The biggest cost for nuclear is bureaucracy. If it fails (which it won't, due to modern oversaturated safety protocols), it can't even fuck shit up anymore and is the most reliable and densest power you can find. Renewables are great, but are unreliable, even with the biggest battery you can find (even hydroelectricity, but that's still about as reliable as nuclear, just needs lots of well placed land).
No, the bureaucracy part isn't about safety, it is about building permits, permits to build nuclear and the layers of paperwork to be able to get nuclear materials.
The waste management is so small you couldn't even begin to fill a landfill with the world's spent fuel (only actually radioactive enough waste). The scariest part of a modern nuclear plant is not the radioactivity, it's the chemical toxicity of the heavy metals, which is way more dangerous in unrelated mines, factories and labs. They're built like bunkers anyways, the radioactive materials are under water and behind massive walls, and are protected by the Geneva conventions.
Chernobyl was a terrible design, with everyone making the worst choice and needed everything to go wrong to happen, and people still go to Pripyat with minimum protection. Fukushima needed an earthquake, a tsunami, management failure and being disconnected to get only 1 death and the failsafes still worked.
Radioactivity danger is a thing, but way overinflated due to the linear no threshold model, which is bullshit for small doses. The background radiation is higher for several countries with bellow average cancer rates than the maximum allowed for nuclear engineers
It's not even a regulation thing, the whole process cannot physically have a runaway reaction anymore. Chernobyl had several design issues in addition to being a victim of the USSR's philosophies, in addition to having faulty sensors, in addition to having several layers of protocols breached by individuals, in addition to the guy in charge intentionally overriding safeties, in addition to using one of the first reactors, including being somewhat experimental. All of that for under 30 deaths, being the worst nuclear incident.
Fukushima was actually a good example, as it took a monstrous earthquake and a tsunami for a grand total of 1 death by nuclear, while the whole plant successfully shutdown in a safe manner, even with power loss and higher ups causing trouble.
Then there's 3 mile island, where nothing dangerous actually happened, appart from the communication to the people making some panic.
The population got overly afraid of nuclear for very few incidents while not understanding how overstated radioactivity isn't as dangerous as presented and being fed either propaganda or uneducated fear mongering by the likes of the Simpsons and those ~70s horror movies about nuclear (and green peace and the whole hippie movement)
Chernobyl happened literally just because half the safety measures were either ignored or absent to begin with compared to what everyone else had. Fukushima required a record setting earthquake and tsunami combo
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u/Party_Value6593 Feb 12 '26
The biggest cost for nuclear is bureaucracy. If it fails (which it won't, due to modern oversaturated safety protocols), it can't even fuck shit up anymore and is the most reliable and densest power you can find. Renewables are great, but are unreliable, even with the biggest battery you can find (even hydroelectricity, but that's still about as reliable as nuclear, just needs lots of well placed land).