EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy

I think a good exercise for the reader is to reflect on why they were ever against nuclear power in the first place. Nuclear power was always the greenest, most climate friendly, safest, cheapest (save for what we do to ourselves), most energy dense, most long lasting, option.

I remember the anti-nuclear fever went viral in 2011 after the Fukushima nuclear accident caused by the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. I think the correct lesson to be learned from that experience is not to built nuclear power plants in places where they can be damaged by natural disasters...and not to call for all nuclear power plants around the world to be shut down.

Or if you build them there, build them so they can withstand that disaster.

There was another similar plant even closer to the epicenter, and it was hit with a (slightly) higher tsunami crest. It survived basically undamaged and even served as shelter for tsunami refugees. Because they had built the tsunami-wall to spec. And didn't partially dismantle it to make access easier like what was done in Fukushima.

Oh, and for example all the German plants would also have survived essentially unscathed had they been placed in the exact same spot, for a bunch of different reasons.

> Because they had built the tsunami-wall to spec.

If you're referring to the Onagawa plant, one engineer (Yanosuke Hirai) pushed for the height of the wall to be increased beyond the original spec:

> A nuclear plant in a neighboring area, meanwhile, had been built to withstand the tsunamis. A solitary civil engineer employed by the Tohoku Electric Power Company knew the story of the massive Jogan tsunami of the year 869, because it had flooded the Shinto shrine in his hometown. In the 1960s, the engineer, Yanosuke Hirai, had insisted that the Onagawa Nuclear Power Station be built farther back from the sea and at higher elevation than initially proposed—ultimately nearly fifty feet above sea level. He argued for a seawall to surpass the original plan of thirty-nine feet. He did not live to see what happened in 2011, when forty-foot waves destroyed much of the fishing town of Onagawa, seventy-five miles north of Fukushima. The nuclear power station—the closest one in Japan to the earthquake’s epicenter—was left intact. Displaced residents even took refuge in the power plant’s gym.

https://www.economist.com/open-future/2019/12/06/were-design...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onagawa_Nuclear_Power_Plant#20...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanosuke_Hirai

The point is not about "someone may not err" but about "someone may err", or more precisely "someone WILL err", coupled with the effects of such mistakes.

Failing to correctly design, build, exploit or maintain a wind turbine or solar panel isn't a big deal. Failing to do so on a nuclear reactor can become a huge and lasting disaster for many.