[wazoox]

The main argument against nuclear is that it absolutely requires a highly educated, well organized society and workforce. If something really serious disrupts our elaborated, complex societies, then nuclear plants will become really dangerous.

With looming climate change, energy crisis, overpopulation and other problems, you can't be sure that we'll be in a stable enough world long enough to be completely safe.

[BurningFrog]

This, like most anti nuclear arguments, is a standard that is NEVER applied to other industries.

[blub]

Which other industry can make an area uninhabitable for many decades?

[TeMPOraL]

Chemical processing plants? Water management?

[johnisgood]

Meat industry especially[1][2].

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

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_agricu...

[realusername]

Any dangerous chemical plant

[chefkoch]

>The main argument against nuclear is that it absolutely requires a highly educated, well organized society and workforce. If something really serious disrupts our elaborated, complex societies, then nuclear plants will become really dangerous.

No, i think the main arguments against nuclear is the impact of the problem if something goes really wrong and that everybody is cutting corners making a technology more unsafe than it could be.

[blub]

I'm amazed we've had so few accidents, considering how many nuclear plants are located all around Europe. Recently I was reading about an incident in Ukraine, where workers from a nuclear power plant connected the internal network to the internet to mine bitcoin.

It's a shame there's no avherald for nuclear power, I bet it would be an interesting read. C. Perrow had access to industry journals when documenting the chapter on nuclear in his "Normal accidents" book. The incidents described there were mind-boggling.

[mandelbrotwurst]

Yup. Plus, with nuclear, even if we do everything as safely as possible, there's always a tail risk of a VERY negative event due to causes outside our control.

I'm yet to understand why this part of the argument is often so readily dismissed.

[smileysteve]

That very negative event is less than the expected externalities of coal and in many types of gas exploration

[icebraining]

"It's better than coal" is damning with faint praise. Is there anyone who is openly anti-nuclear and pro-coal?

[gnopgnip]

The alternative can be even worse though. Even well maintained coal and natural gas plants pollute more, and are responsible for more deaths than the worst case of nuclear power

[wazoox]

Nuclear is better than fossil fuels on many aspects. To keep the Earth inhabitable to humans, we should start closing down coal plants RIGHT NOW and never touch coal again. We should be all working frantically towards stopping using any fossil fuels as quickly as possible. This isn't where we're going...

[dagw]

The main argument against nuclear is

The other main argument I hear all the time is that building a new nuclear power plant today is so expensive that it will never pay for itself at current electricity prices.

[rhino369]

I wouldn't go so far as to say never. But that's generally the reason why nobody in building them in the United States.

But countries with high nuclear usage, like France, show that doesn't have to be the case.

If the US proclaimed a new Manhattan Project to go nearly full nuclear for new energy production, it could probably standardize designs, implement fall back safety features, and reduce regulatory costs.

A lot of the cost for nuclear in the United States is that you need an army of 800 dollar an hour attorneys to get approval/fight lawsuits trying to stop you.

[dagw]

But countries with high nuclear usage, like France, show that doesn't have to be the case.

Except France isn't really building new power plants either, and the one significant project they do have is way over budget and years behind schedule. They're keeping the plants they have running for as long as its reasonable to do so, but as it looks now they're not going to be replaced by new nuclear plants as they get decommissioned.

[cm2187]

You could say the same thing of a badly maintained dam, or hazardous chemicals factory.

[smileysteve]

In some cases not even badly maintained, the nitrogen buildup along with how that affects the life in a properly maintained reservoir have a large cumulative impact.

[rhino369]

Sure, if suddenly society is disrupted that is a very big issue. But in that sort of sudden collapse, humanity is pretty screwed already.

Making the collapse of society a little worse isn't something we should worry about.

[icebraining]

Compounding a war with an uncontrolled nuclear meltdown seems something we should definitively worry about.