1) You have to handle the spent fuel (either by storage or recycling, neither of which is easy). 2) When it goes wrong, it goes WRONG. See Chernobyl and Fukushima.
1) There is no handling of spent fuel. The atmosphere handles it. At least nuclear lets us capture and store it for handling it later.
2) Oil drilling and coal mining both go wrong constantly, with enough deaths and environmental impact to swallow nuclears' very short list of disasters
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_gas_and_oil_pr...
3) Even when things aren't going wrong, people still die working on oil rigs.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6420a4.htmt
I'll add that these numbers are likely deflated due to me mostly focusing on US stats. Dare I say that the problem is even worse than these articles portray.
2. The total death toll from the Fukushima incident is 1 (so far). For comparision, the tsunami & earthquake that caused Fukushima to meltdown killed 20000 and injured 6000 more.
And Chernobyl doesn't really count, as no reactor worldwide is capable of Chernobyling, and hasn't been for the past 25 years at least.
Chernobyl is a horror story that can be told to childen about Soviet/Russian incompetence, not as a valid example about the dangers of nuclear energy.
Likewise, Fukushima can be used as an example about how safe a worst case scenario actually is.
Some of the design flaws of RBMK were retroactively addressed in existing reactors post-Chornobyl. In particular, the flawed control rod mechanism was addressed. It would cause power excursions/criticality when the rods were inserted. However, neither the high positive void coefficient nor the lack of containment buildings was addressed in RBMK. These unsafe features of the reactors led to the shutdown of the only two RBMKs that were ever in the EU (in Ignalina NPP).
While it is difficult to argue the idea that no reactor is capable of "Chernobyling", as "Chernobyling" is a very particular scenario, RBMKs are generally considered unsafe. The lack of containment buildings is particularly concerning because, without containment failure, we would not have had either the Chornobyl or the Fukushima Daiichi disaster.
While RBMKs are not built anymore, and the new Russian VVER reactors are much safer, they still don't meet EU safety requirements. A future evolution of VVER-1200 called MIR-1200 should, although it is difficult to find much information about this.
Overall, I am saying that "Chernobyling" can mean different things as several design and operation faults needed to align for that disaster to happen. Some design faults in Russian NPP reactors have been addressed, some not. Overall, VVERs look very safe as they address all major RBMK design faults, but for some reason still don't meet EU safety requirements. So I wonder what design faults persist. I do agree that Gen 3+ reactor designs look very safe.
If you are willing to spend that much money, just built a huge water tank above the plant, problem solved.
Or even smarter, design a passive save nuclear plant with that money.
Not saying its a bad idea overall, just noting an example. Other issues could be getting enough cooling in and out & avoiding ground water/aquifer contamination if it does indeed melt down.
Except the 8 RBMKs still in service perhaps? Their problems were only partially fixed.
The alternative is renewable energy.
More people died simply because of the evacuation than from the effects of the Fukushima accident.
I don't actually think recycling is hard. Its hard in a society that wants to kill of nuclear reactors.
A society that has a large amount of nuclear and intends to go to 90% nuclear its just flat out logical to go to fast reactors at some point.
This was planned in all nations that were on the nuclear path. The US planned it, but this was prevented by the anti-nuclear people.
French planned it, but it was prevented by anti-nuclear people.
I think if you really have a society that relieas on nuclear and want it for the long term, eventually building some fast reactor and burning up that 'waste' isn't really that hard, I think its actually beneficial.
You can make interesting things like medical isotopes, nuclear batteries and many other things from this 'waste'.
> 2) When it goes wrong, it goes WRONG. See Chernobyl and Fukushima.
I mean, Fukushima the only one relevant for this discussion isn't really that bad. Damns have caused devastation on a much larger scale. So have coal plants. So have gas plants and even worse gas infrastructure.
Even most hard core renewables people believe gas as a back up need to remain, that means, gas pipelines remain for decades. A failure in a gas pipeline can easily be as bad and kill more people then Fukushima.
So really, I think going 100% nuclear is not a huge risk reduction for society and even in case of an accident the consequences are not that unreasonable for what you are getting.
Lets assume a nation like Germany, lets say the need 70 modern PWRs to power their nations. Assume every 50 years you get one Fukushima. I would easily take that deal. And I think reality is that in a nation not prone tsunamis that once per 50 year number is aggressive.
This is a very weak argument. It's akin to comparing driving vs flying in terms of safety. Flying also goes WRONG when it goes wrong. But how would a comparison based on energy output vs material/human damage look like? I mean coal also goes WRONG, see the Aberfan disaster.
https://vividmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/cloud-of-ra...
But the main problem is that it's not localized in time. Chernobyl is a problem for several countries still to this day, and the actual site itself will continue to be a problem for generations to come.
This is easy to solve. Just launch the waste into Space. A typical large reactor produces 25-30 tonnes of used fuel per year. That’ll take one space trip for Falcon 9 to launch it into Space on a trajectory to nowhere. It’ll destroy itself over millions of years or immediately. Either I make no sense at all or why else has no one tried it yet?
1) Because storing spent nuclear fuel on earth isn't actually hard, it is just brought up anytime people talk about nuclear because it's the obvious thing to talk about.
2) Rocket fleets have a ~97% success rate (e.g. see Vega C this week). Spreading 3% of the radioactive material globally isn't a great idea.
Falcon 9 carries that to Low Earth Orbit. You do not want the waste hanging around there. To get it out of earth's orbit, F9 can do 8 tons.
That's 3 - 4 flights per year per reactor, so about $250m per year. Plus Falcon 9 did 60 flights this year, so this even capacity-wise this would only be enough for 20 reactors worldwide.
Plus like other commenters mentioned, a launch failure would be catastrophic.