| > The overall sentiment is that they were let off the hook easily and the total cost will be much higher.
Even if it is more costly, who cares. It's national infrastructure that serves everybody, high costs are acceptable in light of the CO2 crisis. And it's not as if that money was burned or stolen by few people - it goes to local nuclear industry which employs many local inhabitants. This 'nuclear is costly' argument would be relevant if there was a cheaper-than-nuclear replacement for coal energy with similar consistent availability and safety record. There isn't one. > nuclear plants and waste storage facilities are easy targets for terrorism - fortunately that didn't happen yet, but things like Stuxnet proved that it's entirely in the realm of possibility. As far as we know from public resources, Stuxnet wasn't a terrorist operation, but a state-controlled operation. And it wasn't a nuclear disaster - it was destruction of expensive equipment due to poor operational security (virus on USB drives hacked the network and destroyed the equipment). Nuclear plants are NOT an easy target for terrorism, and they are NOT the preferred target for terrorists. When we read about some real terrorist attacks, it's clear they go for large death numbers and best visibility. The newer plants with domes are built to withstand a plane crash, a terrorist would have to be brainwashed by anti-terrorist agency to crash the plane into a nuclear plant instead of big city. Lots of things are in the realm of possibility, but let's get real. Crazies attacking a nuclear power plant is a pretty small manageable threat, both in terms of probability of successful execution and in terms of potential resulting damage. Yes some people and equipment will have to be maintained to guard the plants, but it's not a big deal. > -It's trivially easy to use the reprocessing infrastructure to create weapons-grade plutonium. Yes, but again that is not a very relevant problem because in most countries where nuclear energy would be most benefitial in decreasing CO2 production already have plutonium sitting ready in nuclear weapons and can make more - US, China, India, US, Europe. > nuclear has some advantages but there aren't enough of them to break the trend of using renewables + gas and storage Gas power is not something we should prop up at all when we have the option to build more nuclear power plants. Gas burning produces CO2, nuclear operation does not. |