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That's just comparing them with coal to sound great. The three major nuclear accidents do not represent the worst which nuclear plants are capable of. For example we have yet to see what can happen if a nuclear plant is sabotaged - that's not FUD its a real vulnerably of the technology and is a reason why they incur constant exceptional security as well as safety costs. They consume alot of water resource as well, for cooling.

Thankfully its an academic debate now anyway, because solar and wind prices are already much cheaper with no end to their continued improvement in sight.

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> For example we have yet to see what can happen if a nuclear plant is sabotaged - that's not FUD

That's FUD. What are you proposing is going to happen that would be worse? You can't get a nuclear explosion; the fuel isn't weapons grade. You can get a meltdown and a hydrogen explosion, but that is what happened at Chernobyl. It leaves behind a hot mess and a large cleanup bill but hardly anybody dies. Especially if you're not an obtuse Soviet bureaucracy that dispatches ordinary firefighters to deal with it without adequate training or equipment.

> They consume alot of water resource as well, for cooling.

Water isn't "consumed", it starts off as H2O and ends up that way. It evaporates and then condenses again somewhere downwind.

The soviet response to Chernobyl was in many respects phenomenal. They mobilized hundreds of thousands of people to risk their lives to mitigate it.

One effort that stands out as "preventing something much worse" is that there was a risk of a potentially larger secondary explosion from steam buildup. They tunneled under the reactor and injected ~25 tons of liquid nitrogen a day (the tunnel started 6 days after the explosion, and was functional 8 days after the explosion). They had people risk/give their lives swimming in to close valves and pumping water out. Dates from here: http://www.chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/timeline/

Also, you can absolutely get a nuclear explosion from a reactor, there is some suggestion that Chernobyl might have been a small one in fact (paper): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00295450.2017.1...

> One effort that stands out as "preventing something much worse" is that there was a risk of a potentially larger secondary explosion from steam buildup.

A larger conventional explosion would have been linearly worse, not worse rising to a separate category of problem.

> Also, you can absolutely get a nuclear explosion from a reactor, there is some suggestion that Chernobyl might have been a small one in fact (paper)

This is not what I'm referring to. It's one thing to have a "nuclear explosion" in the sense that the reaction generates enough heat to cause the rapid expansion of gasses which is technically an "explosion".

What I'm referring to is the sort of exponential chain reaction that happens in a nuclear weapon, resulting in something on that scale. You have to design for that on purpose to get it. The density and geometry has to be exactly right.

There were personal heroics but the Soviet response was a catastrophe, it was Sweden that sounded the alarm and the Soviets allowed a May Day parade of children to march through the cloud in Kiev...

"For 36 hours after the explosion, people were given no reliable information about it and left virtually on their own. They never received instructions on how to protect themselves and their children. Radiation levels that according to Soviet laws were supposed to trigger an automatic public warning about the dangers of radiation exposure had already been recorded in the early hours of April 26—but were ignored by one official after another. Finally, people were asked to gather their belongings and wait on the street..." https://www.history.com/news/chernobyl-disaster-coverup

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/remembering-soviet-res...

> you can absolutely get a nuclear explosion from a reactor, there is some suggestion that Chernobyl might have been a small one in fact (paper)

An explosion that's too weak to even blow apart its own assembly doesn't count.

"What are you proposing is going to happen that would be worse?"

No offense but if you can't see how Chernobyl or Fukushima could have turned out worse, or that unexpected accidents in other locations could happen and could be worse, you don't understand nuclear power. Its problematic because I expect you have read plenty on it in order to want to defend it in a topic about aforestation.

"Water isn't consumed"

Water resource is consumed, sure it rains again - often far away and into the sea. Fresh water resources are scarce and under pressure in many places, ancient aquifers are drying out, particularly in the US.

> No offense but if you can't see how Chernobyl or Fukushima could have turned out worse, or that unexpected accidents in other locations could happen and could be worse, you don't understand nuclear power.

I can't help but notice the lack of specific examples or explanations of any kind.

> Water resource is consumed, sure it rains again - often far away and into the sea. Fresh water resources are scarce and under pressure in many places, ancient aquifers are drying out, particularly in the US.

Ancient aquifers are drying out as a result of unsustainable resource management and climate change. Nuclear power helps with both of these, the first by providing power for desalination and the second by reducing carbon emissions. The amount of water it evaporates for cooling by comparison is a drop in the bucket. Also, the cooling can be done with seawater to begin with.

"I can't help but notice the lack of specific examples or explanations of any kind"

Because its so simple as saying, "the wind COULD have blown the fukushima fallout southwards over Tokyo instead of relatively promptly into the Pacific." A nuclear accident COULD deliver fallout to a highly populated area that cant be evacuated in time. A nuclear accident COULD generate much more fallout than Fukushima or Chernobyl. How can one understand the technology, and challenge the reality of such risks of nuclear power plants? Pretending that its been as bad as it might have been and as it could be - like a dangerous driver saying "its fine - I've only ever hit a tree!"

re: desalination - fine then, add the cost of desalinating salt water to replace the increasingly scarce resource that nuclear plants evaporate, to their already uncompetitive cost.

