> Edit: Really don't get the down vote here. It's costing the Japanese anywhere from $200-$800 billion?
1) That isn't an astronomical number. It is $2,000-$8,000 per Japanese person. For a freak accident. Put that in $/kWh terms and you might find that nuclear was reasonably cost effective even in one of the worst nuclear disasters in history, let alone under normal conditions.
2) I don't know if it is controversial; although if the people demanding the cleanup are the same lunatics who regulate the industry in the west I want to see what the justification is for spending $100s of billions of dollars.
3) The cleanup cost should be considered. When we multiply probability by cost it will be a short consideration. There is no way it is as bad as what everyone is currently already doing with coal. It is likely that it will also be better than renewables once waste is factored in, just because the volumes of material involved.
Pretty sure the cleanup costs for continued use of coal, oil, and natural gas due to global climate change far exceed any from nuclear, including even Chernobyl.
Entire nations are disappearing under the rising seas [0]. So far they are relatively poor and lack political influence. Bangladesh is soon for the chopping block. Louisiana and Florida are not far behind. Folks really don't get how close to sea level massive portions of these very large areas are. Far larger than the Fukushima exclusion zone, that's for sure.
Also worth pointing out that there are plenty of low-lying inland areas both critical to the global economy and vulnerable to damage from climate change. Relevant to my own background: California's Central Valley sits pretty darn close to sea level, and is already dependent on rather elaborate levee systems to keep floodwaters and delta seawaters at bay. Said region produces large swaths of the world's entire supply of various fruits and vegetables; that farmland turning into ocean (a very real risk per various climate models) would be catastrophic for the global supply of said produce.
And that's just around sea level rise. The Central Valley's water issues are another probable symptom of global climate change, and just because the Valley lucked out with a wet winter this year doesn't mean that luck will persist. If push comes to shove, I'm sure California's agricultural sector would much rather invest the billions necessary for desalination and upgraded levees to address those symptoms than abandon California entirely - but those are still costs being thrust upon California due to a continued reliance on fossil fuels.
Not until fossil fuels are eliminated for all practical purposes. The only real competition we have today is against global climate change. Once we get past that hump, we can quibble about non-carbon-emitting details.
As long as coal, oil, and natural gas are burned and released into the atmosphere, the economic "competition" going forward is illusory. We're just buying the mitigation and cleanup efforts on credit.
1) That isn't an astronomical number. It is $2,000-$8,000 per Japanese person. For a freak accident. Put that in $/kWh terms and you might find that nuclear was reasonably cost effective even in one of the worst nuclear disasters in history, let alone under normal conditions.
2) I don't know if it is controversial; although if the people demanding the cleanup are the same lunatics who regulate the industry in the west I want to see what the justification is for spending $100s of billions of dollars.
3) The cleanup cost should be considered. When we multiply probability by cost it will be a short consideration. There is no way it is as bad as what everyone is currently already doing with coal. It is likely that it will also be better than renewables once waste is factored in, just because the volumes of material involved.