[__jal]

It normally is! But. It has catastrophic failure modes. (Yes, pebble beds. Let's talk about realities, not if-onlys.)

Because of those catastrophic failure modes, nobody except governments want to assume the risk. And governments only do it because they have sovereign immunity from those whose interests they're supposedly representing.

I firmly believe that any interested parties who want to go nuclear, should, and reap those rewards. If you can't find an insurer, go find wealthy people who believe in your design to indemnify you.

Just don't pick my pocket to build it and then poison me.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Because of those catastrophic failure modes, nobody except governments want to assume the risk.

That would be a fine if it was a level playing field.

Lots of things have catastrophic failure modes. Dams[1], supertankers[2], chemical plants[3], oil drilling rigs[4], coal mines[5], etc. To say nothing of climate change.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez_oil_spill [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benxihu_Colliery

The reason those things have no trouble being built anyway is that they aren't required to carry billions of dollars in insurance coverage to begin with.

And maybe they should, but you can't single out nuclear for a requirement to carry that much insurance and then fault it for not being able to satisfy that requirement when its competitors don't.

[bsder]

> Just don't pick my pocket to build it and then poison me.

Yet that's exactly what we're doing with coal and petroleum.

Let's remove the subsidies for those and then you can get back to me about the cost effectiveness of things like nuclear.

[coldtea]

>Yet that's exactly what we're doing with coal and petroleum.

Only coal and petroleum is mined thousands of miles aways from me, and even if e.g. there's an oil spill, it won't kill thousands in hundreds miles radius.

[bsder]

Coal is mined where I grew up and they rip entire mountains apart, throw the dross back, and leak sulfur into the streams for the next 50 years.

In addition, in California, the radioactive sulfur in pollution from the coal burning plants in China SWAMPS the radiation release from Fukushima by several orders of magnitude.

I'm going to stop here, because any relevant adjective I would use to describe people like you would just get me banned.

[coldtea]

>I'm going to stop here, because any relevant adjective I would use to describe people like you would just get me banned.

The main word I'd use to describe "people like you", given the above, is rude.

The ad-hominem doesn't add anything to the case. And who would "people like me" be? Anybody that has concerns or might be against nuclear power? Because they are necessarily ignorant luddites, and only those for it are the level-headed ones, right?

Well, nuclear reactors and energy production is not science (the science part is done at the academic level), it is applied technology. And technology mingles with private interests, politics and bad actors all the time (e.g. constructors who don't install enough safety measures, governments who don't give a shit about global environmental treaties, loonies who might want to blow up reactors or get their hands to the by products, human errors, political ass-saving, tons of money to be made, higher profit margins by not properly taking care of by products, etc.),

Now to answer the specific points:

"Leak[ing] sulfur into the streams for the next 50 years" doesn't even compare to having to take care of radioactive materials for the next millennia, neither in the extend of time, nor to the potential impact.

Your answer also seems to imply that e.g. uranium mining doesn't have an environmental impact, and it's only coal that "rips entire mountains apart"...

>In addition, in California, the radioactive sulfur in pollution from the coal burning plants in China SWAMPS the radiation release from Fukushima by several orders of magnitude.

All caps "swamps" aside, this would be only relevant if Fukushima was the epitome of nuclear disaster and the "radiation release from Fukushima" was the highest level of tradition release possible (or close).

[saint_fiasco]

> this would be only relevant if Fukushima was the epitome of nuclear disaster

Isn't it? I thought what happened at Fukushima was the worst case scenario for a nuclear power plant of its type. What is the worst that could have happened?

Aren't new designs even safer than that?