The production of energy using nuclear power plants not only bears the risk of devastating nuclear accidents, as seen quite recently again in Fukushima, with the Chernobyl disaster being the historically most famous example. It also brings along problems that will last for hundreds of thousands of years: radioactive waste must be safely disposed for hundreds to thousands of years. It's not surprising thus that countries using nuclear energy struggle with finding proper places for nuclear waste disposal and that "waste is mainly stored at individual reactor sites and there are over 430 locations around the world where radioactive material continues to accumulate".¹ It's also not surprising that citizens usually don't want a nuclear waste site near their home and that they often end up (being planned) near the border to neighboring countries. Besides that, nuclear decommissioning (the process of dismantling a nuclear facility), for instance, requires a lot of unpleasant effort, time - and money. read more
