Well, on the positive side Harley Davidson is currently making an electric motorcycle that will cost $30,000. This will save the planet.
I've worked at four nuclear plants in the U.S.A. Yes, there is nuclear waste but for the amount of energy produced it is low, and for much of the last it is stored on site. I personally feel the current procedures are more than safe. I remember the Three Mile Island situation when I was a young man. Story I've heard several times while personally questioning older workers is that workers in the control room had a news paper that was covering a warning light. Jimmy Carter personally visited the control room and asked what the problem was and helped them find what happened. (I've also heard of an operations controller say you are getting false reading fill the pool with water). NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) does not permit any reading material, personal possessions, etc in the control room that could impede safe operation. This is what I was told.
As I have explained to my daughter, the smoke from the cooling towers at a nuclear power plant is only steam cooling down the water from 600 degrees and very high pressure. It is not nuclear waste. The nuclear rods heat the water to run a steam turbine. That's it's. The spent fuel is stored on site in steel and concrete cylinders after it has cooled in the pool inside containment.
As far as getting rid of coal here in the U.S. it makes no sense when China is building a lot of coal fired plants.
Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has a great use of their terrain just outside of Chattanooga, Tn. The power from Sequoyah Nuclear Plant when demand is low usually at night is used to pump millions of gallons of water in to a man-made lake at the top of Racoon Mountain. Then when demand is higher the water is released into hydroelectric turbines.
https://www.tva.com/energy/our-power-system/hydroelectric/raccoon-mountain
Granted, TVA had 6 million yards of fly ash flow into river close to Knoxville, Tennessee and they cleaned it up, and workers are sueing them for the adverse health effects.
Windmills kill birds. Coal has fly ash that needs to be stored. Nuclear has spent fuel and other contaminated materials like used personal protective equipment (clothing) that needs to be stored.
I'm not an expert in energy. Hydroelectric energy is wonderful and is cheap. Kentucky recently was in the process of building three hydroelectric dams on the Ohio river. I worked on two of them. Hydroelectric energy is very cheap.
The tools to manufacture energy are diverse and with the proper management will overall benefit humans. If you live in a third world country or in California you can regularly have rolling black outs. Blackouts present their own negative issues. Is your mass transit train powered by electricity? Wait until you have a rolling blackout because solar or wind cannot meet the demand. The loss of productivity is exponential.
