Based on safety and carbon emissions, fossil fuels are the dirtiest and most dangerous, while nuclear and modern renewable energy sources are vastly safer and cleaner.

I found this surprising. Even considering the costs of construction and decommissioning, nuclear does not compare too badly to renewables.

This doesn’t seem to be just made up. It cites this which cites this, which cites this. And as far as i’m willing to dig, there’s nothing bogus about it.

I have a few comments though:

  • in the Warner article, do the costs represent proper decommissioning, like making it as safe as a decommissioned solar farm would be? It’s not clear.
  • The OWID article doesn’t distinguish between different types of wind/solar, which the source material does! So maybe that’s how they are fudging the data? Somebody needs to take some time and improve the OWID dataset.
  • It’s really pathetic if renewables still aren’t safer and cheaper than nuclear. Nuclear is so wasteful. If we need a decade or two of research before we can ditch nuclear, then let’s do it.
  • DPUGT2
    31·
    3 years ago

    It’s worse than that. He says “Toxic waste that lasts for millions of years”… but any radioactive waste with such a long half-life is actually only mildly radioactive. The scary stuff, the stuff you don’t want to be within 100 miles of, that stuff burns quickly. Half-lifes measured in hours or even minutes. These two properties are always inversely related. It shows some sort of profound misunderstanding that masquerades as a serious insight and legitimate concern.

    The only true criticism of nuclear at this point is that it takes 40 years to spin one up… you can’t even fabricate the damned pressure vessels but at one or two places in the world. Pretty sure they’re all booked up for the next decade.

    Nuclear’s opponents stalled things long enough that you can’t possibly hope to scale it up to where it could matter on any timescale that your grandchildren might care about. It’s over.