When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?

[DougSpindler]

More people die prematurity air pollution/particulates in car and diesel exhaust than die in auto-accidents every year.  Interestly in the United States more people die from guns than in auto-accidents.

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution on average over 1,000 coal miners would die from coal mine accidents.  Every year about 100 solar panel installers die every year, typically from falling off the roof.

In 60 years of using nuclear power total number of deaths is less than 100.  Last major nuclear power disaster there were no deaths.

Far more of our planet has been destroyed in mining for coal than humans have made radio active from nuclear power waste.  Every year the burning of coal and other fossil fuels releases millions of tons of radioactive isotopes and mercury into the air we breathe and our oceans.

It’s all about risks and how we view them.

[boffin]

I susspect this is something the manufacturer does to get people to buy née cars/. I highly doubt the car manufacturer pays for the repairs, they only coordinate the program for the dealers.  Repairs are probably handled through some third party repair insurance company. 

Don’t y9u think a new car company would want to sell new cars where they make the most money?  I high;y doubt they would wan to mess around with used cars and all f the problems that go along with them.

Of course it is a program to get people to trade in recent cars for new.  Just because it is, it doesn't mean it's not run by the manufacturer.  If you buy a 'certified pre-owned' car from any of the companies I listed, you have access to ANY dealer for repairs, and it's paid for by the manufacturer.  Heck, even Boeing and Airbus take in used aircraft and re-sell them.  My point is that Tesla is really really really really bad at the other aspects of being an auto manufacturer. (support, parts, used, etc).

[apis]

In 60 years of using nuclear power total number of deaths is less than 100. Last major nuclear power disaster there were no deaths.

That's not true, most estimates range from 3'000-30'000 premature deaths after Chernobyl from the radiation. Although it was less than 100 that died in direct relation to the accident. Still peanuts compared to air pollution and many other things.

[DougSpindler]

In 60 years of using nuclear power total number of deaths is less than 100. Last major nuclear power disaster there were no deaths.

That's not true, most estimates range from 3'000-30'000 premature deaths after Chernobyl from the radiation. Although it was less than 100 that died in direct relation to the accident. Still peanuts compared to air pollution and many other things.

The 3,000 to 30,000 is disputed, but let’s go along with the high estimate of 30,000.  That’s still less than the number of people every year just in the United States who die is car crashes or are killed by guns.  30,000 is still less than all of the people killed as a result of coal mining and the burning of fossil fuels every couple of years.  And that doesn’t even take into account the millions of tons of nuclear ionizing radiation and mercury the burning of fossil fuels releases into our air and oceans every year.  Our oceans have so much mercury in them as the result of man burning fossil fuels we warn people not to eat a lot of fish.

There’s a risk with everything we do.  Question is which one is better for us?  It’s a balance between our needs today vs. future generations.   Which one is more important? 

[apis]

Yup. We could have a Chernobyl accident every year and it would cause less harm to human health than air pollution does, and we haven't even considered climate change yet!

People are very irrational when it comes to risk. People like what is familiar to them, like a cosy wood (or coal) fire, but in reality that is far more dangerous than nuclear power.

[DougSpindler]

Yup. We could have a Chernobyl accident every year and it would cause less harm to human health than air pollution does, and we haven't even considered climate change yet!

People are very irrational when it comes to risk. People like what is familiar to them, like a cosy wood (or coal) fire, but in reality that is far more dangerous than nuclear power.

Right.  How many fossil fulel spill have we had compared to nuclear power plant accidents?  I can only think of two nuclear power accidents in the past 60 years.  Now compare that to oil/fossil fuel related spills/accidents I can think of over two dozen which have occurred in the same time frame.

There one in Centrallia Pennsylvania whcih occured in the early 1960s which we haven’t been able put a stop to.

Someone correct me if I am wrong.  Between China, the United States and Australia there are well over 1,000 out of control coal fires.  (One of the ones in the US has been burning since the early 1960s.)  If I recall heariunbg the number correctly these fires are emitting as much CO2 as something like all of the automobiles in the US and Europe every year.  (Or somethnbg to that magnitude.)

