Sure, but even natural gas and rooftop solar have higher rates of death per year than nuclear. (In my second link above.)
In a world in which we must choose the lesser of evils for energy, nuclear is among the least evils, yet faces the greatest overall public resistance to new installations.
I dunno - even that source itself says that the death rates from solar would fall using better construction methods. It also notes (in the case of wind) that increased take up is associated with lower death rates ("Wind power proponent and author Paul Gipe estimated in Wind Energy Comes of Age that the mortality rate for wind power from 1980–1994 was 0.4 deaths per terawatt-hour. Paul Gipe’s estimate as of end 2000 was 0.15 deaths per TWh, a decline attributed to greater total cumulative generation.")
I'd also note that the very low rates of death from nuclear power do not appear to include construction deaths, which are the only source of death measured from wind and solar.
>even natural gas and rooftop solar have higher rates of death per year than nuclear.
the difference here is that no event can significantly change the death rate from gas or solar whereis one wrong cough by nuclear power plant worker and we have Chernobyl with thousands of deaths (in particular in Belarus which took the majority of the Chernobyl hit - about 5000 extra thyroid cancer cases (normally a rare cancer) in the people who were children at the time plus doubling (and in some areas tripling) of the rate of the most frequent cancer - breast cancer (typically 1 in 7 women would get it during lifetime, so doubling means additional 15% of all the women in the affected area would get it) in the areas close to Chernobyl like the Gomel and Mogilev regions plus very significant increase in other frequent cancers of internal organs like colon,etc.)
Or counting it the other way - Russia and Ukraine both have the same - 0.0034 - incidence rate of cancer per year (despite the war and economic differences it is the same people with the same behavior/habits :), while Belarus where people are basically the same as in Ukraine and Russia and drink and smoke and eat the same - has 0.0052 incidence rate, ie. 50000 new cases per year instead of 34000 if they were to have the same incidence as Russia and Ukraine. 16000 extra cancer cases per year for several decades with mortality higher than 50% ...
>nuclear is among the least evils,
hardly so, giving the numbers i referenced above (compare it to coal - the coal's 700K/year deaths means "only" 1K/year for Belarus) and potential of any nuclear power plant to repeat Chernobyl - i'm aware about technical improvements of modern reactors, yet "stupidity will find a way"...
> yet faces the greatest overall public resistance to new installations.
Being anti-nuclear is pretty much accepting the status quo though. Modern nuclear power is much, much more sustainable than coal, scales very well, and is very safe. If you believe in a quick solution for energy issues then you shouldn't halt all nuclear development and leave fossil fuels for the next couple decades.
Being anti-nuclear is pretty much accepting the status quo though.
Elon Musk would disagree.
If you believe in a quick solution for energy issues then you shouldn't halt all nuclear development and leave fossil fuels for the next couple decades.
Nuclear plants take 30 years at least to get through planning and building. Gas fired plants or pump solar can be deployed within a year, Wind + Solar in even less time.
Nuclear will never be able to compete with renewables on cost or deployment speed. It’s dead tech for anything other than space probes and military uses.
How? Nuclear tech is already much more developed than other renewables and it's incredibly efficient. The cost of solar is much higher than the cost of nuclear. Hydroelectric and wind are both lower, but they also require certain geography and can't be used anywhere. Nuclear is not dead tech at all, most of France's power comes from nuclear.
In a world in which we must choose the lesser of evils for energy, nuclear is among the least evils, yet faces the greatest overall public resistance to new installations.