I wanted to post more on nuclear and how much better it is than any fossil fuel. Right now we get about 20% of our energy from nuclear, 10% from green energy and 70% from fossil fuels. If we could get that 20% nuclear up to 50% or more by 2030, we would be well on our way to achieving our goals of a sustainable future.
Not only is nuclear less of a threat to human health and longevity than fossil fuels, burning coal actually releases more radiation than a nuclear power plant does.
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2016/ ... ear-power/
Fossil fuels have a host of problems themselves. Thebyproducts from burning fossil fuels are toxic pollutants that produce ozone, toxic organic aerosols, particulate matter, and heavy metals. The World Health Organization has stated the urban air pollution, which is a mixture of all of the chemicals just described, causes 7 million deaths annually or about 1 in 8 of total deaths. Furthermore, coal power plants release more radioactive material per kWh into the environment in the form of coal ash than does waste from a nuclear power plant under standard shielding protocols. This means that, under normal operations, the radioactive waste problem associated with one of the most mainstream energy sources in use actually exceeds that from nuclear energy.
In fact, on a per kWh of energy produced basis, both the European Union and the Paul Scherrer Institute, the largest Swiss national research institute, found an interesting trend regarding the fatalities attributable to each energy source. Remarkably, nuclear power is the benchmark to beat, outranking coal, oil, gas, and even wind by a slight margin as the least deadly major energy resource in application (see Figure 3).
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... ear-waste/
Over the past few decades, however, a series of studies has called these stereotypes into question. Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.