You may be joking, but seriously the possible irreparable damage is indeed an argument for me that gets insufficiently addressed by the pro nuclear people.
Off course, more people die because of coal power plants and off course the net loss of land due to global warming is bigger compared to nuclear due to rising sea levels. But you can still go to those flooded places (albeit in a diving suite) and not get cancer... This is not the case for the Chernobyl area or Fukushima. This place is lost and cannot be used by humans for a long time. This cannot not happen when using coal power plants.
Take a small country like Switzerland. We cannot afford to lose any land. You can do something about the death of people in the coal mining industry and you can also do something to reduce the atmospheric CO2. But once a nuclear accident happens the land is lost and nothing can be done about it.
And this point is never addressed properly. I don't care about the probability, I care about the possibility.
> This is not the case for the Chernobyl area or Fukushima. This place is lost and cannot be used by humans for a long time. This cannot not happen when using coal power plants.
Wrong.
The Centralia Mine fire has been burning since 1963.[1] The area of the mine is extremely dangerous, causing the city above to be seized by eminent domain and condemned. Poisonous, dangerously heated gases erupt from the ground at random. Chernobyl is reaching the point where the radiation levels are low enough for tourism. Centralia's mine fire will continue burning for up to 250 years. The released gasses will continue to contribute to atmospheric CO2 that entire time. The radiological components of coal combustion (radium gas being one) will continue to be released. It's already a known fact that coal power plants cause more radiation in the cities around them than nuclear plants do.
This is not the only mine fire in the state of Pennsylvania[2], let alone the only such site in the world.
"you can also do something to reduce the atmospheric CO2"
Would you mind sharing this 'something' that magically makes CO2 disappear? Because unless you're suggesting to stop using cars and electricity, there'd be a lot of people interested in that method to stop climate change.
"Take a small country like Switzerland. We cannot afford to lose any land."
Meaning since Switzerland can't afford to lose land, other countries have to. But then why not just built nuclear power plants outside of Switzerland and import power instead?
"I don't care about the probability, I care about the possibility."
No, you always care about the probability. There is a possibility that tomorrow a big asteroid crashes into Earth and extinguishes all humans. But the possibility alone doesn't justify the trillions that would be required to mitigate that risk.
> I don't care about the probability, I care about the possibility.
Anything could happen. All the electrons in the atoms of your body could end up in Mars or all the gas in your room escapes out asphyxiating you. But that's a very very low probability. Probability matters, not the possibility.
Not to mention that Chernobyl and Fukushima are far from the worst case scenario.
An active power plant or a nuclear waste storage facility being destroyed (e.g. as an act of war) and dispersing a large amount of fuel/waste in the environment would be orders of magnitude worse.
Off course, more people die because of coal power plants and off course the net loss of land due to global warming is bigger compared to nuclear due to rising sea levels. But you can still go to those flooded places (albeit in a diving suite) and not get cancer... This is not the case for the Chernobyl area or Fukushima. This place is lost and cannot be used by humans for a long time. This cannot not happen when using coal power plants.
Take a small country like Switzerland. We cannot afford to lose any land. You can do something about the death of people in the coal mining industry and you can also do something to reduce the atmospheric CO2. But once a nuclear accident happens the land is lost and nothing can be done about it.
And this point is never addressed properly. I don't care about the probability, I care about the possibility.