> Fly ash is much worse, since it's also radioactive
My apologies, I was indeed talking about radioactive waste in general being hard to top in terms of pollution. It goes without saying that I'm not terribly happy with how this country is getting into coal lately. So yes, fly ash is definitely a concern as well. I just happen to think waste from nuclear fuel is easier to "not produce" right now.
> A pollution source that can be shipped on rails? And you only need to do it every few years? Does it get more ideal?
Yes, they ship it around and it radiates. Remember - in the US, they recently had to scrap plans for that one site because it meant the fuel had to travel there a long way. I was also off a little - it's pretty much an every year event, but I guess that's still not a threshold trigger for you.
Still, again, the real problem here is that nobody really knows where to ship this to and what to do with it once it's there. And how safe it will be the next couple hundred thousand years.
> Not for a long long time. Doesn't matter, in the meantime we'll just stick the nuclear waste somewhere where there are no people.
See - I'm just not really satisfied with that answer and I guess I don't see how anybody can be. Sorry.
> Why would you link to something that supports my position?
You were asking me to qualify 'horrifying' - seems like we have a different measure there. I find any radiation exposure leading to death by lung cancer horrifying.
> I'm glad you enjoy that since that's exactly what we are talking about: "Relatively speaking, since none are perfect, which energy source is best?"
Nope, sorry, that's not the same. Comparing two things is one thing - Relativism is something else entirely. That branch discussion was about discussing how extracting fuel from the earth is polluting. You qualified that by saying: Hey, there are a lot of things that are polluting, like iron/coal/oil/gas. Yes - I understand that - but that's not adding to the discussion.
It is inherently a better idea to not use fuel in the first place. No matter which one, you have to keep digging it up to keep it going and that's bad. It's also the crucial difference between renewable and fossil sources of energy. No matter how "little" fuel you need: on the long scale, it will fail with 100% certainty, eventually.
> And I'd rather not spend money on technology that doesn't work, probably can not work, and definitely is terrible while we wait.
Now I'm not even sure we read the same article anymore. That's not really a defensible statement in light of how widely used this technology already is. Or are you still hung up on solar?
> Nuclear power is not a dead end technology - it's the cleanest power we have, and more engineering can make it even cleaner.
Dead-end in terms of: "What technological progress does this provide on the side?". Sure, making it "cleaner" may be one form of progress, but I think "green" energy simply has more potential for innovation and collateral technological benefit for everybody.