DiaNuke.org

It’s obvious why people connected with the failing nuclear industry will keep desperately pushing the “nuclear is a climate solution” argument. But there are also other people genuinely worried about climate change who might still stubbornly back nuclear power despite the arguments put above. There are several reasons for this.

The disaster at Chernobyl is still considered one of the worst nuclear accidents in history. It happened on April 26, 1986. Thirty-five years later, a group of survivors returns to the ghost city of Pripyat in northern Ukraine.

In an attempt to negotiate these contending positions, a frequent mantra is that energy strategies should “do everything” in order to address the climate emergency. But – as a number of commentators have noted (for example, here and here) – this would actually be a highly irrational course of action.

Where “doing everything” involves making investments that are slower or less cost effective, which divert resources away from preferable options, or which in some other way impede them, the result would be potentially disastrous for carbon emissions mitigation.

In the graphic report linked below the description of “reprocessing” irradiated nuclear fuel refers to dissolving the solid fuel in nitric acid, thereby creating a corrosive and fiercely radioactive liquid. That is indeed how most reprocessing in other countries has so far taken place.