the op seems to be missing the fact that the waste from fossil fuels is the thing that is causing the climate change. we definitely don't have a good long term waste solution for that.
Honestly I think a lot of people miss this. Similarly people will look at full cycle for nuclear but not for renewables. Nor include batteries or other storage systems. First order approximations aren't good enough to let us even approximate an understanding of what is arguably the most difficult problem in human history.
ok, well I hear that a lot but does anyone have the figures of how many Chernobyl zones would be expected if all of the fossil fuel usage was replaced with nuclear?
but then questions become - does increasing power generation via nuclear improve or make the systems worse - because maybe the sites we have now are the best of the best and we get more we no longer have the best of the best.
Final question - is there perhaps any sort of interplay from multiple Chernobyl like incidents possible? In the same way that the increase of fossil fuel usage went beyond just local pollution to climate change.
But yeah, fossil fuel usage providing almost all of humanity's energy needs over a century has damaged the environment much more than a much shorter period and much more limited nuclear power usage has.
on edit: I am in fact a proponent of increasing nuclear power usage - just these arguments I see about Chernobyl not being that bad in comparison to climate change are not that impressive without some extrapolation and hard science.
> how many Chernobyl zones would be expected if all of the fossil fuel usage was replaced with nuclear?
Honestly? Roughly 1. The reason Chernobyl blew up is difficult to explain to people that don't have a lot of background in nuclear physics. In addition to this, no western country built reactors that even had the ability to explode.
So a better question would be about Fukushima like zones (yeah, there is a bit of a difference. Their exclusion zone is smaller and won't last as long). This is also pretty unlikely and very difficult to calculate. Some people over estimate the damage from Fukushima, some under. Again, it is hard to explain to non-experts. It's not only nuclear physics, a tough enough subject as is, but also a lot of geology, medicine, and more. The simplest way to put the Fukushima accident is that it was caused by a never before seen earthquake (and subsequent tsunami) and one that was not predicted possible. Now, science did advance and this possibility was learned about, but it was a little too late. A typical response to this is that we also don't know what can happen in the future, but this is also naive because we've clearly gotten better.
There's been close to 700 reactors built and only 2 had major accidents. That's less than half a percent. Supposing we had 10k reactors that would put us at 30. But this is naive for the reasons given/implied to above. The honest answer is probably less than 10. But it is again hard to calculate because that estimate is based on current climate conditions and assuming events like Katrina are common. But I think this is still a high estimate because even the Indian ocean earthquake didn't cause such a disaster at India's Chennai reactor. My more honest guess is 3. But this is even hard because it's based on black swan events and in addition to that climate wouldn't be as big of a problem as it is today if we had continued to build reactors in the 80's. We also have assumed that such production wouldn't have increased safety measures like we see in Gen IV and Gen V reactors. Which if those were around, then I don't think we would have an additional one and I don't think Fukushima would have happened. So 1.
The truth is that asking this question is impossible to answer and not really that fruitful. It is abundantly clear that the 2 accidents that have happened were black swan events. Only Chernobyl was (somewhat meaningfully) predictable. We still don't know how to predict black swan events because by definition they are rare. We can't give a meaningful answer to your question.
And yeah, I agree. It is very clear that Chernobyl is less bad than climate change. Nature is still thriving in Chernobyl and Fukushima. Just humans aren't. And that might not be such a bad thing (though obviously it is bad for all the people that were displaced).
The long-term storage solution we're using now for CO2, is to put it into the atmosphere. Putting that there is much worse than putting radioactive waste deep underground in a stable salt formation. It's even worse than letting the nuclear plant waste sit around in open water tanks, as we do now.
I'd also say that the climate zone is much larger and deadlier than the Chernobyl zone.