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organicAnt  ·  4075 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Small reactors may be nuclear power's future

I would prefer no risk over an infinitesimal almost non-existent risk. Based on the examples I mentioned, when nuclear goes bad, it goes really bad and it affects countless future generations and radioactivity travels and is practically impossible to clean up. And innocent people end up paying with cancers and all sorts of nastiness. So why run a risk? (Not to mention that the military makes use of radioactive waste for manufacturing weapons with so called "depleted uranium" which is not considered a nuclear weapon but which causes radioactive poisoning with devastating consequences where it is used, such as in Iraq.)

Not all places need to have access to the same renewables for a decentralized grid to work. Your example of Finland is quite extreme. We can start with places where there's quite a bit of sunlight, which is a lot of the populated world and then focus in more challenging places. In Finland there may only be wind in the winter but what are the chances that the wind will stop all over the country at the same time? Also, it may be possible to take advantage of tidal energy and geo-thermal.

I'm well aware that moving over to renewable energy sources is challenging and expensive. But it is a price well worth paying for a resilient, non-polluting and risk free future. In fact it's the only solution if we ever want to arrive at such future.