> but ignore environmental pollution problems.
What “environmental pollution” are you talking about here?
What “environmental pollution” are you talking about here?
1. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/frack...
2. https://www.publicsource.org/fracking-proximity-cancer-asthm...
3. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/children-born-near...
4. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fracking-can-cont...
5. https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/story/study-links-fracki...
Decommissioning too, very very costly to do it in an environmentally conscious way, the waste is very expensive to store safely. And these costs are generally not even included in the costs. Way too often an energy company vacates a site and the state is left cleaning up the mess which costs billions.
There are many things that are much more dangerous than the what remains of the fallout from a nuclear accident, that people are perfectly fine living with: air pollution due to ICE-powered cars, pesticide in farm areas, lead fuel near general aviation airfields, or cigarettes, alcohol and even junk food!
People have a very wrong vision of what nuclear fallout actually means, and it's mostly fueled by the nuclear bomb scare in the cold war era. But in the real world even Hiroshima and Nagasaki were quickly re-settled after the bomb with no dramatic effect.
(this is not to say radioactive material is harmless, just that the incorrect perception of its harm lead us to take drastic measures when it comes to nuclear, while we are fine as a society taking little to no measures against much more harmful things)
As for decommissioning, I answered in another comment already, see [1].
As it is the costs of the nuclear waste management are, and will be for a long time, fielded by tax payer and not internalised with the plant builders/operators.
But really these days it makes no sense. The reason these costs are not borne by the operators is because the business model would be impossible if all costs were included. As it is even with all the handouts it's hard to make it work cost-wise.
Why are other industries allowed to just put a locker on the front door and call it a day? Decommissioning and waste processing of solar plants isn't included in the cost either. In most industries it is expected that the site is secured (which, in case of an NPP means removing the old fuel obviously) and then the next guy who wants to use the site pays for the destruction of the buildings (or in practice the taxpayers as subsidies to improve “competitiveness” of the region). But somehow not nuclear.
Industrial countries are filled with old industrial sites with massive amounts of remaining pollution (heavy metal in the soil, asbestos in the buildings), the industrials never paid for decommissioning.
In fact I think that the policy we apply to nuclear is the right one, and for effluents as well (unlike chemical plants that litters the neighborhood with PFAS, NPP reject practically nothing whatsoever), as it is the only sustainable model. But then again why the double standard? Why apply it only to nuclear?
The answer is unfortunately the irrational fear of nuclear that derives from the stigma of the cold war and the fear of the Bomb…
And in large parts, they are doing that. But I guess details depend on jurisdiction.
First, the amount of waste that last centuries fits in a single room per nuclear country. Also you don't need to manage or finance it at all, you can just leave it there an be fine with it:
In fact when nuclear was still being treated like a regular industry with respect to its pollution, the nuclear wastes from the military and early civilian programs in UK and France were being dumped in the middle of the Channel. Not that I'm saying that this is a good thing, at all, but it's also causing no harm in practice and because the quantities are so small, the environmental impact of doing so is much smaller than the routine wastes of most industries, including IT.
Also, we've known the solution to waste for 60 years now: it's called a breeding reactor. 40 years ago France had one prototype (Phénix) and wanted to scale it up to industrial size (Superphénix) but it was canceled due to pressure from Greenpeace (including a successful campaign to pressure the Swiss government to fight the project)! Then 30 years later Greenpeace is conveniently still using the nuclear wastes argument.
Eg mercury release from burning coal will be dangerous forever.
It always annoy me when people talk about nuclear waste living millions of years. I'm like “you know what's living longer than that? A good chunk of industrial pollutants who actually have an infinite lifetime”.