Comments by "Regis" (@Timbo5000) on "Curious Droid" channel.

I know right.... nuclear isn't even bad for the environment at all, it emits close to nothing. I will never understand why nuclear gets all this hate, it is clearly the future of emissionless power production. More advanced nuclear plants are extremely safe and highly efficient in terms of power produced per nuclear waste. Things like Germany closing all nuclear plants in favour of brown coal plants "for the environment" is absolute madness. I think Chernobyl left this irrational fear of nuclear power in the minds of many people even though it is one of the safest (and cleanest) means of producing power. Environmentalists should adore nuclear power.
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@iancampbell6925 That's a fair point against nuclear warships. I'm unsure what exactly would happen and the extent to which the nuclear reactor would be exposed.
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@veeeks2938 Since Chernobyl, 2 people have died due to problems in nuclear plants. This makes it the power source with one of the absolute lowest death rates. If, unlike in Chernobyl, there are proper safety measures in place, nuclear power is extremely safe. Regarding nuclear waste, very small amounts will be produced for the energy you get in return and storing it is no issue. All you need is some space. Adding to that, there are new technologies in terms of nuclear power that allow us to produce even less amounts of waste per power and makes it even safer. Once we figure out nuclear fission there's even zero risk to safety and waste.
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@Innoruuk In the Netherlands we built a bunker to store nuclear waste. In Finland they place it in old mines. Seems rather simple. Nobody died in Fukushima, Chernobyl was a dumb mistake and saying we should not get into nuclear power because of the grave mistakes that were made there is like saying we should never fly again because a pilot once did something extremely stupid, ignoring all safety protocols, and crashed s commercial plane (or more relevant today, because Boeing ignored safety protocols in building their new commercial plane because they wanted to produce it quickly and caused two of them to crash). Such grave errors in following safety protocols can't be a reason to stop using nuclear power. Fukushima happened because a massive earthquake AND tsunami hit a nuclear plant. The plant was immediately stopped after the initial earthquake. Regular electrity failed, so they switched to emergency power to cool the plant. The tsunami then took out the emergency power. Then there were second back-up batteries that could cool the plant for several hours, expecting the regular electricity to be back up soon. Electricity never came back up and the batteries ran out, thus causing the accident. Since then, nuclear reactors worldwide have taken notes about additional safety measures. What happened in Fukushima was extreme and still nobody died. If something like that were to happen again, new plants should be protected against even situations like that due to additional safety protocols. But to pretty much all nuclear plants, especially here in Europe, such extreme circumstances will never occur in the first place.
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@Innoruuk Well of course we have to take heed to how to store it. It's why we built a specially designed bunker for it and Finland also took the necessary precautions to prevent spreading of nuclear waste outside of the mines they stored it in. Germany was careless, apparently. About Fukushima, those figures are false, very false. https://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/a_e/fukushima/faqs-fukushima/en/ The only health consequences of Fukushima are zero deaths, a handful of increased chances of cancer (for a couple of workers) and the most serious consequences are that the forced evacuation of thousands of people caused mental health issues (entirely unrelated to any nuclear problems). The latter consequence is quite serious, I do agree. And that is the major flaw of nuclear power. IF anything should go wrong, which it close to never does but can nonetheless, it's a disaster. It may be safe enough to not even cause deaths in a serious instance like Fukushima, but the fact that a large area has to be evacuated is disastrous in itself. Prevention is of grand importance. Newer nuclear technologies make it even safer and can prevent nuclear radiation altogether. From what I've gathered, Thorium plants for example (soon-to-be perfected tech) are safe even when breaking down. They can't have a melt-down in the case of a disaster because they don't have to be cooled all the time. I agree with you that the current nuclear technology is risky, no matter how safe it is (as you say, mistakes will be made even if it's one in a hundred years that's disastrous). But technology that is within reach can make nuclear 100% safe in the face of breakdowns AND Thorium also reduces the waste. I think the future is in such advanced nuclear plants.
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