Nuclear causes the fewest deaths out of all available energy sources, except solar, which is a tiny bit lower in that regard. Both wind and hydro have a higher death toll, with wind being just slightly above nuclear, and hydro being a lot higher (about 40x more deaths).

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh

Usually I wouldn't cite this source, but in this case their data matches other, more trustworthy ones, and is the first that shows up in search engines.

Those deaths are counted in my 5 k

You actually don't need any fossil fuel to make it work. You just have to electrify the mining machinery then you can power it with solar, wind, hydro and nuclear.

Best I can see, summer shutdowns are primarily caused by extended spring maintenance. Is there some more concrete reason summer shutdowns happen?

Thorium Salt Reactors eat waste uranium and are capable of creating more uranium form thorium for legacy reactors in a continuous cycle.

implementation. Execution. Maintenance. Long term sustainability.

Fossil Fuel fired power plants?

People never hesitate to show that feels > reals

You can say that but I remember Fukushima. The damage causes by the Fukushima meltdown cost more than the power company's total profits in Japan over the previous 40 years.

And it's a mistake that will never happen again, as this accident immediately triggered a ton of retrofitting across the nuclear reactors in use specifically to cover the eventuality that Fukushima showed us.

Now compare Fukushima to the ongoing effects of fossil fuel plants, and the deaths caused. What do you think caused more deaths, Fukushima, or stopping all nuclear plants in the country? This paper argues that the shutdown caused an increase in mortality (people freezing to death over winter due to up to 40% higher energy costs) ultimately killing more people than radiation exposure (emphasis mine):

To put these estimates in context, we calculate that the higher electricity prices resulted in at least an additional 1,280 deaths during 2011-2014. Since our data only covers the 21 largest cities in Japan, which represents 28 percent of the total population, the total effects for the entire nation are even larger. Meanwhile, the number of deaths due to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident is much lower. No deaths have yet to be directly attributable to radiation exposure, though projections estimate a cumulative 130 deaths (Ten Hoeve and Jacobson 2012). An estimated 1,232 deaths occurred as a result of the evacuation after the accident.7 Therefore, the deaths from the higher electricity prices likely outnumber the deaths from the accident in only four years if we extrapolate our estimates to the entire country, and almost certainly outnumber the deaths over a longer time period given that the higher electricity prices persisted beyond the end of our study. This suggests that ceasing nuclear energy production has contributed to more deaths than the accident itself.

So keep telling me that nuclear is safe, and I'll keep pointing to the damage it is guaranteed to cause.

Nuclear power is the safest form of energy per TWH. Tell me again how much you care about guaranteed damage caused by an energy source. Nuclear may have a large local impact, but that's not remotely comparable to the global environmental impact that fossil fuels have, both in premature deaths and impact on the climate. Shutting down nuclear before you have a non-fossil fuel base load source in the name of safety is spending dollars to get pennies.

And you're risking your entire city, all at once, everything in it.

Out of over 660 plants over 60 years, there's been 3 'major' accidents, of which only one of them was even close to what you're describing. Fukishima has close to a quarter million people living there today. Heck, even the small town of londonberry township (3 mile island) has almost 5000 people in it.

Your argument is based in hysterics, not reality.

The cost was because people like you dont understand low dose exposure and stick to the LNT model for radiation exposure. So they literly dug out the ground and removed all traces of radation. On paper that sounds great till you realize that nothing is radiation free and this was essentially a massive theatrical production of mopping the rain.

There's been what, three disasters total similar to the one in Fukushima? And remind me, how many people died from that one? Was it one guy?

There is no one ideal energy source. The best approach is, as always, to diversify. Relying completely on one source is irresponsible. Nuclear with renewables is a fantastic mix. Especially in countries that can't reliably generate significant amounts of electricity with hydro.

Renewable sources of energy are safer

They're actually not, generally speaking. All types of renewable energy, with the exception of solar, cause more deaths than nuclear does.

• https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
• https://cheatsheets.davidveksler.com/deaths-per-terawatt-hour.html

Some articles report slightly lower death tolls for renewables, but don't provide any sources for that data. Geothermal energy, which neither of the two sources above includes for some reason, sits right next to wind, so slightly above nuclear in terms of deaths caused per terawatt-hour.

Nuclear doesn't compete with wind and solar. You can put up wind and hydro cheaply and quickly almost anywhere, and that's great and all and we should honestly subsidize manufacture inside Europe rather than just rely on buying from China.

But you still need base load and nuclear is the only option that makes any sense on scale from an ecological perspective. Hydro is highly situational and almost always a worse option for the environment, as well as for safety. Coal plants should never be an option.

So yeah, just go nuclear bro.

I live by a bunch of nuclear plants. One day, I got a text alert from the government saying something was going on at one of the nuclear plants. I decided I was probably already going to die and the went back to watching porn on the toilet. I will have my dream of being an environmental telling skeleton.

You havent been attacked by a solar panel? Theyre awfully vicious in my area /s

Real answer is probably engineering issues, DIY, and a healthy dose of propaganda-number-fudging

The RBMK design was outdated 10 years before construction.... but yeah lets unironically compare a model T Ford with no automatic controls slop welded together with shit tolerences and barely any control systems to a modern car with sensors and with safety features because they are both examples of a car.