[hugi]

Fukushima was an excellent demonstration of what can happen. You devastate huge areas of land and make them unlivable for generations. This is especially applicable to the United States that has proven entirely unable to handle it's own nuclear waste and just accumulates it at the sites where it's generated, waiting for disaster to happen.

[cm2187]

I always thought that nuclear waste was a non problem. It is a minuscule amount of confined hazardous material. Even if you don't recycle it, the impact on the environment is negligible.

But I agree that the devastation of huge areas of land is a problem, but let's also keep in mind that the reactors that blew up where early generations reactors. More modern design do not present those risks [1]. Judging nuclear energy based on 1960s design is like judging aviation based on the safety records of 1930s planes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor

[hannob]

> But I agree that the devastation of huge areas of land is a problem, but let's also keep in mind that the reactors that blew up where early generations reactors.

With "early generation reactors" you mean all the ones that exist. The whole "next generation reactor" / "generation 4 reactor" thing is at this point nothing more than vague plans for what could be.

[DennisP]

That's overstating things. Fukushima was built in the 70s. A nearby reactor faced the same challenges but was built a decade later, and it was fine. That's just a GenII, still not as safe as the GenIII+ we're building now.

Chernobyl, of course, was a horrific design that didn't even have a containment dome. Nobody builds reactors like that anymore.

And GenIV is a little more than vague plans; e.g. Terrestrial Energy's molten salt reactor has already gotten through the hardest part of Canada's licensing process, which puts them on track for a demo reactor by 2025 or so.

[hairytrog]

They have to secure a few B$ in funding. lol.

[Krasnol]

Sure it is a non problem.

If your country is the size of the USA and nobody bothers if you let it disappear somewhere in the desert. Which is not the case in Germany and most of the countries. People just don't want to have a nuclear waste dump near by and Germany needs to spend a hell lot of money to clean up the last mine they used as a dump already.

The tech is dead and the lobby won't be able to ride that current artificial hype for ever...

[selectodude]

Hiroshima was literally leveled by an atomic bomb and wasn’t unlivable for even a full generation.

[pfdietz]

A 13 kiloton fission bomb produces about .01% of the long lived fission products that are resident in the core of a 1 GW(e) reactor just before refueling.

[realusername]

Is that sarcasm? The exclusion zone of Fukushima is very small and people already live there again. The total impact of Fukushima (the nuclear disaster) is one death of a plant employee and 3 people getting cancer.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

Huge areas of land unlivable for generations is an overstatement. Fukishima and Chernobyl exclusion zones are lush green forests that where wildlife thrives.

[helpme3]

The wildlife isn't exactly thriving, but I guess getting dosed is better than human contact for most species: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/06/science/nature-adapts-to-...

[_ph_]

Well the wildlife prospers around Chernobyl exactly because it is not safe for humans to live there. Absence of humans usually is great for the wildlife. Besides the wild animals just not knowing about radioactivity, humans are way more sensitive to radiation due to their typically longer life spans.

[lstodd]

This point about devastating huge areas of land re Fukushima is so wrong I don't even. It was idiocy and blame-shifting from top to bottom. And yes people die from other people's idiocy in rather much bigger numbers.

[deepsun]

Afaik, the main problem with Fukushima disaster was awful handling by Japanese management, mostly finger pointing, instead of fixing the problem.

In particular Fukushima case, the evacuation caused more harm than fallout would do, so, in retrospective, it would be better to not evacuate.

There is no "huge areas devastated and unlivable for generations".