Killing a predictable number of people each year is not danger, it's damage. The danger posed by hydro is real, but entirely negligible compared to nuclear.
But of course we should replace fossils by renewables and phase them out before nuclear. And if nuclear wouldn't take too long to build building new nuclear plants as a stopgap may actually make sense. Unfortunately, they do.
Fukushima was a triple meltdown after total inundation of 1960s-class reactors. The short and long-term death-toll from radiation was quite literally zero, as reaffirmed by UNSCEAR just last month [1]. I don't think the "boundlessly large nuclear accidents make the technology untenable" argument really holds water given this kind of experience.
So... so you must always postulate the worst possible scenario, no matter how unlikely, and judge any technology solely by that? Even in the face of 60 years of worldwide operation providing huge swaths of the world's carbon-free energy while injuring only a vanishing fraction of the people injured by the most common alternate sources?
I cannot see how this view can be justified.
But if you want to take this view, consider this hypothetical worst case. Imagine we push forward with wind, solar, and batteries, but human rights issues related to manufacturing with slave labor, corruption, mineral shortages, grid instabilities, and land usage issues that emerge once these technologies reach world-scale cause enough trouble that we just keep on operating large amounts of fracked fossil gas to the point that climate change hits the bad predicted scenarios and all the bad events of climate change happen anyway. Isn't that hypothesized worst case just as valid as this worse-than-Chernobyl nuclear accident you're holding above our heads?
Since the damage caused by severe nuclear accidents is essentially permanent, we cannot recover from them. So in the long run, we cannot afford even an accident per century, and thus, cannot afford nuclear power.
Also building enough nuclear to replace fossils would take too long anyway, it's not even an option.
> we cannot afford even an accident per century, and thus, cannot afford nuclear power.
This statement has no basis. We've had multiple awful nuclear accidents and the world keeps turning. We are headed towards a much worse scenario of climate change if we don't effectively decarbonize.
You are aware that there are places on earth with hundreds of thousands of inhabitants that have natural radiation dose rates from the geology that are well beyond the dose rates in almost all of the Chernobyl and Fukushima exclusion zones?
> Also building enough nuclear to replace fossils would take too long anyway, it's not even an option.
That's a thing anti-nuclear institutions have been saying for sure but it doesn't hold even a little water. France, for example, decarbonized almost all of its electricity with nuclear in 15 years. When you take a look at achieved decarbonization rates per capita, nuclear is at the top.
Today, we've seen reactors of the Hualong One, ABWRs, VVERs, and ARP-1400 designs built in wholly reasonable times.
And for deep decarbonization, we plan to use factory/shipyard production techniques to serially produce thousands of standardized low-carbon power plants even faster.
> This statement has no basis. We've had multiple awful nuclear accidents and the world keeps turning.
You hadn't forgotten I was writing about severe accidents within half a sentence, hadn't you?
> We are headed towards a much worse scenario of climate change if we don't effectively decarbonize.
I'm quite aware of that. And if I considered stopgap nuclear realistically possible, maybe I'd support it.
> That's a thing anti-nuclear institutions have been saying for sure but it doesn't hold even a little water. France, for example, decarbonized almost all of its electricity with nuclear in 15 years.
Building nuclear is not even the hard part. Deciding to do so is. Changing public opinion to favour nuclear won't happen in time so there's no point. The decision to decarbonize using renewables has been made, there's actually no need to even discuss it further.
> When you take a look at achieved decarbonization rates per capita, nuclear is at the top.
The available technology and political climate has changed since then.
But of course we should replace fossils by renewables and phase them out before nuclear. And if nuclear wouldn't take too long to build building new nuclear plants as a stopgap may actually make sense. Unfortunately, they do.