Nuclear energy is the cleanest source of energy there is.
Hmm.
It doesn't generate carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases so certainly cleaner than oil/coal or gas emissions wise.
There are however around 30k tons of spent fuel rods currently in the world from Nuclear energy facilities, this amount is growing annually. Most US based rods are "temporarily" housed in pools by the reactors until a permanent location can be found or it can be recycled for further use ( which is not currently done in the US despite being a better option for nuclear waste as it makes the final product safer a helluva lot quicker than not - hundreds vs millions of years) .
The US doesn't recycle Nuclear yet and it's really really hard to find a permanent location to store it. I don't believe there is one in the US currently, I'm not sure there is one in the world yet, as such the pool housings at facilities are getting larger and almost certainly now holding more than they were originally designed to hold (all good until the first disaster occurs and the press scream "how was this allowed to happen!!!?") . All a permanent location will do is house it, it doesn't make it safe, maybe that technology is coming (IFR etc.) but for the moment it's not there.
The high level waste that is a run off from final cleaning of the fuel rods has the same issue, it can be housed but not made safe.
Recycling the original waste certainly cleans the energy up more but explain to me how it is cleaner energy than renewables?
Of course you have to take the whole life cycle into account to compare the carbon footprint but ongoing Uranium ore mining and the process of building the reactors are worse than mining the materials and building and repairing wind turbines. Uranium ore is also a finite resource. Wind/tide/solar isn't.
https://theecologist.org/2015/feb/05/false-solution-nuclear-power-not-low-carbon why back something that will be used up? Let's back the long term winner and invest in making it more efficient.
There are a lot of nuclear shills out there. There is a lot of money to be made in nuclear or any fossil fuel burning energy source as someone has to supply the fuel. You don't with renewables, there are less ways to make money out of them. There's a reason one lobby is better funded than the other. It's a cynical world out there.
