@NoelWauchope@mastodon.social I’m sorry, but to put it bluntly, I think this is an awful take based more on fear mongering than fact.

Nuclear waste has been practically solved, as waste-based reactors dramatically reduce the necessary storage lifetime of their spent fuel.

Costs are being attenuated by building SMRs, and having more distributed, smaller reactors means a more robust power grid in the event of a plant outage or a malicious attack.

Not all fissile material can be or is used to make bomb material, and having a 0 carbon, highly scalable, and REGULATED WASTE STREAM method to generate power is amazing.

Solar panels are full of perovskites which contain lead, or other materials that contain cadmium or other highly toxic heavy metals. They are often shipped to 3rd world countries where they are eventually burned and cause disease and death to the “recyclers”. And coal ash puts out more radioactive waste into the air and environment than nuclear by multiple orders of magnitude to the point that thyroid and other cancers are dramatically more likely to occur in their vicinity. You could walk past a nuclear glass concrete storage and experience less radiation exposure than living near a coal plant.

All this to say: bombs bad, electricity good, and you can literally say this about nearly ANY power source. The US firebombed Japan before nuking them and the firebombs did more total damage throughout the war, does that mean we should be anti-gasoline, or anti jet fuel, or any other combustible material? Granted, nuclear is much more devastating with smaller amounts, but can also be used for good, and it should be or we have absolutely NO shot of tackling the climate issues we will be facing soon without it.