[apis]

Wow, hadn't heard about Centralia before. They've basically had to abandon the entire town. I know of a place in Sweden where they have a gigant pile of oil shale that have been burning since the 1940s.

[coppice]

I can only think of two nuclear power accidents in the past 60 years.  Now compare that to oil/fossil fuel related spills/accidents I can think of over two dozen which have occurred in the same time frame.

While the number of nuclear accidents is low, if you can only think of two you aren't really trying.

[apis]

There have only been two major accidents at civilian nuclear power stations that have caused harm to people or the environment. Chernobyl and Fukushima. There are a few other military related accidents though, not to mention all the nukes they blew up in the atmosphere.

[coppice]

There have only been two major accidents at civilian nuclear power stations that have caused harm to people or the environment. Chernobyl and Fukushima. There are a few other military related accidents though, not to mention all the nukes they blew up in the atmosphere.

Dounreay was probably as bad as Chernobyl, but the coverups mean we'll never really know. Three Mile Island let stuff out, but it remains unclear just how much. As I said, not many accidents, but its not as low as 2. You also have places like Sellafield with a long history of poor control, yet only one event that came close to a real disaster.

[DougSpindler]

I can only think of two nuclear power accidents in the past 60 years.  Now compare that to oil/fossil fuel related spills/accidents I can think of over two dozen which have occurred in the same time frame.

While the number of nuclear accidents is low, if you can only think of two you aren't really trying.

Okay, if I give it some thought, I can think of two others.  Three mile island, no deaths, and SL-1, three deaths.  Wait one more, Santa Susana, no dead.  We still have less than 100 dead.

Now to be fair, if I think about fossil fuel spills I can think of over a dozen more.

Look none of these energy sources are without risk.  When it comes to loss of life and continued ongoing heath issues short term as well as long term coal/fossil fuels are the worst.  Hasn’t the burning of fossil fuels released far more radioactive isotopes into our environment than nuclear power? 

[DougSpindler]

There have only been two major accidents at civilian nuclear power stations that have caused harm to people or the environment. Chernobyl and Fukushima. There are a few other military related accidents though, not to mention all the nukes they blew up in the atmosphere.

Dounreay was probably as bad as Chernobyl, but the coverups mean we'll never really know. Three Mile Island let stuff out, but it remains unclear just how much. As I said, not many accidents, but its not as low as 2. You also have places like Sellafield with a long history of poor control, yet only one event that came close to a real disaster.

There is no mention of a nuclear power plant or nuclear power plant accident in or around Dounreay.  What’s the name of the nuclear power plant and what was the accident? 

[apis]

There have only been two major accidents at civilian nuclear power stations that have caused harm to people or the environment. Chernobyl and Fukushima. There are a few other military related accidents though, not to mention all the nukes they blew up in the atmosphere.

Dounreay was probably as bad as Chernobyl, but the coverups mean we'll never really know. Three Mile Island let stuff out, but it remains unclear just how much. As I said, not many accidents, but its not as low as 2. You also have places like Sellafield with a long history of poor control, yet only one event that came close to a real disaster.

There is no way to cover up a large accident. There is nothing that is so easy to measure as radioactive decay. Geiger counters can detect the decay from individual atoms. Many elements that are emitted from a nuclear accident are not naturally occurring so we can tell where they came from if they are found (like caesium-137)

Independent measurements after the Three Mile Island accident didn't see any increase in background radiation or caesium-137 (there is already caesium in the US after the atmospheric nuke testing, but the levels didn't change near or far away from the reactor).

EDIT: Lots of people have Geiger counters at home and measure background radiation continually. Some people on this forum have built their own even.

