[teachrdan]

I know this is supposed to be a joke, but you are making a category error if you conflate hitting your thumb with a hammer with running a nuclear power plant.

One of the problems with nuclear is that, for practical and security reasons, you are dependent on an authoritarian regime to run the plant -- a plant that will be inherently not-transparent for the same reasons.

That means you have to trust the authorities in question to tell you the truth about risks like accidental discharges of radioactive waste. In the case of Ireland, which has a long history of being disenfranchised, the trust is understandably broken.

This makes building a new nuclear plant and having it run in your country by the same powers that screwed you over before with the same technology a non-starter.

It seems you didn't read the Sellafield article. If you want to be intellectually honest, I'd suggest starting there. (or at least with the "Incidents" section)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield#Incidents

[hinkley]

And if anyone is wrong, they will only have to deal with it for 20-50 years, then they die and the next 5000 administrations have to deal with the literal fallout.

If your uncle hitting his thumb meant everyone in his line and all of his neighbors would have a flat thumb for the next million years then the government would absolutely involve itself in hammer design and operational safety guidelines.

[psd1]

Fallout came from Chernobyl and Fat Boy. There is no fallout from a reactor that doesn't explode, and Chernobyl exploded for human reasons rather than structural ones.

Yes, waste lasts a long time. That's mostly in the form of a pond of slightly clicky water. The fear is overblown. See http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2026/ph241/teixeira2/

[hinkley]

People gave their lives to dig underneath Chernobyl. If they hadn’t the aquifers in Eastern Europe would be radioactive for the next million years.

[psd1]

Good point, hinkley (see what i did there?). I forgot about alternate timelines.

However. People all over the world live on top of aquifers that have been naturally radioactive for millions of years. See you at the protest against granite bedrock.