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You can't claim to be an environmentalist and be anti-nuclear energy at the same time
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this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
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Unpopular Opinion
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Unfortunately this is an unpopular opinion and the other comments in the thread prove the average person thinks a nuclear power plant produces deadly products. It is literally thousands of times better for the environment than coal and gas plants. Replacing all coal and gas plants with nuclear energy would have an immediate positive impact on the environment. We also don't need to keep them forever. Eventually they'd be replaced with renewables.
Kurzgesagt video
A nuclear power plant does produce deadly products. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nuclear-waste-is-piling-up-does-the-u-s-have-a-plan/
A nuclear fusion power plant (up and coming) would produce zero net, but the energy needed is not yet sustainable. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-repeat-nuclear-fusion-breakthrough-in-a-step-toward-more-clean-energy-180982683/
However, I am not a professional, just a mere student. I think I'd agree that nuclear power overall, would be better now than coal or gas, but would be worse in the long run due to the residual pollution.
Those potentially deadly products can be stored in a safe way. Your link doesn't even claim that it's actively killing people. They claim that it's costly to build geologic repositories, and once they're built you don't need more for a long time. Meanwhile coal power plants are directly putting deadly waste into people's lungs.
Take a look at this bar chart: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17876910/
Nuclear waste is a solved problem, and it has been solved for a long time.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/06/19/stop-letting-your-ridiculous-fears-of-nuclear-waste-kill-the-planet/
It can also be reprocessed to further reduce the waste amounts:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing
And what if instead you used that decade+ and those $B’s to just build out renewables and storage? You’d make a difference faster, get better/faster return on your Investment, have a more stable grid, and the operating cost would make your investment continue paying off more for the life of the technology