Dave showed a really cool one that was made by Shodan here on the forum:

[nctnico]

Meanwhile I've found an interesting article from June 2018 which sums up the status on 3rd generation bio-fuels:
http://www.ethanolproducer.com/articles/15344/zero-to-10-million-in-5-years

Appearantly it is commercially viable to make 3d generation bio-fuels:
Yancey predicts corn fiber-to-ethanol will be the first cellulosic fuel to top 1 billion gallons, with multiple starch plants adopting one of the new technologies well before there will be multiple standalone, dedicated biomass plants. “It could be adopted as fast as corn oil was, because it is so profitable,” he says. The projected return on investment for D3Max is at one year with a 40 percent equity investment. 

And the leftovers may even serve as food for animals:
The distillers grains left after the fiber is converted to ethanol tests at 50 percent crude protein on a dry weight basis. Feed trials will be conducted this fall to establish its performance in poultry, swine and dairy.

[DougSpindler]

Meanwhile I've found an interesting article from June 2018 which sums up the status on 3rd generation bio-fuels:
http://www.ethanolproducer.com/articles/15344/zero-to-10-million-in-5-years

Appearantly it is commercially viable to make 3d generation bio-fuels:
Yancey predicts corn fiber-to-ethanol will be the first cellulosic fuel to top 1 billion gallons, with multiple starch plants adopting one of the new technologies well before there will be multiple standalone, dedicated biomass plants. “It could be adopted as fast as corn oil was, because it is so profitable,” he says. The projected return on investment for D3Max is at one year with a 40 percent equity investment. 

And the leftovers may even serve as food for animals:
The distillers grains left after the fiber is converted to ethanol tests at 50 percent crude protein on a dry weight basis. Feed trials will be conducted this fall to establish its performance in poultry, swine and dairy.

Again with the marking hype  - "Yancey predicts corn fiber-to-ethanol will be the first cellulosic fuel... " 
My psychic is predicting they wont.

 “It could be adopted as fast"  But then it could be adopted much slower.

"The projected return on investment for D3Max..."   What if the projections are wrong? 

 "Feed trials will be conducted this fall...."  So they are still experiment, which means we don't know.


This is from June 2018, so they have had 6 months.  Let's see if what you posted turned out to be true?
Was the prediction correct? NO!
Was it adopted as fast as corn?  NO!
Did they meet projected returns?  b]NO![/b]

How did the trials go?  Not as well as perdicticted.

Are you begining to see a pattern here?

Thank you for playing.

[fsr]

The problem with fission reactors, is that the accidents can have terrible effects in any part of the world. An explosion causes heavily contaminated material to be released at high altitude, where the winds can transport them pretty much anywhere. The melt rods eat tru any material and reach and contaminate subterranean waters. That's why everyone was so scared about Chernobyl, and Fukushima (not so long ago).

[coppice]

The problem with fission reactors, is that the accidents can have terrible effects in any part of the world. An explosion causes heavily contaminated material to be released at high altitude, where the winds can transport them pretty much anywhere. The melt rods eat tru any material and reach and contaminate subterranean waters. That's why everyone was so scared about Chernobyl, and Fukushima (not so long ago).

Its the concentration that seriously matters, not what happens when the stuff is thinly spread far from the event. If that mattered we'd have to shut down all the coal power stations, as they put out an enormous amount of radioactive waste.

[DougSpindler]

The problem with fission reactors, is that the accidents can have terrible effects in any part of the world. An explosion causes heavily contaminated material to be released at high altitude, where the winds can transport them pretty much anywhere. The melt rods eat tru any material and reach and contaminate subterranean waters. That's why everyone was so scared about Chernobyl, and Fukushima (not so long ago).

Its the concentration that seriously matters, not what happens when the stuff is thinly spread far from the event. If that mattered we'd have to shut down all the coal power stations, as they put out an enormous amount of radioactive waste.

You are correct.  The dummies that all said California would become radioactive from all of the radioactive isotopes in the Pacific ocean didn't realize the United States government and UC Berkeley dumped all of their radioactive waste into the Pacific Ocean at the Farallon Islands between 1946 and 1970.  The Farallon Islands are now a National Marine Sanctuary that's radioactive.