To add to your examples, there was the very real possibility with Fukushima that Tokyo would have had to be evacuated. This was seriously considered at the highest levels of the Japanese government (i.e. the PM and cabinet):

> The 400-page report, due to be released later this week, also describes a darkening mood at the prime minister’s residence as a series of hydrogen explosions rocked the plant on March 14 and 15. It says Mr. Kan and other officials began discussing a worst-case outcome if workers at the Fukushima Daiichi plant were evacuated. This would have allowed the plant to spiral out of control, releasing even larger amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere that would in turn force the evacuation of other nearby nuclear plants, causing further meltdowns.

> The report quotes the chief cabinet secretary at the time, Yukio Edano, as having warned that such a “demonic chain reaction” of plant meltdowns could result in the evacuation of Tokyo, 150 miles to the south.

> “We would lose Fukushima Daini, then we would lose Tokai,” Mr. Edano is quoted as saying, naming two other nuclear plants. “If that happened, it was only logical to conclude that we would also lose Tokyo itself.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/28/world/asia/japan-consider...

> Because its so simple as saying, "the wind COULD have blown the fukushima fallout southwards over Tokyo instead of relatively promptly into the Pacific." A nuclear accident COULD deliver fallout to a highly populated area that cant be evacuated in time.

So the thing that actually happened with Chernobyl then, not something significantly worse than that.

> re: desalination - fine then, add the cost of desalinating salt water to replace the increasingly scarce resource that nuclear plants evaporate, to their already uncompetitive cost.

Evaporating the water is how you desalinate it. It starts as seawater, it evaporates, you recondense it as fresh water. The equipment needed to do that costs less than the value of the water; the major expense is generating the heat which you're already doing for power generation. So I guess we could subtract the net profits from producing that valuable side product from the cost of the power generation, sure.

Do we then get to add the costs of climate change to the cost of burning coal, or are we only attempting accurate accounting for nuclear and not anything else?

Actually - most desalination is done by reverse osmosis - which is much more efficient than evaporation.

> Water resource is consumed, sure it rains again...

And sometimes ocean water is rained back on land. Hurray, water cycle!

Normal operation of coal powerplants is more dangerous than the worst accidents we had with nuclear powerplants.

Modern nuclear powerplants are much safer than these that had accidents.

Yes you have to include the possibility of new accidents - being sabotaged or not. But that possibility needs to be weighed with the probability of it. And it's very low.

Meanwhile we completely ignore the 100% sure deaths and radiation caused by coal powerplants. Because we're used to it.

BTW sabotaging hydro powerplants can kill hundreds of thousands of people at once. And it's much easier than sabotaging a nuclear powerplant. Get one diver with a swimsuit and give him some TNT.

Somehow I haven't seen this used as a counterargument to renewable energy :)

For all the stretched comparisons about how safe nuclear can be, the technology is a liability which requires great care and expense to keep secure and safe.

Its promotion was competing with and obstructing the promotion of renewables for over a decade past, but its moot now that in the past couple of years the price performance of renewables has become unassailable. There's no point promoting nuclear anymore and arguing about how safe nuclear has been or could be - its more expensive already than wind and solar, materially, environmentally, security-wise and economically. Wind and solar are still on a rapid improvement curve. Nuclear powered heat plants are not futuristic generation options, they're relics from the nuclear arms race.

Yes you have to include the possibility of new accidents - being sabotaged or not. But that possibility needs to be weighed with the probability of it. And it's very low.

This is not a case of of risk but uncertainty - very different strategies apply here.

Thankfully its an academic debate now anyway, because solar and wind prices are already much cheaper with no end to their continued improvement in sight.

Has large scale energy storage been solved? I know there are a number of ways to do grid-scale storage, but are any of them scalable enough to power the entire country from solar and wind? Especially if another "storm of the century" (which seem to be happening more frequently now) reduces solar/wind output from a significant portion of the country so you need to draw deep into storage reserves.

> Has large scale energy storage been solved?

There are numerous technologies which can currently provide large scale energy storage at cost which is currently competitive in many situations and due to drop rapidly once they are actually required and built in quantity. To mention a few: flow batteries, hydrogen production and generation, carbon neutral biomass fuel, heat storage and conversion batteries including molten salt, enhancement of existing hydro schemes, online EV fleet, active geothermal... besides you know if pushed, even the occasional emergency fossil fuel burn if unprepared. Nuclear plants are not known for their uptime during storms either.

Current prices are detailed here, been dropping every year : https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...

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