My main issue with Nuclear power is my lack of trust in regulators over time.
Nuclear done well is safe, clean and has an extremely low carbon footprint.
But, where profit incentives exist, lobby groups exist. And the US government has shown itself incredibly pliable with enough donations and time given.
So for me, give it 10-15 years, or less, and the safety margins will erode over time as people get too comfy with the new normal, and like always happens, be it Boeing, Texas power systems or the like, I have a nasty suspicion bad events will start happening at a scale previously unseen, with companies not doing their due diligence and lobbying for concessions and bending regulation around expensive but necessary precautions.
Along those same lines, can modern America even handle major infrastructure projects such as new nuclear power plants, without those initiatives collapsing into a mass of red tape, contractor corruption, dueling interest groups, endless studies, political showmanship, and cost and time overruns? The time for nuclear was decades ago, when the country's systems were more functional.
You can already see what effect nuclear has when the safety is not done well (Chernobyl and Fukusima). But even those cases kill less people than coal done well.
They kill less people than coal if you make a very gross average of total deaths per kWh.
30 years after the Chernobyl disaster there are two uninhabitable subdivisions of Ukraine that will require control for the rest of human history. "Average deaths" doesn't matter when the people living near nuclear power plants have to be in constant preparation for total evacuation.
I agree with the parent comment in that I wouldn't trust Western countries in maintaining nuclear plants for 40 years and safely disassembling them afterwards. Luckily for us, renewables exist so we don't have to.
> Is there any serious unpredictable danger for people living near Chernobyl?
The towns surrounding Chernobyl were completely evacuated. This can happen again.
In Germany, the government of Aachen is giving iodine tablets and asked its people to prepare for an eventual nuclear catastrophe because of the nearby nuclear power plant behind the border with Belgium [1]. The nuclear power station was designed to run 30 years, but 15 years after its expiration date there's no sign the Belgian government will close it.
I wouldn't trust any western government to not fall for the same "already built plant = free energy" trap the Belgian government fell into. We are better off admitting that and focusing on renewables instead of risking nuclear.
The Chernobyl disaster happened on a world power with strong scientific and engineering capabilities. I don't see how a power plant that's 15 years over expiration date like Tihange couldn't be a couple of serious mistakes away from a similar catastrophic meltdown.
This is not "Tihange will definitely melt down". This is "there's a small chance Tihange might melt down and render a significant part of Belgium and Germany uninhabitable like parts of Ukraine and Belarus are uninhabitable now" which to me is unacceptable.
Nuclear done well is safe, clean and has an extremely low carbon footprint.
But, where profit incentives exist, lobby groups exist. And the US government has shown itself incredibly pliable with enough donations and time given.
So for me, give it 10-15 years, or less, and the safety margins will erode over time as people get too comfy with the new normal, and like always happens, be it Boeing, Texas power systems or the like, I have a nasty suspicion bad events will start happening at a scale previously unseen, with companies not doing their due diligence and lobbying for concessions and bending regulation around expensive but necessary precautions.