Then look at Chernobyl.  Every year thousands of tourists visit the disaster site every year and the area around the reactor is full of life.  And all of the anti-Nuke folks told us it would be a nuclear wasteland.  (They got that one wrong.) 

How dangerone is ploutonium?  The anti-Nuke folks say it's the most dangerous substance man has ever created.  And then there's the truth.  In the 1940s people like Albert Stevens were unknowling injected with radioactive plutonium to see what would happen.  What happend is Mr. Stevens lived another 20+ years peeing and pooping radioactive plutonium until the day he died. 

Someone correct me if I am wrong but the with all of the atomospheric nuclear plutonium bombs we dentonated the entire Earth is coverned in a blanket of plutonium.

[apis]

The problem with fission reactors, is that the accidents can have terrible effects in any part of the world. An explosion causes heavily contaminated material to be released at high altitude, where the winds can transport them pretty much anywhere. The melt rods eat tru any material and reach and contaminate subterranean waters. That's why everyone was so scared about Chernobyl, and Fukushima (not so long ago).

The Chernobyl accident has been studied in detail for over 30 years now, and we have a lot of scientific data on what actually happened. Worst case estimates say that about a total of 30'000 might die prematurely in Europe because of radioactive particles from Chernobyl (many others like the IAEA and the WHO says it's 4'000). Thankfully such accidents happens very seldom; since the first nuclear reactors were built in the 1940s it has only happened twice (and Fukushima is believed to have less of an health impact than Chernobyl).

That still sounds really bad! But what many forget is that the alternatives are not without risk either.

For example, the worst hydro electric dam accident killed ~171000 people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam
That did only affect the country that built the dam though, so you could say it was more local.

But what about wood stoves? You posted a link before:
https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2018/overview/
It says that: "In 2016, household and outdoor air pollution led to some 7 million deaths worldwide." (!)
That air pollution comes from burning and it's killing millions every year. If you replaced that burning with electric power from nuclear we will literally save millions of lives every year all around the world.

Wood stoves also spread their air-pollution around the world. So does any form of burning, it causes air-pollution which is spread with the wind around the world in the same way the Chernobyl accident spread radioactive particles with the wind.

That UN page doesn't say how many of the 7 million deaths are cause by wood stoves, but I know a Swedish report that estimate that 900 died prematurely in Sweden because of wood burning. (We have a population of about 10 million). That means that only in Sweden wood burning causes more deaths in 4 - 35 years than the biggest nuclear disaster did worldwide over all time. The same report says that a total of 7600 die every year from air pollution here, and that 3600 of them are caused by air pollution that comes from outside of Sweden (e.g. coal power plants).
http://naturvardsverket.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1242584/FULLTEXT01.pdf

And then we haven't even considered all the other toxins from coal power plants, like mercury and other heavy metals. Or the problem with ocean acidification (caused by SO₂ as well as CO₂ from coal power plants). Those effects are also global; it's the reason why ocean tuna contains so much mercury for example, or why the great barrier reef is dying. And then there is climate change, which also affects the entire planet...

So yes, a nuclear accident can cause pollution in other countries but it is nothing compared to what air pollution from burning does.

[apis]

How do you convert waste plant material to bio fuel?
I know there are many ideas out there, but is there any factories doing this commercially? (please provide links if so).
Otherwise I don't see how that is any different than solar storage solutions (better batteries, etc).

See poet-dsm.com (the DSM part is Dutch) but there are other companies as well who have a working process.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/poet-dsm-project-liberty

How many liters/m^2 of bio fuel do they produce in a year?

From this link: https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/poet-dsm-project-liberty 20 to 25 million gallons. And I assume this is the goal for 2018 so we'll probably know how much they produced soon.

That doesn't answer the question.

