For every one person killed by nuclear plants, thousands die because of coal, and other kinds of power plants don't stack up well against nuclear either.
Not to be picky, but we are seeing some of the first aging nuclear facilities being operated beyond their designed lifetime by people who don't deserve to be qualified as competent. Coal has killed more people than nuclear, but it certainly seems nuclear power operators are well prepared to close that gap. :-/
I worry about future failures as those reactors grow old.
Having said that, it would be much wiser to build more modern, resilient, nuclear power plants than the equivalent capacity in coal.
Now that we have them though, why can't we just shut them down? Because of the energy deficit that would create since we're still pulling on the nuclear handbreak.
It won't be pretty.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-so...
Chernobyl, an INES-7 killed 56 people. Plus another 4000 from radiation.
As previously linked, check these out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease
The Great Smog of London killed twelve million people. Banqiao Dam killed 171 000 and destroyed homes for another eleven million people.
Don't get me wrong. I like nuclear. I just know it's dangerous and the consequences of one accident can be pretty scary and long lasting.
Let's stick to the current facts please. When someone dies from exposure to one of these "holding ponds" then we can update the model.
But, you can accurately quantify the risks of coal using current facts, because the direct effects of coal power are measurable. When you stop using coal, the effects start to go away.
Even with rooftop solar, you can measure the risks of maintenance personnel falling off of roofs and production accidents. Again, current risks that can be measured and evaluated. If you take the panel off of your roof, there is zero risk of someone dying as a result of your panel. In the year 2200, I can say conclusively that no human will be injured as a result of the solar panel on my roof.
Nuclear is different, because while the operating lifetime of the plant is dozens of years, it leaves behind waste products which introduce life-threatening risks for hundreds or thousands of years. Nobody on earth has a viable long-term strategy for managing waste products today, nor an ETA for when that strategy will be devised and implemented.
That doesn't mean that nuclear energy is evil or otherwise morally reprehensible -- it is not. But ignoring obvious long term risks by narrowing the scope of what you consider a risk to be is not an apples to apples comparison.
"The NRC will require retrieval to protect public health and safety in the event the site, design, or operations proves to be unsuitable. Based on performance confirmation data, the NRC will determine whether the repository system or subsystem (natural or engineered) has failed or is expected to fail to meet the performance criteria. If such failure is determined at any time during the preclosure period, the NRC may direct the DOE to retrieve the waste. The DOE could retrieve waste for its own reasons without being directed by the NRC. Such activity, however, must be carried out under applicable NRC regulations governing movement of waste. It should be noted that the NRC retrievability provision in Part 60 is only intended to protect the public radiological health and safety."
Summary: in case the repository method is all screwed up and we gotta put it somewhere else.
FWIW I do not see what is so hard about long term storage of nuclear waste. 1. Go to somewhere which never has earthquakes 2. build a shed 3. put the waste in it
IIRC this is not true. There are, however, a strategies that people don't like.
Doesn't mean they're not viable.
However, there are designs which would keep the fuel underwater for longer periods of time, like the B&W mPower modular reactor, which has a cooling pool in the containment structure with enough capacity to hold all waste generated during the 60-year design lifetime.
All this is, of course, figured into the per-kilowatt-hour death rate when it actually hurts someone. The spent fuel pools are considered part of the plant for the purposes of risk assessment. In normal operation, of course, the spent fuel pool keeps the radioactivity nicely contained and doesn't hurt anyone.