Nuclear should be considered part of clean energy standard, White House says

These "concerns" show lack of understanding of current nuclear industry capabilities and realistic undestanding of real and potential disasters.

> Lack of a proper handling of nuclear waste

"Nuclear waste" handling is very non-lacking since 40's, there is no real problem with it. It is a contentious topic because NIMBY and because anti-nuclear propaganda, but not a real problem that needs to be solved. There is very little of such waste. It is already being stored in acceptable way - power plants have water pools for the hot stuff and storage facilities for the less hot stuff. The hot stuff becomes less hot after some time. France has a process in operation for converting the waste into glass and storing it safely in casks. No, keeping the waste away from people determined to dig up spent nuclear fuel for 100000 years isn't a real problem that needs to be solved.

> Weakness to improper handling. Human error is very common and should not be able to lead to catastrophic events.

Nuclear disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima are very small when you compare them to other industrial accidents, like chemical plants or oil/gas. People are dumb and sometimes they cause disasters like these. Many times bigger disasters (in terms of deaths, property damage) happen without people having a say, like tsunamis, hurricanes, volcano eruptions. Nuclear energy is much safer, in terms of deaths per kWh, than solar or wind energy.

> Usefulness of civilian technology in the spread of nuclear weapons.

All big countries where more nuclear energy will be most important in dropping the CO2 production already have nuclear weapons and are not going to get rid of them. Spread of nuclear weapons is not a relevant argument against most of new nuclear plants, because the weapons are already there.

> Nuclear disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima are very small when you compare them to other industrial accidents, like chemical plants or oil/gas

Hmm, it's been 35 years and При́пʼять is still uninhabited—and, I think, uninhabitable—as part of the 2600-square-kilometer Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Which chemical-plant or oil/gas industrial accidents are you thinking of that have rendered 5000 square kilometers uninhabitable for 35 years, or rendered 2600 square kilometers uninhabitable for 70 years? I'm supposing that "very small when you compare" implies at least a factor of 2—more likely a factor of 10?

I can't even think of any major wars that have had such an effect, although it's easy to think of wars and accidents that have killed more people. Chernobyl killed 100 people more or less immediately and several thousand more people over the years. The Fukushima accident itself has only killed one person so far, but the evacuation (to keep people from being killed by radioactivity) killed 2200 more people.

On the afternoon that При́пʼять was evacuated in 01986, it was the ninth atomgrad; today there are 11 atomgrads in Russia (ЗАТО under the authority of Росатом), producing 20% of Russia's electricity. If we had five times as many atomgrads, or if we had as many atomgrads as we have sites of chemical plants, how many uninhabitable atomic Exclusion Zones would we have by now? Would it be more, or—thanks to the extra experience—fewer? Surely some would be smaller than Chernobyl's, some larger.

I think there probably would have been a few hundred thousand more people dead in such accidents, and a few dozen more radioactive nature preserves like the Chernobyl zone, before we figured it out, and that would have been better than the global-warming catastrophe we were on track for a decade ago. For better or worse, though, that wasn't the way things went. Instead now we have solar energy that's not just cheaper than nuclear but cheaper than coal.

> current nuclear industry capabilities

If I talked about that I would write way more negatively. Olkiluoto 3 is such a shut show for instance.

> there is no real problem with it.

You need to keep it from polluting the environment like the ground water, which is very hard to do on a geological timescale. Containers can rust or get crushed by forces. Not even saline formations are safe from water entry. Also you need to stop mishandling like dumping it in the Mediterranean like what happen end in Italy in the 80s.

> There is very little of such waste.

1 kg per capita per year like in France is not very little. And they don’t have any permanent storage location for that.

> Nuclear disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima are very small when you compare them to other industrial accidents, like chemical plants or oil/gas.

Which industrial accident has turned multiple hundreds to thousands of square kilometers into exclusion zones for decades of not centuries?

And we have been lucky that those accidents happened in relatively uninhabited areas.

> Nuclear energy is much safer, in terms of deaths per kWh, than solar or wind energy.

That’s both wrong and irrelevant as lack of deaths are just one aspect of safety.

> All big countries where more nuclear energy will be most important in dropping the CO2 production already have nuclear weapons

The world is not just 8 countries. Especially Africa will play a huge role when its population will get wealthier and consume more.

> very hard to do on a geological timescale.

Yes, but geological timescale (millions of years) is an absurd straw man. We have no influence on what happens with anything on that timescale. Civilizations come and go in thousands of years. On scale of millions of years various different disasters are much more impactful and inevitable, both human made (nuclear war) and natural (volcanoes, tsunamis, asteroid impacts). Little waste contaminating ground water a little is of NO concern to us.

> they don’t have any permanent storage location for that.

But it is very little, when compared to other kinds of waste. We can continue storing it at few special sites/pools/warehouses for hundreds of years like we do now. Of course, at some point putting the hot stuff in the ground becomes preferable.