Oh, I didn't see you wanted to know per surface area. This images says it all:

Very good.  Thanks
Assume 80 gal/acre
I drive 12,000 mi/year
Assume 25 mi/gallon
So that's 480 gal/year
So I need 6 acres of corn land.

I checked US Energy Information Admin for fuel consumption in the US
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=23&t=10
Quote from the web site
"How much gasoline does the United States consume?
In 2017, about 142.98 billion gallons (or about 3.40 billion barrels1) of finished motor gasoline were consumed in the United States, a daily average of about 391.71 million gallons (or about 9.33 million barrels per day)."

So that is 1.8E9 acres of corn to produce this fuel based on 80 gal/acre. 

Now Wikepedia tells me that there are 9.6E7 acres of corn in production in the USA. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_States

So the 96 million acres could produce 0.7% of the fuel for the us. 

That does not include aircraft or ships.

Did you remember to compensate for the fact that one gallon of etanol only contains about 45% of the energy of one gallon of gasoline?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Energy_densities_of_common_energy_storage_materials

[fsr]

People visits chernobyl, but in organized tours. You cannot wander in any place you want, because radiation isn't absorbed the same in different materials. The roads don't have much radiation, and that explains how they can reach the place, but the forest is contaminated, and so are the animals living there. You can read about mutations in them in several websites, such as newspapers, and the like.

The only thing good about fision, is that there is no direct CO2 emissions, but just what are we going to do with the nuclear waste? Just how much of this thing are we going to stockpile? This junk is so bad, that if some terrorist group get this hands on this, they could easily make a dirty bomb. With enough resources and the correct nuclear waste, even a nuclear bomb. So, the more we have, the more dangerous it is.

The less nuclear reactors we need to build, the better, but for that we need to generate more from renewable sources.

[apis]

People visits chernobyl, but in organized tours. You cannot wander in any place you want, because radiation isn't absorbed the same in different materials. The roads don't have much radiation, and that explains how they can reach the place, but the forest is contaminated, and so are the animals living there. You can read about mutations in them in several websites, such as newspapers, and the like.

You can't go into the reactor that exploded of course, but you can go mostly everywhere else. There are people that are living permanently in the exclusion zone, some never left. The wildlife in the exclusion zone is thriving anyone who says otherwise is dishonest at best. Those pictures of mutations are just scaremongering. Mutations occurs naturally everywhere, it is not any more common around Chernobyl than elsewhere today (there might have been a small increase shortly after the accident). Directly after the accident there was a part of a pine forest close to the reactor that were damaged (the needles turned red) but it has long since recovered. They kept operating the other three reactors at the Chernobyl power plant for over a decade after the accident. People went to work there every day (and still do). And yes it is now officially a tourist attraction in the Ukraine I believe.

but just what are we going to do with the nuclear waste? Just how much of this thing are we going to stockpile?

We will store it in deep geological deposits, they are building one in Finland now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository
There is so little nuclear waste produced that all of the nuclear waste that's been produced in the Netherlands can be stored in a single building:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Covra_het_gebouw.JPG

This junk is so bad, that if some terrorist group get this hands on this, they could easily make a dirty bomb. With enough resources and the correct nuclear waste, even a nuclear bomb.

People deal with poisonous and dangerous substances at factories all the time.

Terrorists have much better options than dirty bombs, like flying an airliner into a building.

Dirty bombs are just more scaremongering. It would be a pain in the *** for the terrorists to get hold of and to deal with it without killing themselves before they even built the bomb. And if they manage to detonate a dirty bomb do you know what would happen? There would be a poof from the explosives, a dust cloud, then nothing. The small area where the dust lands would be evacuated and a people in radiation suits would come and vacuum up most of the dust. No one would die from the small dose you get from the spred out, low concentration dust, (except the terrorist who has been driving around with a truckload of it). Maybe the risk of cancer for a handfull of people increase the next 30 years, but that isn't the kind of damage terrorists want, they want massive instant damage. Like a building full of people collapsing.

And no, they can't make a bomb. Ask Iran how they are doing with their nuclear weapons program.

