Even taking the high estimate for chernobyl at value, deaths from nuclear still pale in comparison to deaths from fossil fuels... The WHO puts at 4.2M deaths/year from air pollution [0] and there are other studies putting it at twice that.
Coal also emits far more radiation than nuclear... this study puts it at 100x [1]
Who indeed is entitled to coerce others into accepting a risk. Except I would flip that the other way... the risk I am being coerced into running face first into catastrophic climate change instead of investing in nuclear energy.....
renewables simply can't meet base load requirements, grid scale energy storage doesn't exist... which means to phase out fossil fuels we need nuclear. there's no two ways about it
plus we could have done all of this decades ago if greenpeace/the oil lobby hadn't pulled off their incredible anti-nuclear stunt.
also renewables pose significant enviromental problems. going to kill a lot of birds and pave a lot of deserts (which are useful ecology not wastelands) to make ends meet. OTOH nuclear has spectacular power density
Ivanpah puts out like 400MW using 3500 acres. It also uses a shitload of natural gas and fries birds. Oops.
Diablo Canyon puts out 2.25GW using 12 acres. And doesn't fry any birds.
> renewables simply can't meet base load requirements
We read this since the 1990's. Meanwhile the share of renewable energy in gross final energy consumption in Europe reached 19.7% in 2019, up from 9.6% in 2004.
A grid-scale storage exists and is already useful: dams (pumped-storage hydroelectricity). Others appear (electric vehicle batteries, hydrogen...). The need for storage is proportional to renewable sources variability, which can be tamed (sources mix, geographic dispersion...).
The main anti-nuclear stunts are the nuclear boo-boos, interpreted as warnings (mainly TMI, Chernobyl, Fukushima).
Renewable are deployed a system (many units, just as nuclear plants) and a mix (many types: wind, solar, biomass...). Analyzing Ivanpah alone isn't sound, as variability is at its max.
There are contraptions reducing the impact (bird...) of wind turbines.
Off-shore (especially windfarms) and desert relieve a fair part of the low-power density effects, and local small systems (for example on rooftops...) also are part of the solution. This leads to a quite respectable density (in terms of useful land waster), while building a nuclear powerplant in a densely populated area becomes more and more difficult (Diablo Canyon's implantation site, Avila Beach, has 1600 inhabitants... on 16.15 km2!).
Even neglecting any direct accident, Diablo Canyons's warm waste may, in case of a new boo-boo, fry many things for many years.
Coal also emits far more radiation than nuclear... this study puts it at 100x [1]
Who indeed is entitled to coerce others into accepting a risk. Except I would flip that the other way... the risk I am being coerced into running face first into catastrophic climate change instead of investing in nuclear energy.....
[0] https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution [1] https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/...