[wlll]

> The only real solution I see is nuclear, but that's a naughty word for some reason.

I am sure that if you put your mind to it you can think of some reasons people might feel uneasy about nuclear power. It’s not like incidents involving it are that far in the past.

[kayaeb]

if you look up deaths by energy production method, nuclear is far and away the safest, in every single country by orders of magnitude, even wind is deadlier.

[pfdietz]

The claims that solar and wind are deadlier use cooked statistics (very old numbers for wind, and dodgy assumptions about rooftop solar that don't apply the utility-scale fields that are now dominating).

[kayaeb]

I'm not sure if "accidents" count as "cooked" statistics... modern nuclear plants are much safer than 20th century ones as well, so if we're updating numbers I think nuclear is still an extremely safe contender (and if you split nuclear deaths by country, USA is an order of magnitude again safer than all nuclear). Maybe I misinterpret what you mean by cooked though, I would be interested in reading more about it, if you have a good piece? Wind also relies on pizoelectric elements, I'm not sure what their carbon footprint is compared to nuclear fuel, probably would be less in the future if like CA/OZ stepped into the rare-earth supply chain.

And new types, like thorium salt reactors don't have classical issues like uranium waste products and much much smaller possibility of runaway reactions. And France has been "5 years away" from fusion reactors for like 30 years on a shoestring budget, with real money that could be a possibility in maybe another 30 years and also dodges all the horror-story problems.

Overall, I agree, modern solar, especially reflector-steam plants shouldn't be lumped in with silicon panels, especially when talking about total carbon footprint. But I do think nuclear carries a lot of unfair baggage that has kept us on oil for way longer than we should have been.

[GekkePrutser]

Right now yes. But we're creating waste that remains harmful for thousands of years and store it in facilities with a 100-year service life.

It's the same kind of "leaving problems to the next generation" of current fossil-fuel use except this one is a lot more generations away.

[kayaeb]

This isn't the case with thorium salt reactors or, if we had enough funding to finally crack it, fusion.