There is so much bullshit when it comes to nuclear power it's ridiculous.

Nuclear is safer and cleaner than coal power, than wood stoves and water power. We can't replace everything with renewable, we need power also when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. We need either coal or nuclear, and nuclear is way better than coal in every aspect.

[DougSpindler]

How do you convert waste plant material to bio fuel?
I know there are many ideas out there, but is there any factories doing this commercially? (please provide links if so).
Otherwise I don't see how that is any different than solar storage solutions (better batteries, etc).

See poet-dsm.com (the DSM part is Dutch) but there are other companies as well who have a working process.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/poet-dsm-project-liberty

How many liters/m^2 of bio fuel do they produce in a year?

From this link: https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/poet-dsm-project-liberty 20 to 25 million gallons. And I assume this is the goal for 2018 so we'll probably know how much they produced soon.

That doesn't answer the question.

Oh, I didn't see you wanted to know per surface area. This images says it all:

Very good.  Thanks
Assume 80 gal/acre
I drive 12,000 mi/year
Assume 25 mi/gallon
So that's 480 gal/year
So I need 6 acres of corn land.

I checked US Energy Information Admin for fuel consumption in the US
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=23&t=10
Quote from the web site
"How much gasoline does the United States consume?
In 2017, about 142.98 billion gallons (or about 3.40 billion barrels1) of finished motor gasoline were consumed in the United States, a daily average of about 391.71 million gallons (or about 9.33 million barrels per day)."

So that is 1.8E9 acres of corn to produce this fuel based on 80 gal/acre. 

Now Wikepedia tells me that there are 9.6E7 acres of corn in production in the USA. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_States

So the 96 million acres could produce 0.7% of the fuel for the us. 

That does not include aircraft or ships.

Did you remember to compensate for the fact that one gallon of etanol only contains about 45% of the energy of one gallon of gasoline?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Energy_densities_of_common_energy_storage_materials

Nope. 

[DougSpindler]

The problem with fission reactors, is that the accidents can have terrible effects in any part of the world. An explosion causes heavily contaminated material to be released at high altitude, where the winds can transport them pretty much anywhere. The melt rods eat tru any material and reach and contaminate subterranean waters. That's why everyone was so scared about Chernobyl, and Fukushima (not so long ago).

The Chernobyl accident has been studied in detail for over 30 years now, and we have a lot of scientific data on what actually happened. Worst case estimates say that about a total of 30'000 might die prematurely in Europe because of radioactive particles from Chernobyl (many others like the IAEA and the WHO says it's 4'000). Thankfully such accidents happens very seldom; since the first nuclear reactors were built in the 1940s it has only happened twice (and Fukushima is believed to have less of an health impact than Chernobyl).

That still sounds really bad! But what many forget is that the alternatives are not without risk either.

For example, the worst hydro electric dam accident killed ~171000 people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam
That did only affect the country that built the dam though, so you could say it was more local.

But what about wood stoves? You posted a link before:
https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2018/overview/
It says that: "In 2016, household and outdoor air pollution led to some 7 million deaths worldwide." (!)
That air pollution comes from burning and it's killing millions every year. If you replaced that burning with electric power from nuclear we will literally save millions of lives every year all around the world.

Wood stoves also spread their air-pollution around the world. So does any form of burning, it causes air-pollution which is spread with the wind around the world in the same way the Chernobyl accident spread radioactive particles with the wind.

That UN page doesn't say how many of the 7 million deaths are cause by wood stoves, but I know a Swedish report that estimate that 900 died prematurely in Sweden because of wood burning. (We have a population of about 10 million). That means that only in Sweden wood burning causes more deaths in 4 - 35 years than the biggest nuclear disaster did worldwide over all time. The same report says that a total of 7600 die every year from air pollution here, and that 3600 of them are caused by air pollution that comes from outside of Sweden (e.g. coal power plants).
http://naturvardsverket.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1242584/FULLTEXT01.pdf

And then we haven't even considered all the other toxins from coal power plants, like mercury and other heavy metals. Or the problem with ocean acidification (caused by SO₂ as well as CO₂ from coal power plants). Those effects are also global; it's the reason why ocean tuna contains so much mercury for example, or why the great barrier reef is dying. And then there is climate change, which also affects the entire planet...

