> Yes, Chernobyl
Sorry, I was asking for a source that supports the claim that "nuclear has _*much worse failure modes*_", not if a disaster exists. That's why I provided a source where I'd argue that the failure mode was worse than Chernobyl. I can point to more if you want, but the question was about a comparison.
> And yes uranium for power plants is still enriched, even if it’s not to the degree that weapons-grade uranium is enriched.
My criticism of this is that you're claim suggests that other energy sources don't have harmful byproducts. I've stated clearly that nuclear has worse, but FAR less. For comparison, a bomb is ~97% enriched uranium where a fuel rod is about 3%. This is exactly why I brought up the Iran deal. There's plenty of byproducts that we have in many common industries that also easily enter aquifers, never degrade (at least radioactive material degrades), and are extremely dangerous to humans. Many of these things are used in sources like solar (PV). The difference in nuclear is that the quantities are far less. Several orders of magnitude. Here's a picture of all of France's radioactive waste[0]. This is decades of waste for an entire country. Here's a video of Russia's equivalent[1]. The numbers are just tiny. Yearly PV waste is 150x that of nuclear. There's just nothing else out there that you can put decades of industry waste in a single building. I won't even bring up that coal does more than this every day. You have to account for the difference in waste levels.
> False equivalency strikes again. You’re trying to deflect to the issue of securing the plant. Compare what can be done with a ton of nuclear fuel or nuclear waste vs a ton of whatever goes into or comes out of a coal plant.
Our worry in both cases is state actors. But you're probably thinking "terrorists could just steal nuclear material and make a bomb". If you're thinking a dirty bomb, I'll refer you to this thread[2]. If you're talking about a warhead, well remember the huge differences in quantities and why Iran is pretty far away from being able to create a warhead. Such an operation would be incredibly difficult. You're much better off stealing from a weapons plant. (I should note that you can also create a dirty bomb out of coal waste)
> You also call the waste footprints of nuclear fission power “small”. Well it’s partly small because nuclear power is small. To scale it up to the level where could actually displace fossil fuel use would multiply those numbers and problems by 10-100x.
France is the obvious counter example to this where they produce 413TWh, which is about half of what the US does. Those pictures are half a century's worth of storage. To get waste sizes equal to coal you'd have to scale up 500,000x, and if you had that much nuclear running you could produce enough energy for the world many times over. Even scaling up the 150x to match solar you'd be producing 6x the world's energy consumption. You'd need 5x to do the US, nowhere near 10x-100x (nuclear is already 20% of US energy production, where are you getting 10x-100x??!?!?!). I'm not even suggesting that. I'm suggesting like 2x and let renewables grow 4x (it isn't nuclear vs renewables, that's a real false equivalence).
> And I’ll not to completely skipped over the biggest problem of all: it requires humans tasked with building, maintaining, operations and monitoring plants in a way that just doesn’t seem realistic or scalable.
Well for one, if it was the biggest problem you should have brought it up if you expect me to respond to it. For the second point, we have a track record of nuclear being far safer than any other energy production to date. So yeah, I'll ignore it. If you can find me a source that says nuclear kills more people I'll bite, but right now this is insane[3]. Having this argument is costing lives. Nuclear, along with renewables, are orders of magnitude safer than gas, biomass, and fossil fuels.
This is insane that we're having this debate. People are dying. The planet is being severely harmed. And while we continue to have this argument the fossil fuel companies win and get to continue to kill people and the planet. So sorry if I'm a bit pissed, but I don't like the fact that hundreds of thousands of people are dying every year that don't need to. That millions go without power that could have it. That could have hospitals (which wasn't considered in our deaths above), education, access to the internet, and a modern world.
I'm providing sources, if you're just going to spout hearsay then expect me to treat you like someone who is promoting deadly propaganda (i.e. pissed).
[0] https://twitter.com/Orano_usa/status/1182662569619795968
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5uN0bZBOic&t=105s
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26605085
[3] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy