Two issues must be addressed, however: spent fuel storage and proper maintenance of facilities. Both get swept under the rug, unfortunately. I did a brief stint with a company that made components for nuclear reactors, and I can attest to the most rigorous of engineering, Quality, and safety testing and evaluation on the face of the earth. I have absolute confidence in the components that go into a nuclear reactor and auxiliary systems. The private companies who cut corners at every opportunity? Not so much.

The "problem" is purely the result of selective attention, selective attention that is proving quite deadly.

Today, 19,000 people will die from spent combustible fuel, also know as "air pollution." That is even without considering the cost of climate change.

I've been hearing this crap about so called "nuclear waste" for thirty years, but what I haven't heard is a case where the storage of used nuclear fuel over the nearly 70 year history of commercial nuclear power has killed as many people as will die in the next 12 hours from air pollution.

Used nuclear fuel is a valuable resource which is critical to the survival of civilization. As long as we carry on as if it is a problem, the only energy problem that matters, rather than a resource, the more we will continue to make the state of affairs with things that do matter worse.

The state of affairs to which I refer is the fact that the planet is in flames, and yet...and yet...I find myself talking about used nuclear fuel which has a spectacular record of safe handling.

It is nothing if not absurd.

I’ll say no more.

No one has ever proposed a "Yucca Mountain" for dangerous fossil fuel waste which kills 7 million people per year.

Yucca Mountain was always a dumb idea because it was a paean to the waste mentality of the 20th century.

If one takes the position that public stupidity should determine infrastructure choices, one is engaging in enthusiasm for, well, public stupidity.

I understand used nuclear fuel on a profound level and so I know that Yucca Mountain was simply an exercise in bad thinking. That anyone still carries on about it is a reflection of the elevation of ignorance as a virtue, in other words, an appalling and dangerous attack on the future.

Whenever I ask antinukes to show that in the 70 year history of commercial nuclear energy it gas killed as many people as will die from air pollution in the next six hours, using a reputable source, they change the subject or mutter something insipid.

Antinukes are very much like antivaxxers with the caveat that antivaxxers have not come close to killing as many people. Covid never killed 19,000 people in a single day and Covid was killing for a couple of years.

Antinuke fear and ignorance has been killing people at that rate for many decades.

Have a nice day.

Goodbye

This is, in my opinion, why the planet is in flames, avoidance of clear thinking.