Heard a climate scientist on a podcast and it flipped my view on nuclear power

I used to be dead set against nuclear energy because of the waste problem and accidents like Fukushima. But last week I listened to Dr. Kerry Emanuel on a weather podcast explain how modern reactors produce way less waste and can be built to be meltdown-proof. He pointed out that renewables alone can't meet baseline energy demand, especially in cloudy or windless weeks, and that nuclear has the lowest death rate per terawatt-hour of any power source by far. Now I'm looking into newer designs like molten salt reactors. Has anyone else had a shift in thinking after hearing a specific expert talk about the trade-offs?

2 comments

2 Comments

evah401d ago

Wait, meltdown-proof reactors exist now? That's wild, I always assumed there was no way around that risk.

christopher_coleman1715h ago

Yeah that's basically what the new generation of reactors are designed for.