Tell me again nuclear power is cheap.
Nuclear power is cheap.
The costs are not visible to the user of the fuel but put on the nation states and future generations.
If coal electricity users actually paid the real cost it would dwarf nuclear cost.
> Nuclear power is only cheap as the nation states serve as insurers
Even disregarding the risk/cost of accident cleanup, nuclear power isn't necessarily cheap or unsubsidized.
"Hurricane Katrina caused $81 billion in property damages, but it is estimated that the total economic impact in Louisiana and Mississippi may exceed $150 billion"
Tell me again dirty power is cheap.
But you are somewhat right. Katrina is a better comparison with Fukishima which, to my knowledge, was a combination of being a poor location and repeated environmental damage that wasn't properly repaired or maintained. The 2015 Tianjin explosion is a better comparison with Chernobyl as that was human error and poor maintenance, not "act of god" weather.
But I was specifically referring to the idea that Katrina was completely different as there was no human error involved in there.
Besides which, nobody said nuclear power was cheap (not lately), but it is safe. Even with Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear power causes vastly fewer deaths per unit of delivered power than other methods, especially coal (one of the most common sources of power in the world).
Traditional nuclear power plants are very expensive, but that's because they're huge.
Figuring out the actual time until Chernobyl is safe is pretty difficult as most resources are highly politicized (I wonder why...) and there are certain REALLY hot spots, but considering the high profile nature of it: even when it reaches safe and reasonable levels of radiation, people are going to be afraid of it.
But here is a pretty decent, if not overly scientific, resource to get an idea of things http://chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/radiation-lev...
For good chunks of it, it is safe enough for humans. Not great, but if there were a pressing concern, people could live there (keeping away from the remaining problems) comfortably (seriously, you would be amazed at background radiation levels in a lot of residential areas). But there is no pressing reason to, and there are definitely some spots you would want to stay the hell away from.
Fukishima, Three Mile Island, and Hiroshima/Nagasaki are cases where there IS a pressing reason for people to live there, so standards are much lower/more reasonable/whatever.
The surrounding area will be safe long before that but the epicentre will be radioactive for a long time and there is nothing we can really do about it.
- "Fukushima robot stranded after stalling inside reactor" [1]
- "the robot could remain ambulatory in the radiation field for only 50 minutes, and in fact the robot's lower portion was no longer responding to commands" [2]
Poor robots, always being sent in to die alone.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/13/fukushim...
[2] http://phys.org/news/2005-12-mighty-mouse-robot-frees-stuck....
Today, we don't quite have the ability.
In the future, we will.