2500th part of it.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20005612/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Release_and...

Only caesium-137 is long lived, of which 85 PBq was released