Check your sources for that Chernobyl estimate. It comes from the European Greens political party and includes victims of Soviet mismanagement.
The UN's reports on the effects of radiation (UNSCEAR) estimated 4000 future solid cancers (not deaths) and later dropped that estimate when the data didn't pan out.
Civil used nuclear fuel has never leaked and is not so dangerous after a few hundred years. Don't try to confuse us with the issue of weapons as those are separate programs which predated all municipal atomic power production.
Some think that the UN is always right and without any bias. I don't. That's exactly my point here: there is no consensual way to assess nuke effective victims.
Don't try to confuse us by pretending that a nuke civilian program doesn't help nations trying to build a nuclear weapon. That's the root of Iran's current pertinent project, and "Many UN and US agencies warn that building more nuclear reactors unavoidably increases nuclear proliferation risks" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-use_technology#Nuclear )
Don't try to confuse use with "not so dangerous after a few hundred years" while all pertinent experts and legislation, for example in France and the US, require that a waste repository must hold it safely for 1 million years, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r...
That report (Fairlie, Sumner 2006) was commissioned by the European Greens. If you clicked once to the Wikipedia reference you're citing you could see that as well as why they might have been selected to produce that report.
Civilian nuclear energy rarely results in a nuclear weapons program. Today IAEA monitoring is effective in preventing diversionary pathways and enforcing international nonproliferation obligations (even where the US is obligated to not use internationally sourced uranium to produce weapons tritium).
A legislature requiring a million year containment is far from an evaluation of the waste's toxicity. Otherwise you would be forced to talk about specific isotopes.
Please reread my posts here, beginning with the very first. I was writing about another report, titled "Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment", by Yablokov & Nesterenko. It was not authored by Fairlie.
If you clicked once to the Wikipedia references I provided since my first post you could see that. Here it is, once again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the...
You may think that European Greens reports aren't credible, however this is IMHO a very weak counter-argument, simply the classical ad hominem fallacy at work.
My argument here is that this "What are the safest sources of energy?" article contents is highly debatable because it builds upon debatable theories. If the Chernobyl disaster really caused abut 1 million deaths, as stated by pertinent scientists in the aforementioned report, then the article's conclusions should be very different.
> Civilian nuclear energy rarely results in a nuclear weapons program
Stating that the IAEA, which is an UN agency, has the power to prevent anything is just an opinion. Nearly all nations, small or huge, routinely neglect UN injonctions without any consequence.
> A legislature requiring a million year containment is far from an evaluation of the waste's toxicity.
This is an opinion. I, for one, cannot see any other reason for those legal dispositions. Actions aiming at keeping a repository sealed for 1 million years cost more than those necessary to keep it for "a few" centuries, this was a deliberate decision.
The UN's reports on the effects of radiation (UNSCEAR) estimated 4000 future solid cancers (not deaths) and later dropped that estimate when the data didn't pan out.
Civil used nuclear fuel has never leaked and is not so dangerous after a few hundred years. Don't try to confuse us with the issue of weapons as those are separate programs which predated all municipal atomic power production.