So yes, a nuclear accident can cause pollution in other countries but it is nothing compared to what air pollution from burning does.

Very well said.  And you forgot one other issue with the burning df coal/fossil fuels, every yer they release millions of tons on radioactive isoptopes into the air and our oceans.  The slag heaps from the burned coal are also contain radioactive isotopes.

[DougSpindler]

People visits chernobyl, but in organized tours. You cannot wander in any place you want, because radiation isn't absorbed the same in different materials. The roads don't have much radiation, and that explains how they can reach the place, but the forest is contaminated, and so are the animals living there. You can read about mutations in them in several websites, such as newspapers, and the like.

You can't go into the reactor that exploded of course, but you can go mostly everywhere else. There are people that are living permanently in the exclusion zone, some never left. The wildlife in the exclusion zone is thriving anyone who says otherwise is dishonest at best. Those pictures of mutations are just scaremongering. Mutations occurs naturally everywhere, it is not any more common around Chernobyl than elsewhere. Directly after the accident there was a part of a pine forest close to the reactor that were damaged (the needles turned red) but it has long since recovered. They kept operating the other three reactors at the Chernobyl power plant for over a decade after the accident. People went to work there every day (and still do). And yes it is now officially a tourist attraction in the Ukraine I believe.

but just what are we going to do with the nuclear waste? Just how much of this thing are we going to stockpile?

We will store it in deep geological deposits, they are building one in Finland now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository
There is so little nuclear waste produced that all of the nuclear waste that's been produced in the Netherlands can be stored in a single building:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Covra_het_gebouw.JPG

This junk is so bad, that if some terrorist group get this hands on this, they could easily make a dirty bomb. With enough resources and the correct nuclear waste, even a nuclear bomb.

People deal with poisonous and dangerous substances at factories all the time.

Terrorists have much better options than dirty bombs, like flying an airliner into a building.

Dirty bombs are just more scaremongering. It would be a pain in the *** for the terrorists to get hold of and to deal with it without killing themselves before they even built the bomb. And if they manage to detonate a dirty bomb do you know what would happen? There would be a poof from the explosives, a dust cloud, then nothing. The small area where the dust lands would be evacuated and a people in radiation suits would come and vacuum up most of the dust. No one would die from the small dose you get from the spred out, low concentration dust, (except the terrorist who has been driving around with a truckload of it). Maybe the risk of cancer for a handfull of people increase the next 30 years, but that isn't the kind of damage terrorists want, they want massive instant damage. Like a building full of people collapsing.

And no, they can't make a bomb. Ask Iran how they are doing with their nuclear weapons program.

There is so much bullshit when it comes to nuclear power it's ridiculous.

Nuclear is safer and cleaner than coal power, than wood stoves and water power. We can't replace everything with renewable, we need power also when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. We need either coal or nuclear, and nuclear is way better than coal in every aspect.

Very well said.  Couple of additional points.  With all of the nuclear weapons which have been decommissioned we currently have a 600 year supply of nuclear fuel.  Since we are not going to use them for bombs nuclear power is really the only other thing we gave a use for the material.  If we don’t use it for nuclear power what are we going to do it he the nuclear material?

It is amazing how much misinformation about Chernobyl is being spread by hoaxters.  You are right the other reactors continued to be n operation for decade or more with people going to work everyday.

Interestingly any idea who is exposed to their most ionizing radiation?  It’s not the people living in or around Chernobyl or Fukushima, not riadation workers or astronauts....  It’s smokers.  People who smoke cigarettes are exposed to more ionizing radiation every year than anyone else.

https://youtu.be/TRL7o2kPqw0