What’s to compare? On a per kWh basis, nuclear is cleaner and safer. On a per accident basis nuclear is cleaner and safer. On a waste product basis nuclear is cleaner and safer.
Coal plants emit radioactive material in the smoke they kick out. They literally spit continuous radioactive material into the air. Nuclear plants simply do not.
In fact, putting aside Chernobyl (there are so many reasons including it skews the numbers against nuclear unfairly) there have been more deaths related to wind turbines than nuclear plants.
Edit: and even with all the deaths from Chernobyl, it’s still safer on a per kWh basis. :End-Edit
The reason Chernobyl is unfair is for a few reasons. Most of them being abhorrent policies that were enacted by the Soviet Union.
Operators of the plant were poorly trained. Design flaws that could impact safe operation were classified and not shared with the operators. Testing processes were a joke by all standards, even for the time. And the RBMK reactors were simply flawed in their design, and it was known about from the beginning because it was done to be cheap.
Compare that with a CANDU reactor which has both active and passive safety mechanisms that make it nearly impossible to meltdown. The closest we’ve ever had to an accident was a false alarm about contaminated water leaking that was sent out from the Darlington, Ontario plant a number of years ago.
And the issue with nuclear waste isn’t as huge as everyone makes it out to be. The vast majority of the spent fuel drops down to background levels in a few decades. And the really radioactive stuff, which is about 2% of the total fuel, is radiative for thousands of years. But the fun fact about that is it can be reprocessed into new fuel and used again in a reactor like the CANDU reactors.
The only reason that fuel isn’t being recycled today is because it’s still economically cheaper to just use new fuel and store the used stuff on site.
Nuclear is far far FAR from dead. In fact it’s picking up steam. And nuclear should be used alongside renewables. There’s no reason we can’t invest in nuclear and renewables at the same time. And keep in mind that the money invested in nuclear doesn’t take away funding from renewables.
What’s to compare? On a per kWh basis, nuclear is cleaner and safer. On a per accident basis nuclear is cleaner and safer. On a waste product basis nuclear is cleaner and safer.
Coal plants emit radioactive material in the smoke they kick out. They literally spit continuous radioactive material into the air. Nuclear plants simply do not.
In fact, putting aside Chernobyl (there are so many reasons including it skews the numbers against nuclear unfairly) there have been more deaths related to wind turbines than nuclear plants.
Edit: and even with all the deaths from Chernobyl, it’s still safer on a per kWh basis. :End-Edit
The reason Chernobyl is unfair is for a few reasons. Most of them being abhorrent policies that were enacted by the Soviet Union.
Operators of the plant were poorly trained. Design flaws that could impact safe operation were classified and not shared with the operators. Testing processes were a joke by all standards, even for the time. And the RBMK reactors were simply flawed in their design, and it was known about from the beginning because it was done to be cheap.
Compare that with a CANDU reactor which has both active and passive safety mechanisms that make it nearly impossible to meltdown. The closest we’ve ever had to an accident was a false alarm about contaminated water leaking that was sent out from the Darlington, Ontario plant a number of years ago.
And the issue with nuclear waste isn’t as huge as everyone makes it out to be. The vast majority of the spent fuel drops down to background levels in a few decades. And the really radioactive stuff, which is about 2% of the total fuel, is radiative for thousands of years. But the fun fact about that is it can be reprocessed into new fuel and used again in a reactor like the CANDU reactors.
The only reason that fuel isn’t being recycled today is because it’s still economically cheaper to just use new fuel and store the used stuff on site.
lol. I’ve said now 4 times this is not about nuclear vs fossil fuels. It’s hilarious the perseveration on this.
Nuclear is dead. Accept it and move on to fixing the problems with renewables. There are 2 fantastic reasons to avoid nuclear.
Nuclear is far far FAR from dead. In fact it’s picking up steam. And nuclear should be used alongside renewables. There’s no reason we can’t invest in nuclear and renewables at the same time. And keep in mind that the money invested in nuclear doesn’t take away funding from renewables.
At least in the US the number of applications for nuclear plant construction has dropped 75%.