Interview Questions

Question 1

What are the myths about nuclear?

Answer 1

Waste is an unsolved problem.
Nuclear energy isn't safe.
Nuclear plants are like bombs.
Nuclear is too expensive.
Using more nuclear will make the world less safe.

Question 2

How can we solve the waste problem?

Answer 2

1. There are commercial scale recycling plants that will take the waste from all plants and recycle it for reuse in other plants. 2. Advanced Nuclear designs will be able to use the waste as fuel, without it needing to be recycled.
2. Additionally, for the small fraction of the most radioactive isotopes, these can be frozen into glass (vitrification), and buried and these will be inert within 300 years, not a million years, well-below the duration of the glass containment.

Question 3

How safe is nuclear energy?

Answer 3

It is the safest mode of generating energy humans have ever designed. It is the only technology that is forced now to store its own waste safely. If fossil fuels had to do this, we wouldn’t have the climate crisis.

The actual number of deaths caused by a problem at one of the plants is under 50, the exact number is about 32. These facts are not in dispute but what people fear is the risk that was posed by movies like “Chinatown,” which is the prospective risk that a plant might act like a nuclear bomb. This seems like a possibility but it is not physically possible.

So what people need to understand about safety, is that they are comparing a fictional disaster scenario against millions of current deaths from fossil fuels and a known existential threat from climate change that is already causing billions in damage and thousands of deaths already from extreme weather.