This argument causes some of the problems this argument tries to avoid.

> I'm opposed to the construction of new nuclear plants

The technology involved in nuclear plants has evolved tremendously, both in terms of efficiency and in terms of safety, but the technology of the new generation is fundamentally different.

> The biggest drawbacks of nuclear power (expensive and slow plant construction) are off the table with existing plants!

Old plants use outdated designs. Nobody would tolerate the 1972 Internet infrastructure nowadays, and yet Chernobyl was created that year, and is still in use.

The main reason old plants stick around instead of being replaced is that Greenpeace and Green parties influence each other into lobbying against building correct reactors.

Take Superphénix: a French Gen IV reactor started construction twelve years before the Chernobyl accident. Its design is still considered next-gen and highly favorable today.

Activists literally fired rocket-propelled grenades at it while it was being built. It got so bad that they had to shut it down.

They tried building a similar Gen IV reactor recently, ASTRID, that improved tremendously even compared to the advanced Superphénix, and it got cancelled six months ago because of lobbies.

So all that remains are old plants… designs that were essentially initial drafts meant to be replaced by better technology, but that never gets shut down because every replacement gets lobbied against.

Those old designs have awful properties, so yeah, we get Chernobyl and Fukushima. We would have had neither if people had let replace the oldest generation. But because of Greenpeace, people died, and fear rose, when all this was unnecessary.

Japan pretty much imports all of its energy. Its an Island nation with limited flat-land that is densely populated - the Solar production is limited and cannot significantly contribute to its energy needs. Off-shore wind may help, but Japan going forward will assemble one of the most diverse energy portfolios.

> maintain the existing nuclear plants

In Japan and wait for the next major earthquakes?

> Hardening existing plants against possible future catastrophe is probably far cheaper

Probably not. That's the case in Japan where several reactors will never be restarted again.

No energy source is 100% safe. People die when working on windmills and hydroelectric disasters are way more deadly than nuclear disasters. I think 100% safe is an unreasonable requirement.

Safety is not necessarily the concern, though clearly important. It's also the huge task of decommissioning afterwards. Even "safe" nuclear power stations require the disposal of all sorts of irradiated mundane things like PPE. Contrary to popular belief its not all spent fuel rods. When you dismantle it's even more difficult because you have to use specialised equipment to take buildings apart room by room. We're still not good at decommissioning, it's an active research area (lots of funding though) and it's going to be like this for decades.

The same thing did not happen in Germany. The increase in renewables more than made up for the decrease in nuclear.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...

Also interesting, between 2000 and 2010, before Fukushima, Japan had a large increase in coal use.

> Same thing happened in Germany.

Germany turned to coal? It didn't happen. Germany actually turned to renewables.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany#...

There are aiment where leach treatment is suitable, generaly related to restoring blood flow. So mostly frostbite, transplantation and reconnecting of severed tissue (eq. an accidentally cut off ear, etc.)

This is worse than leeches. It's more like arsenic.

Provided that there will be future generations.

Once you're past the distance where transmitting electrical power is feasible, you would probably have to store the energy chemically. In principle you could charge gigantic banks of lithium batteries and then ship the batteries, but that would require infeasible (probably ludicrous) amounts of lithium, and lithium batteries are a pretty inefficient way to chemically store energy.

Alternatively, it probably isn't cost-effective with current technology, but on a fundamental level, you could use a nuclear reactor to power a system that chemically recombined atmospheric CO2 and water back into hydrocarbon fuels. Unlike fossil-derived hydrocarbons, these hydrocarbons would be carbon-neutral since you'd be sourcing all the carbon from the same atmosphere that it would eventually be dumped back into. This is probably going to make sense for things like vehicles, aircraft, rockets, etc. long before it makes sense for power generation, but there are definite benefits. We already have all the necessary technology to burn hydrocarbons, meaning that any improvements in synthesizing hydrocarbon fuels can potentially eliminate the need to switch these things over to batteries or whatnot. Which may be extremely helpful if we run into serious resource constraints over lithium, or if we grow increasingly concerned with the environmental byproducts of lithium battery production.

I would look at France's history, they are one of the most nuclear centric countries, with (relatively) few major accidents.

In general, build a not-fancy light water reactor away from the ocean and major fault lines.

We have the most experience with LWRs, and they are pretty safe except for the impact of major natural disasters.

There are other reactor designs, but we really need more experience with them.

This isn't so much a nuclear question as a power transmission question. Here is a link that could help:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current#Ad...

You can convert electricity, water and CO2 to fuels, such as hydrogen and natgas. These fuels can then be transported.

There are significant energy losses if all you want on the other end is electricity. But not so bad if you're burning it for heat.

In theory a nuclear reactor could produce both electricity and heat to produce synthetic fuels, making it more cost effective than renewables.

For electricity only it looks like renewables are significantly cheaper however.

Sort of, but not really. Asimov worried about us losing the knowledge of nuclear power, and whilst there's a little of that what's really lead to its demise is that as we've learnt more about what's needed to build and operate it over the years it's become less and less viable.

https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.htm... casts doubt on the future of Nuclear growing anywhere near enough to be a best-hope; scaling it up to world energy production of 15TW seems infeasible - burning through the available Uranium supplies in ~5 years - even scaling it up to 1TW would stretch many resources used in nuclear reactor construction such as rare elements.