Three Mile Island was the worst nuclear accident in US history. Was mainly caused by poor design of human feedback systems which caused operational confusion and lead to a catastrophic failure.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    15 hours ago

    You’re glazing over a LOT of R&D accidents, not to mention the infrastructure that supports and facilitates nuclear power generation.

    Yeah, the actual power generation plant is relatively small compared to a wind farm or solar plant, but you’re skipping the nuclear material refinement centers, the environmental challenges and risks posed by transportation and storage of nuclear material, and completely ignoring the storage of spent radioactive materials. Yucca mountain nuclear waste facility was constructed for a reason.

    I’m all for nuclear power, but you need to get into the gritty if you’re going to make a good faith attempt at comparing it to other methods of power production. The entire process of producing fissionable materials is extremely expensive, power intensive, and uses incredibly toxic chemistry to get it done.

    Fusion looks great on paper, but we’re still having a hell of a time figuring out how to capture energy from reactions that last millionths of a second.

    • @Rakonat
      link
      English
      25 hours ago

      https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-per-energy-source

      Nuclear land use is still below all other forms of energy generation when you take the whole lifecycle, from mining to refinement to production and construction, lile I said in my above post.

      Most nuclear plants contain all their nuclear waste during their lifetime operation and transport after decommissioning. Yucca mountain was designed as a backup and assumed 30 years to fill if fuel rods were not reprocessed.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        -15 hours ago

        Lolol really? Taking into account the whole life cycle? Did they factor in how long it’s going to take to decontaminate, say, Chernobyl? That’s unfair, because that was an accident. How about Lake Karachay?