I don't outright buy the claim that a "failure" results in you getting hurt. Nuclear disasters like Fukushima or Chernobyl are acute, immediate events. You're getting 3x the yearly radiation from one cross-country flight NYC to SF than you would if you lived at the gates of a nuclear power plant for a year.

You are at a much higher risk of dying from a commercial airliner crash in your lifetime than you are of any nuclear operation - accidental disaster or normal operation. There have been zero (0) human deaths in the US from any operation or accident at a nuclear plant. There were zero human deaths from radiation at the Fukushima meltdown. In fact, more than 2,000 people died from the evacuation alone; the earthquake and tsunami killed 15x as many.

Nuclear power is safe. Carbon-friendly. Effective. Operationalized. Not scary, just malunderstood.

I call absolute bullshit on this line of thinking. Microsoft and other corporations have just as much if not more public interest in keeping their reactors safe and effective. Not to mention financial interests.

>Nuclear disasters like Fukushima or Chernobyl are acute, immediate events.

Not at all.

Fukushima costs 7 billion per year now, after 15 years, with no end in sight. Boar with meat measuring over 30 000 bq/kg was shot 30 years after Chernobyl in areas over 1000 miles away.

The things that have already happened were not acute, immediate or local, they were wide-spread and long-lasting.

And they were far from the worst that could have happened. Imagine if the fire at Chernobyl was not put out, for example.

Financially and technically nuclear makes little sense since solar and batteries are faster to deploy and much cheaper.

Nuclear power is very interesting for nations and companies that want to extract money from the taxpaying population. Microsoft gets cheap electricity now, and when the US discovers that its promise to handle the waste and liability is crazy expensive, taxpayers will have to pay for it. Not Microsoft.

Politicians and corps generally want to start multi-billion dollar projects to deliver comparatively tiny amounts of electricity 10 years from now, because it's about the money today, not about the electricity tomorrow.

Don't fall for it. We want to build cheap, distributed, uncomplicated electricity ourselves, controlled by the people who consume it.

Even if nobody gets rich from selling electricity in that scenario, there's plenty of money to be made from consuming almost free electricity.

I'm just not sure we can trust the numbers in today's America. I'm sure it's safe if they are run responsibly, but we've already got stuff like Cancer Alley (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Alley). I'm less worried about a disaster than I am about long term radiation exposure due to cut corners.