I want new ones, not built in tsunami & earthquake prone areas, since they are the only practical way to eliminate greenhouse gasses, and to stop propping up theocracies in the Middle East.
Oh, and I forgot about getting off of coal. Even if there were 10 more Fukushimas, it still wouldn't be as much radiation as what coal produces:
"The radiation that fossil fuel plants spew into the environment each year is around 0.1 EBq. That’s ExaBecquerel, or 10 to the power of 18. Fukushima is pumping out 10 trillion becquerels a year at present. Or 10 TBq, or 10 of 10 to the power of 12. Or, if you prefer, one ten thousandth of the amount that the world’s coal plants are doing. Or even, given that there are only about 2,500 coal plants in the world, Fukushima is, in this disaster, pumping out around one quarter of the radiation that a coal plant does in normal operation."
Yeah well, you can sort of plan for tsunamis, but earthquakes have a habit of sneaking up on you. In 2012 there was a humongous earthquake in Italy... in the area with the lowest risk of earthquake around the entire country, technically one of the safest areas in the continent.
The only completely-safe nuclear reactor is the one which doesn't get built.
The only completely safe ____ is the one which ____. We can fill in the blanks all day long.
There are ways to mitigate the earthquake risk and there are new designs that are incapable of melting-down. Using a combination of the two would certainly be better than crap we're spewing into the atmosphere at the moment.
It's only scary if you read sensationalist BS and don't bother to educate yourself on the facts.
Nuclear power is the cleanest way to produce large scale energy. It's also one of the safest ways. In the entire lifetime of using nuclear power we've had a grand total of 3 accidents, and even in this case, it was a 50 year old power-plant that survived an earthquake several times more powerful than it was ever designed for.
> In the worst-case scenario, a mishandled rod may go critical, resulting in an above-ground meltdown releasing radioactive fallout with no way to stop it, said Consolo, who is the founder and host of Nuked Radio. ...
It's so easy for a rod to go critical? This nuclear reactors use water as a moderator, the moderator increases the chance of the nuclear reaction.
Just after the tsunami the problem was that the rods had a lot of intermediate short-lived radioactive elements, and need the water for cooling. Now I suppose that most of them had disappeared.
Very detailed article about the next task to remove 1,300 fuel rods from Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan and how it could lead to a series of cascading failures with an apocalyptic outcome.
Many details that I did not know yet. However it is scary to read.