France does not have Cigeo yet but it is in the works. "Permanent" is a bit too ambitious word, but long-term storage is planned. It is long-term, so there is no rush.

> into exclusion zones for decades of not centuries?

I meant in terms of deaths. Direct deaths due to Chernobyl are in the order of 60 people. Long term impact on deaths is very unclear and estimations are contested.

Exclusion zone due to Chernobyl accident was defined as 30km-radius disk centered at the plant. Radiation contamination is going down and overall long-term effect on ecosystem there is deemed positive by scientists expert on this area.

Creating an "exclusion zone" isn't exactly the worst thing that could happen in an industrial disaster. For example, the Bhopal gas disaster directly killed thousands of people and harmed half a million. Much more devastating.

> That’s both wrong and irrelevant as lack of deaths are just one aspect of safety.

Are you sure you want to subscribe under this ridiculous statement? If it is one aspect of safety, a very important one I might add, how is it irrelevant? Also, where did you read this fact about deaths/kWh of nuclear energy is wrong? It is a broadly accepted easily findable fact.

> The world is not just 8 countries. Especially Africa will play a huge role when its population will get wealthier and consume more.

"Will". Do you realize most of coal/gas power production happens in nuclear weapons wielding countries? What will happen with Africa is not clear now, they may build more nuclear or more coal/gas, time will tell.

I meant in terms of number of deaths and significantly harmed people.

Exclusion zone is a human concept for human inhabitation, it does not mean the zone is lost from the map of Ukraine. According to scientists that study the zone, for the non-human ecosystem the benefits of people moving out outweigh the damage now. In time, the radiation will go down so people can live there. Some already do, even though it is illegal.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/23/wildlife-returns...

> Direct deaths due to Chernobyl are in the order of 60 people. Long term impact on deaths is very unclear and estimations are contested ... the Bhopal gas disaster directly killed thousands of people and harmed half a million. Much more devastating

100, not 60, and while it's true that the long-term deaths from Chernobyl are "contested", the controversy is about whether only 4000 people have died from it so far, or more like 60,000 people. 350,000 people lost their homes.

In Bhopal, by comparison, the official death toll was 2259, but other estimates go as high as 16000. More to the point, though, almost 2 million people still live in Bhopal, more than before the disaster. Nobody lives in Pripyat now. Before the disaster 14000 people lived in Chernobyl itself; now 1000 people live there—state employees with short tours of duty, whose job it is to keep everybody else out of the Exclusion Zone except for brief, strictly monitored visits.

I don't think this supports a judgment that the Bhopal disaster—the worst such accident so far, despite the existence of many more pesticide plants and similar facilities than nuclear power plants—was "much more devastating".

But the whole safety debate is a moot point, since solar energy is so much cheaper than nuclear now that nuclear will be relegated to niche roles for decades.

I agree entirely. Chernobyl and Fujisima are examples of old, obsolete, and flawed tech that has long been ironed out and removed. With the new rectifications on technology, international incidents like Fukushima would never have happened. Also, new reactors produce considerably less waste than old ones, making it a manageable problem. Finally, Nuclear does not emit greenhouse gases; It has always been “clean” in that sense

> I meant in terms of number of deaths and significantly harmed people.

Okay, well, aside from the 4000–60'000 people who died from the Chernobyl disaster, 350'000 people permanently lost their homes, so they were significantly harmed. What "other industrial accidents, like chemical plants or oil/gas" is that "very small" compared to? What non-nuclear industrial accidents have permanently uprooted (or otherwise "significantly harmed") 700'000 or more people, wiping out entire centuries-old communities? Even the Beirut Blast (300,000 homeless, 210 dead, 7500 injured) and the Bhopal disaster (2500–16000 dead, 500'000 injured) didn't manage that.

It's probably true that the deer, rabbits, and black mold are better off, even if the people aren't, and that might be a good reason for deer, rabbits, and black mold to build nuclear power plants. But it's not a very convincing reason for people to build nuclear power plants.

(Global warming was, though, or should have been, until we had the better alternatives we have now.)

Immediate damage on lives was much bigger with Bhopal, long-term it is hard to say and let's not pretend we can analyze it here. It is hard to compare long-term effects between Ukraine and India and how much those effects were due to disasters and how much due to botched response. Different political system, population density and moving options for people.

My point is accidents other than nuclear with similar death counts do happen, thousands or tens of thousands people die or have to relocate. Natural disasters happen too - the tsunami responsible for Fukushima disaster killed 15000 people.

These kinds of disasters are immense and bad, but the damages are quite contained and can't dictate energy policy all around the world. The existence and non-preventability of similary big natural disasters shows that the narrative about nuclear energy being too dangerous is unsubstantiated. Chernobyl disaster is a lesson, but it is quite limited in scope - it is about pitfalls of soviet-like safety-neglecting attitudes, putting people who do not know how the reactor works in charge. Much less on dangers of nuclear energy.