☢️ "Nuclear power? No thanks!" - Completely irrational
Update from : I wrote this for a school assignment in english class. We were supposed to argue for something and destroy all arguments against it so this post has a pretty strong opinion. I've changed my mind a bit since then. I still think that nuclear fission power is pretty cool and safe but it just takes really long to build nuclear reactors, the price for it's electricity is higher than renewables and some countries would entirely depend on other countries for the fuel, which is something you don't want. Germany shutting down nuclear reactors for coal plants is stupid though. We should focus on renewables and all kinds of electricity storage for the power transition away from fossil fuels.
2011 in Fukushima, Japan: The nuclear reactor explodes. Short after Germany decides to phase out nuclear reactors in their territory over the next years because of growing safety concerns from the general population. Was this the right choice or was the decision just driven by panic? What does Germany intend to replace nuclear power with?
The decision was definitely driven by panic since it was made right after the nuclear accident. Our use of fossil fuels heats up earth. To stop and reverse this we need to electrify machines that currently need fossil fuels to run because electricity can be generated in a way that doesn’t heat up earth. Therefore we require more electricity additionally to the ever growing need for electricity by a growing population and people using more technology. You can use fossil fuels to generate electricity but we would be stuck at the same problem again. So we need to look to other power generation methods like renewables (solar, wind, hydro, geothermal). Even though nuclear power is kind of disliked it is a good contender too. Let me tell you why.
This statistic by OurWorldInData/energy with data from 2007 and 2016 suggests that while about 57.34 people die per terawatt-hour of coal (That is only coal. Not even mentioning the other fossil fuels.), only 0.07 people die per terawatt-hour of nuclear power. Therefore nuclear power is among the safest methods of generating power alongside renewables despite of the alleged dangers of nuclear power proposed by anti-nuclear-power activists. Additionally you can generate huge amounts of power with just a little radioactive material unlike with coal, where much more coal is needed to produce the same amount of power. This massive all day power generation would very much help the electricity grid when renewables can't produce power because of current daytime or weather. It would alleviate the need for a good amount of batteries that would otherwise be needed in an electricity grid without coal, oil, gas and nuclear to make up for the deficiencies of renewables during night time or bad weather as mentioned before.
You might say "But there have been two nuclear reactor accidents already that killed many people! “ Yes, that is correct. The statistics still say that other fossil fuels can be held accountable for many times more deaths. The accidents were also both very stupid accidents that could have been easily prevented. It was human error. Modern nuclear reactors can run all by themselves. Some people are even working on even safer nuclear reactor designs which would make an accident almost impossible.
What about nuclear waste though? While the waste of coal power plants is just blasted into the atmosphere, the waste of nuclear reactors can be recycled or stored deep underground in many layers of radioactive protection. The problem here being that there is (as far as I know) no nuclear waste storage in the underground for long term storage over thousands of years yet. New reactor designs can decrease the amount of waste though or run completely on already existing waste.
Fellow people against nuclear power, I hope I could turn your opinion around. In conclusion, nuclear power should be used alongside renewable energy sources to combat our reliance on fossil fuels.