Like. Nuclear waste/disasters contaminate areas for thousands of years and cause cancer. Why is that “clean”?
In: 9
A few points:
1)Nuclear energy produces far less dangerous (toxic and/or radioactive) waste than alternatives like coal, in terms of total volume created per kilowatt of energy generated.
Coal releases radioactive and toxic byproducts in far far greater volume and it’s not contained. The toxic and radioactive byproducts wind up in ash slurry holding pools (which often leak into ground water or can flood out the sides) or is released in the air you breath.
2) Nuclear energy does not release carbon dioxide or heavy metals into the air and/or surrounding environment so it has little to no impact on our climate. There is a notion of thermal pollution, however, whereby it can affect nearby streams or rivers by heating them up a bit and changing what lifeforms can grow there. However, that can be managed.
3) Nuclear waste can be safely stored underground, far away from people and there isn’t much of it produced compared to how much energy is generated. It’s also typically wrapped in a sarcophagus which prevents radioactivity from leaking through. You can stand next to these sarcophagi and be totally fine.
4) Newer generation reactors actually can use a lot of the waste from earlier generation reactors as fuel, so that “waste” is actually often effectively stored fuel for future reactor technologies.
5) Newer reactor designs are incredibly safe and have less thermal pollution. They’ve ran many catastrophic failure tests on these designs and the reaction always grinds to a halt, so far anyway.
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