Why Nuclear is NOT the path forward and why reactors ought to be scrapped

Radiation Ghost Towns in Fukushima 

Of course, we've all heard it by now - how nuclear energy was touted as the energy solution to a population of 7 billion, as the panacea to a world overly dependent on harmful fossil fuels, as the revolutionary piece of tech to finally usher us into an energy surplus utopia, as the energy too cheap to meter. For all the exaltation, for all the promise, what has come to be the fate decades later for this proclaimed messiah of mankind? The pro nuclear zealot quickly unleashes the fact in your face that today 10% of humanity’s energy needs are met by nuclear plants at the staggeringly cheap rate of 2 cents a kilowatt-hour. Impressive one may say. Impressive that is if that was all there was to it. Are things in life ever quite that simple?
Any reader with average cerebral equipment must already be mightily uneasy at that curious figure of 2 cents. Similarly curious is the reluctance of the same zealot to a discussion whenever the subject of nuclear waste is broached. Here's what they'll improbably tell you: Firstly, wastes from reactors stay stubbornly radioactive for dozens of millennia posing a grave and permanent hazard to their surroundings. Secondly there are at present only temporary means to contain this nuclear waste at storage facilities which in addition to being obscenely expensive are rapidly running out of space. What happens when we pass that threshold where we are still pumping out nuclear waste but have nowhere to dispose it? Companies are already turning to even more unsafe and more exorbitant options for disposal. At present, methods used to contain radiation from spilling out involve blocking using water aided by a cooler to keep it from evaporating. The inherent and unshakeable risk that emerges with this method is the over reliance on the water not evaporating which in turn is overly reliant on the nuclear reactor staying in perpetual homeostasis. A gamble that history has shown can be lost and to catastrophic consequence. When a tsunami was set off and the fragile homeostasis of the Fukushima reactors was roiled and the water stranding between unsuspecting citizens and catastrophe was stripped…Thirdly, the steel containers which pack these radioactive wastes inside them require a great amount of human monitoring and are always an earthquake or [insert other natural disaster] here away from giving way to your next Fukushima. One would scarcely be off the mark to call these containers as akin to ticking time bombs except deadlier. Much, much deadlier. The subject of cancer risk is another to be conspicuously avoided. The horror of Chernobyl wasn't the death toll of 31 on that day. The horror of Chernobyl was the radiation induced cancer that later claimed 4000 unsuspecting lives. Both Chernobyl and Fukushima became virtually uninhabitable following their respective disasters displacing hundreds of thousands. A test of urine samples from 1500 preschool kids in Fukushima revealed Caesium traces in 104. More recently and quite alarmingly, a 2018 report by Fukushima University found the disaster site was still leaking contaminated water into the Pacific at 2GBq/day and Greenpeace detected multiple radiation hotspots in dangerous proximity to selected sports venues at Fukushima for the upcoming Olympics in Japan.

What is the cost borne by that child with Caesium in his urine? What is the cost borne by the increasingly polluted pacific and its marine life? What is the cost borne by unsuspecting citizens with nuclear waste in their backyard? What is the cost borne by the hundreds of thousands displaced? What will be the cost borne by posterity who will live side by side with the wastes we leave behind? What is the cost of nuclear technology inevitably winding up in wrong hands and giving way to more weapons of mass destruction? What is the cost of ignorance? Two cents a kilowatt-hour or… Have we finally begun to account for the nuclear cost of nuclear?