Nuclear fission/safety

Learning from past disasters

There have been two major nuclear meltdowns in history: Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Are all of today's nuclear reactors better made, to prevent the same things from happening again? ^{[RESEARCH needed]}

Breeder reactors

I'm not sure to what extent the same safety lessons apply when designing breeder reactors (an innovation that would be needed if nuclear power has any hope of really replacing fossil fuels).

Land lost

One factor in assessing nuclear power's environmental footprint: Consider how much land has been made uninhabitable from nuclear disasters.

If accidents keep happening at the same rate, here's how much of the Earth's surface we'd expect to lose, if (hypothetically) all the world's energy came from nuclear power:

nuclear_exclusion_zones

4514 km^2

Total area of lands made uninhabitable from nuclear disasters

Nuclear Exclusion Zones | Britannica
https://www.britannica.com/story/nuclear-exclusion-zones

There are 2 areas: Chernobyl (4,143 square km) and Fukushima (371 square km)

nuclear_power.to_date

89250 TWh

Total amount of nuclear electricity ever generated to date, since the beginning of history

Key World Energy Statistics 2020
- Page 18: Nuclear Electricity Production
Estimated from the area under the curve of the graph.
Extrapolated to 2022

earth.surface

510072000 km^2

world.energy.tfc

9937.70 Mtoe/year

Global energy usage - total final consumption (TFC)

Includes: fuel (80.7%) + electricity (19.3%) AFTER it is generated.

Does not include the fuel used in generating electricity. See [energy.tes] for that.

Citation: "Key World Energy Statistics 2020" IEA
- Page 47 - Simplified energy balance table - World energy balance, 2018

nuclear_exclusion_zones / nuclear_power.to_date * world.energy.tfc % earth.surface per century (calculation loading) Not sure if this is particularly helpful, since accidents are unforeseen and there's no reason to expect that their "rate" will stay the same. It could go up or down, considering all the advancement of nuclear tech that would be needed to scale up energy production.

This doesn't include land made uninhabitable from nuclear weapons,^{[QUANTIFICATION needed]} which some people consider an inevitable consequence of nuclear power.