[cletus]

It's weird to me how many advocates there are for nuclear power on HN. Years ago, I would've been one of them. Now? I don't think I can trust people with nuclear power.

People aren't capable of having a sufficiently long term view. People make short term decisions that are bad in the long term all the time. You see accident after accident caused by people making short term decisions that have a low probability of failure but where failure has disproportionately bad consequences. Just look at unsafe and drunk driving.

So the problems with fission power are:

1. We have no good way of disposing with the waste. This includes the waste produced in enriching Uranium (eg what to do with all the UrF6) as well as reactor waste.

2. As much as coal and other fossil fuels have negative health effects and probably cause deaths, there is only so much damage a single coal plant can do. A single nuclear plant on the other hand can make an area of thousands of miles uninhabitable for generations.

3. Storage and transportation of fissile material (ie reactor fuel) presents a bunch of environmental and security issues.

Renewable (specifically solar and wind) really are the solution here.