Well, the damage to the ecosystem from the BP oil spill will likely last a few hundred years. The damage from Chernobyl will likely last for a few tens of thousands of years.
The environment around Chernobyl has already recovered, and is now healthier than it would have been without a nuclear disaster (due entirely to it's function as a human repellent).
The area is still bad for humans; but not terrible for the ecosystem.
Sure. In the same way that flying is far safer than driving. There are massive amounts of safeguards in place to keep it as safe as possible. The problem is that when something goes wrong, it goes very, very wrong. This is why some people fear flying and nuclear power.
Even ignoring climate change, coal kills _literally a thousand times as many people as nuclear per kWh_ (largely due to air pollution; living vaguely near a coal plant measurably shortens your life). But people aren’t necessarily great at intuitively understanding risk; nuclear _feels_ much scarier.
>But people aren’t necessarily great at intuitively understanding risk; nuclear _feels_ much scarier.
Nuclear is much scarier. Your argument fails to account for the extreme effort spent in order to keep it safe!
In the US, high explosives kill fewer people per year than painkillers. Despite this extraordinary statistic, we're not about to let anyone buy high explosives over the counter. Because we know that high explosives are in fact, much more dangerous than painkillers.
Same goes for nuclear. We have kept it safe(ish) so far, but we know what can happen if we don't.
You don’t even have to look that far ahead, people area already dying every year due to the direct toxicity (Including radionuclide release!) of fossil fuel emissions.
One relevant study for those not aware: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11301007/
I mean every single major nuclear plant accident is from reactors built in the 1960s. I think we are simply better at building them and it is no longer a question of “when”
Assuming no outside forces suddenly intentionally do something to it. Attacks against infrastructure aren't uncommon. Having infrastructure that is well known to take quite some time to spin down with the consequences being ten thousand years of salted earth is quite a big bullseye.
Which I would still argue is far from making a "when" realistic. This entire comment chain started on the matter of cost. If someone has a reactor, the enemies won't try to explode. They will go Temüjin on it and seize it.
