The public is listening to the anti-nuclear experts, like M. V. Ramana. But one has to understand that for M. V. Ramana, no nuclear power plant is safe enough. For him only a world without nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons is safe enough.
"Without nuclear power plants" because any nuclear power plant can be used to breed plutonium which can used to make a nuclear weapon.
The primary risk of nuclear technology for M. V. Ramana is not radiation induced cancers, it's nuclear proliferation. For him nuclear power plants could be safe, only if they could not be used to make plutonium.
> - Germany still doesn't have an answer to the permanent storage of the waist
The best solution for the high level nuclear waste (the nuclear waste most spoken about) would to have a common European permanent storage not a permanent storage in each country, because the amount of high level nuclear waste is very small and probably the most stable geology is old granite bedrock in Sweden and Finland.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Europe_g...
Germany is currently operating the world biggest permanent storage for dangerous waste UTD Herfa-Neurode. Contains at least 690,000 tons of waste containing dioxins and furans, 220,000 tons of waste containing mercury, 127,000 tons of waste containing cyanide, and 83,000 tons of toxic waste containing arsenic. Nuclear waste is currently excluded, but I think it would not make a difference, especially because the after 400 years fission products decay away and only Plutonium and minor actinides stays. Mercury, arsenic, dioxins and furans stay forever.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untertagedeponie_Herfa-Neurode
https://radioactivity.eu.com/articles/radioactive_waste/acti...
> - with existing reactor types the worst imaginable accident is really, really bad. Especially for a densely populated country like mine
All places where large amounts of energy can be released are dangerous. The biggest disaster was not nuclear, but the failure of the 1975 Banqiao Reservoir Dam and other dams in Henan Province, China. The disaster killed an estimated 171,000 people and 11 million people lost their homes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure
> - nuclear power is quite expensive. The electric power prices at the customers are only so low because there are open and hidden subsidies in place (e.g. no atomic power plant in Germany has to pay full insurance. Or they don't need to pay for the 20000+ year long storage --- that's all "socialized", e.g. the tax payers pay for it
No hydro power plant pays full insurance, because dam failures are extremely rare and at the same time extremely devastating, the governments bears the costs of the failure, like for many other kinds of civil infrastructure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponte_Morandi_collapse
Germany is already paying permanent storage for chemical waste, UTD Herfa-Neurode.
Subsidies, we could look into EEG-Umlage, Kohlepfennig.
> - nuclear power needs at the end reliably cooling. Look at the rivers --- in Germany we had to stop nuclear power plants, because the summer drough was so intense that not enough cooling water was available. That happened several times in France, too.
We have to adapt our whole infrastructure, see the disruptions in Rhine shipping.
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/rhine-water-hit...
Nuclear power plants can be adapted to work dry environments, for example Palo Verde nuclear power works in a desert. But this adaptations cost money, when most European nuclear power plants were build in 70s,80s, there were not seen as necessary. In Europe, for example Jaslovske Bohunice and Mochovce NPP use evaporative cooling. French NPPs will have to be retrofitted.
https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2015/12/29/palo-verde-nuclear...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/org/science/article/pii/S15552...
> - these days, the electric power companies of Germany don't want to build nuclear power plants. In "Manager Magazin" --- not your usual leftist or eco magacine --- they layed out that this is economically infeasible.
Nobody will invest in building nuclear power plants in Germany for decades. The political risk that current government or next current government, or over next government will stop operation of a nuclear power plant, is too large. The electric power companies know this.
> - most countries don't have uran mines. My own one used to have, but that is depleted. Interestingly, the russian atom sector owns a lot of the uran infrastructure worldwide, even when abroad (e.g. they own things in Australia or Canada). We just learned the hard way that depending on Russia --- or USA with their toll war --- is an extremely bad idea
There are many countries with substantial uranium reserves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_r...
Breeder reactors could reuse already mined depleted uranium, they could use much more common thorium, they can run on nuclear waste from older PWR, BWR reactors. Some of breeder reactor concepts have already been tested.
But breeder reactors but they didn't materialize because:
1. Breeder reactors need nuclear reprocessing, this rises risks of nuclear proliferation. (Nuclear reprocessing is also strongly opposed by M. V. Ramana)
2. The building of nuclear power plants stopped in the West. Why invest in new technology if it will not build?
3. Uranium is currently very cheap. Most of the costs in producing fuel for nuclear reactors is not the uranium, but the enrichment of uranium and manufacturing of the fuel rods.
Chernobyl, thing of the past.
Bad design (positive void coefficient, instabilities at low power levels)
Bad manufacturing (no containment, slow control rod movement, manual controlling without computers)
Bad operation (ignoring safety regulations, insufficient training).
We used to drive cars without seat belts.