Just to be clear, I’m not claiming that nuclear is not problematic. It is. But the lasting damage from ultra rare major disasters is like a decade of topsoil contamination.
You can compare nuclear to hydro and coal, because those are the similar sources that can produce base load electricity. In that group, nuclear is by far the least problematic.
When Russian troops dug trenches in the Chernobyl exclusion zone during the 2022 invasion hundreds of them developed acute radiation poisoning and radiation levels in the capital spiked. That was 36 years after the initial contamination.
Plants and animals in some areas of Europe, particularly specific mushrooms and deer, still have levels of radiation exposure from the event (since the radioactive particles travel in the food chain) that make them unsafe for consumption.
Just to be clear, I’m not claiming that nuclear is not problematic. It is. But the lasting damage from ultra rare major disasters is like a decade of topsoil contamination.
You can compare nuclear to hydro and coal, because those are the similar sources that can produce base load electricity. In that group, nuclear is by far the least problematic.
When Russian troops dug trenches in the Chernobyl exclusion zone during the 2022 invasion hundreds of them developed acute radiation poisoning and radiation levels in the capital spiked. That was 36 years after the initial contamination.
Plants and animals in some areas of Europe, particularly specific mushrooms and deer, still have levels of radiation exposure from the event (since the radioactive particles travel in the food chain) that make them unsafe for consumption.