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I love how you just gloss over the 2nd worst nuclear disaster in world history, that required abandoning an entire town... We need to stop burning fossil fuels

• chasil 3y ago
  I think that nuclear power must focus on safety and efficiency. Fuel rods from reactors near me are discarded after only 2% of the potential power is released from them. I understand that the best designs can extract 40%, leaving less waste. New reactors should be held to a minimum of 20%. The "daughter nuclei" in the 2% exhausted fuel rods require active cooling (circulating water) for well over a year before they exhaust and cool sufficiently for dry storage. We need "walk-away safe" designs where a complete loss of power doesn't result in catastrophic explosions. We have kept this 50s technology way past its design life. It isn't replaced because of resistance to building any more nuclear at all, which is not helping.
  • kagakuninja 3y ago
    The problem isn't "resistance". Reactors are just too expensive. The great hope of the pro-nuclear crowd is SMRs, and the current one being built in the US got canceled due to cost. Until the cost problem is solved, nuclear power is dead on arrival. The existing plants were only built because of massive subsidies and the government placing a cap on the maximum liability from nuclear accidents.
• elil17 3y ago
  I’m sure having to evacuate was very hard on the people of Fukushima, I don’t doubt that. But, burning fossil fuels is also causing us to abandon entire towns (costal towns), and at a much faster rate. Burning fossil fuels is too expensive.