If you listen to the people on Lemmy, everything is incompatible with capitalism. So do we cower in the corner and hope the problems away?

The amount of death and destruction attributable to all nuclear accidents since we figured out fission is barely statistically significant when compared to fossil fuel consumption.

Regulatory agencies can and do keep accidents from happening. Not always, because people are both stupid and corrupt. But mostly.

Capitalism isn't going away any time soon. Maybe in a post fusion world, we'll cross the threshold of post-scarcity too. Until that happens, we do the best we can with the tools at our disposal.

You could make the same argument about literally anything. Capitalism caused the 737Max disasters. You want to give up planes?

That's the main Issue! It can't be calculated. It's an enormous debt for the future

I don't get this advocacy either, makes me wonder why? Constructing a nuclear power plant usually takes decades, they are not a solution for the more immediate problem climate change. They also introduce lots of new problems, and it's not sustainable either.

Why not build it in a remote location then?

Dams can also produce a lot of hydroelectric power, and a catastrophic failure could also destroy an entire town or more. We just don't build dams upstream of a large town.

While 100% true for nuclear, the current state of burning fossil fuels is much MUCH worse.

I think a town burning down would be fatal for most the inhabitants 3000 BC

this is 4chan

It’s sad that the coal lobby has convinced so many people that the most reliable clean energy source we’ve ever discovered is somehow bad.

Its bad in the sense that is a crazy expensive way to generate electricity. Its not theoretical. Ask the customers of the most recent nuclear reactors to go online in the USA in Georgia. source

"The report shows average Georgia Power rates are up between $34 and $35 since before the plant's Unit 3 went online. " (there were bonds and fees on customer electric bills to pay for the nuclear plant construction before it was even delivering power.

...and...

"The month following Unit 4 achieving commercial operation, average retail rates were adjusted by approximately 5%. With the Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery (NCCR) tariff removed from bills, a typical resident customer using 1,000 kWh per month saw an estimated monthly increase of $8.95 per month. This follows the previous rate impact in 2023 following Unit 3 COD of $5.42 (3.2%)."

So another $5.42/month for the first reactor built on top of the $35/month, then another $8.95/month on top of all that for a rough total of $49.37/month more just to buy electricity that is generated from nuclear.

Maybe the power company is greedy? Nope, they're even eating more costs and not passing them on to customers:

"Georgia Power says they're losing about $2.6 billion in total projected costs to shield customers from the responsibility of paying it. Unit 4 added about $8.95 to the average customer's bill, John Kraft, a spokesman for the company said."

So that $49.37/month premium for electricity from nuclear power would be even higher if the power company passed on all the costs. Nuclear power for electricty is just too inefficient just on the cost basis, this is completely ignoring the problems with waste management.

The next biggest problem with nuclear power is where the fuel comes from:

"Russia also dominates nuclear fuel supply chains. Its state-owned Rosatom controls 36 percent of the global uranium enrichment market and supplies nuclear fuel to 78 reactors in 15 countries. In 2020, Russia owned 40 percent of the total uranium conversion infrastructure worldwide. Russia is also the third-largest supplier of the imported uranium that fuels U.S. power plants, accounting for 16 percent of total imported uranium. The Russian state could weaponize its dominance in the nuclear energy supply chain to advance its geostrategic interests. During the 2014 Russia-Ukraine crisis, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin threatened to embargo nuclear fuel supplies to Ukraine." source

So relying on nuclear power for electricity means handing the keys of our power supply over to outside countries that are openly hostile to us.

Particularly since coal power stations emit FAR more radioactive material, routinely, than most nuclear "leaks".

It has some interesting discussion, although it also shows how US-centric Lemmy is. Much of the EU has understood why nuclear energy is inherently incompatible with renewable energy and has therefore rightfullly dismissed it.