[cbd1984]

If you're being generous, it's a case of the perfect being the enemy of the good: "We wouldn't need nuclear if we went all-in with renewables!" is the cry, even if it's not necessarily the case in every environment. But if that's your cry, and you ignore all the waste renewables create (what, are solar panel factories 100% efficient now?), then doing anything other than 100% renewable all the time is unjustifiable.

If you're being less generous, it's all about fear-mongering and the people who bought into the fear. Nuclear Is Evil is pretty axiomatic to them, and it takes little to convince them that power plants will explode like bombs and waste is just being dumped at random and everything else you can imagine if you don't let facts get in the way of a good Righteous Indignation.

So, yes, to some people nuclear is "dirty" in the sense of "ritually unclean", and they will not be convinced otherwise.

[7952]

It is fascinating how difficult it is to find a good argument for opposing nuclear power. The discussion usually turns into an endless round of meaningless comparison that pretends that we only need one perfect choice instead several imperfect ones.

The best argument I have been able to come up with is that whilst it could be the perfect energy source humans are fundamentally incapable of designing or operating nuclear plants perfectly. You end up with designs that are tightly coupled and massively complicated, which is always risky from an engineering perspective. To make them safe you have to spend huge amounts of money on staff to maintain and operate.

Fukushima was designed and run by highly trained people but it still went wrong. Several stations in the UK were designed by brilliant scientists and still needed flood defenses built in response to Fukushima. There is a real threat and it is entirely due to the normal fallibility of humans. I personally think that nuclear is a necessary choice, but it is hardly a good choice. We need a new generation of generators that are very small, needs minimal maintenance, and have negligible risk even if they are completely destroyed.

[wodenokoto]

I actually don't think that is a good argument either. Even with the 3 mile, Fukushima and Chernobyl disaters, more people have died falling of windmills than from nuclear power (per megawatt hour).

I think the concentration of energy (making it a good target for terrorists), and the probable long term damage of waste which has not yet been realized are better arguments, but still not good enough to have coal over nuclear in my opinion.

[7952]

I agree that it is a risk worth taking. But those risks are not merely unscientific fear mongering and meed to be mitigated by more than just incredibly expensive human processes.