> I keep seeing justifications like that and it makes me want to puke
This kind of justification is _indeed_ a bit cynical and morbid. I suspect it is a way to respond to the sometimes overly emotional argument from nuclear opponents.
I don't think it helps having a cool-headed debate on this complicated topic.
However, I do think mentionning that all form of electricy productions have risk trade-offs, and illustrating it with the insane number of casualties caused by other sources of energy production is relevant. (Eg: https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...)
But a bit of "tact" is warranted.
> First of all: The total number of victims is unknown and it is still rising. Even for Chernobyl.
The total number of victims from the direct events (explosion, short term exposure) is largely "known" (although the Soviet numbers might not be trustworthy, if you want to go this direction.)
The long-term numbers are of course harder to estimate. Again, it's going to sound morbid; but, to know if it's "still rising", you have to determine if someone who dies from a cancer 34 years after the event died because of the event.
I'm in no way qualified to say so.
I have to revert to the same method I use when I don't know stuff: I find scientists to trust.
In this case, the UN organization that has to investigate such things does not see a massive hidden mortality, as I understand it. (https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html#Exposure .)
It is entirely possible not to trust UN on this, but not really helpful.
> Second: It costs tens of billions of dollars to clean up these messes. Paid for by the cow you can milk forever: tax payers.
That's absolutely true. It's also the tax payers who invested money to build the plant, and reap the benefit of having the energy. Again, this is a cost-benefit analysis. It's perfectly possible to not come to the same conclusion depending on your level of risk averseness.
However here, again, it's not irrelevant to mention that all sources have this kind of trade-off.
And, to put it bluntly, I assume it would also be the tax payer would who have to clean-up after a broken dam. Or an hydrogen storage tank that explodes. Or burying the child mining the rare-earths needed for solar panels. Or curing the respiratory diseases caused by fossil fuels as we speak. Not even mentioning the various climate events.
> In short, if the goal is decarbonization wind and solar are the only game in town. Add medium and long-term storage to the mix and there's nothing stopping us from a truly green future other than politics.
Unfortunately, the `medium` and `long-term` storage does not seem to exist yet at the scale required to sustain modern world grids - at least according to scientists who would like to decarbonize just a much as you and I. (https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/03/meet-vaclav-smil-man... , https://jancovici.com/transition-energetique/renouvelables/1...)
I would love the situation to be more simple. The same science that tells us the climate is changing it telling us our energy situation is not easy to solve - yet.
In the meantime, we'll have to use all tools available (including the dangerous but efficient ones.)
I'm in no way an "absolute fan" of current nuclear (Although I'm much more concerned about the long term storage of waste - not so much because it's dangerous, but because no one wants it in their backyard. And proliferation, a bit.)
I'm all for investing in doing nuclear fission differently. If the design presented here does lower the risk of accident, as they claim, that would be for the best.
I don't think you're trusting the claim, and I can say that I'm rather skeptical too - but mostly because I don't know much. If enough scientist tell me this kind of nuclear plant is safer, I can accept that.
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Off-topic: If I was very cynical and very pro-nuclear, I would fund a massive superproduction about a giant dam collapsing. The super-vilain could be a corrupt entrepreneur helped by an ambitous greenwashing politician.
