Alarmist article is alarmist.
"Zero non-threshold linear model" which is used by alarmists to predict the amount of cancers from minuscule radiation (such as the Hanford leak) is total bogus. Even its creators admit that it was purposeful, misleading, and only aimed to scare people instead of being based on facts, because the authors wanted to encourage nuclear disarmament and thought that scaring people by wildly exaggerating the consequences of radiation (a likely byproduct of a nuclear war) was the way to achieve this. Empirical evidence and later research points to that low to moderate levels of radiation decrease mortality and cancer incidence; radiation tends to destabilize very small malignant tumours and generally boosts immune system. You would basically have to get radiation poisoning in order to cause the risk of malignancies to grow.
When news report that OMFG RADIOACTIVE WATER LEAKING FROM FUKUSHIMA WERE ALL GUNNA DIE the raw numbers say that it's often less radioactive than perfectly drinkable well water is naturally in Finland. But Japan being exceptionally poor of uranium ore (thus having nonexistent background radiation) and having been nuked twice, they panic at readings which would be completely normal elsewhere. If the radiation limits around Fukushima were followed here, for example most of Finland should be evacuated.
As for the common argument, "nuclear waste is highly radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years", that is an outright lie. A substance can be "highly radioactive" only for a short period of time or low active for a long period. Nuclear waste is lethally radioactive for the first hundred years or so, but after a thousand years it cannot be distinguished from background radiation. "Hundreds of thousands of years" would be when there are no radioactive isotopes left. Of course, using fast breeder reactors nearly 100% of current nuclear waste could be reused as fuel (leaving behind several orders of magnitude less waste that is actually non-radioactive on top of that), but FBR's have not been developed much, because MUH NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY (FBR converts uranium into plutonium, making it attractive tech for Young General and the like) and because uranium is one of the most common elements on the planet - it is so plentiful that at the moment it is not profitable to look for it or open new mines. Curiously enough, the same companies that supply nuclear powerplants are also responsible for prospecting for uranium and run the uranium mines. I wonder why it is in their interest that 98% of the "fuel" is wasted...?
To date, a few hundred people at most have died due to Chernobyl which was INTENTIONALLY CAUSED - an experiment breaking all the safety rules, gone just as wrong as was to be expected, impossible to reproduce with modern reactors. EVERY YEAR, hundreds of thousands of people in Europe alone die due to respiratory illnesses arising from fossil fuels.
Nuclear power is the most efficient and safe form of energy, too bad people are basing the energy decisions on irrational fears rather than hard facts.
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"But muh renewables", no, they are not enough to maintain Western lifestyle even with improving energy efficiency. Rivers that can be dammed mostly have been already. Very few areas have strong enough tide for tidal power. Geothermal energy is mostly available at fault lines. "But muh windpower and solar power available errywhere", welcome to Finland in winter to witness how well solar power works without sunlight, or how well wind power works without wind (when the frost is at its highest, it's deadly calm). Solar panels basically have negative EROI (energy return on investment) north of the Tropic of Cancer and south of the Tropic of Capricorn, the farther from the equator the smaller the EROI. As for wind, eg. in the Canary Isles (smack in the middle of ocean, where there's always wind) they are in use for about 20% of the time. In less windy areas, they would also have negative EROI. Wind and solar power are profitable money-wise only because of massive subsidies, and because they are MUH GREEN ENERGY nobody dares to question the EROI.
And no, hydrogen is not an energy source, because it doesn't exist in free form on Earth. It must be "made" with electricity which always takes more energy than you would get by burning the refined "pure" hydrogen.
Now, peat might be the only sensible renewable energy source. When it decomposes, it produces methane, which, according to climate alarmists, is 25 times more potent greenhouse gas than the abominable carbon dioxide. If you burn it, it woud produce CO2 instead, so if you believe in the ManBearPig, you should rationally burn it. Oh, but countries that dried out all their swamps centuries ago say it's a fossil fuel and don't allow its use. Hello reality, it's slowly renewable (about 100 years versus 100 million years for oil and natural gas) so could be utilized given enough swamps. Here in Finland, a frakking third of our land area is some sort of swamp, so 1% of that used annually in energy production would actually be quite a source of energy. But no, Central Europeans say that swamps are so rare that they must be protected for protection's sake.
