Now you're asking a completely different question. It's not a matter of not knowing what to do, it's a matter of not doing it.
But nothing about nuclear is unique in that regard. If you have incompetence then we get Deepwater Horizon, Bophal, companies dumping cadmium, lead, mercury, cyanide, nitrogen, phosphorous or acid in to rivers and groundwater, mining runoff, destroying rainforest, dam failures, basically the entire list of Superfund sites in the US. Those kinds of things can be significantly worse than even a full scale nuclear meltdown. And on top of that, chemical pollutants have no half-life -- they're forever.
There is a 3700 acre coal mine fire that has been burning in Pennsylvania since 1962, causing the town to be abandoned:
It's the same problem with anything -- even solar is silicon. Take a look a the environmental history of Silicon Valley for a morbid lesson in how wrong that can go.
That is a very interesting point - would I rather live next to a DuPont chemical plant or a nuclear power plant? I think I would choose the nuclear power plant.
Edit: With the nuclear plant I at least have feasible means to monitor any danger by myself.
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Now you're asking a completely different question. It's not a matter of not knowing what to do, it's a matter of not doing it.
But nothing about nuclear is unique in that regard. If you have incompetence then we get Deepwater Horizon, Bophal, companies dumping cadmium, lead, mercury, cyanide, nitrogen, phosphorous or acid in to rivers and groundwater, mining runoff, destroying rainforest, dam failures, basically the entire list of Superfund sites in the US. Those kinds of things can be significantly worse than even a full scale nuclear meltdown. And on top of that, chemical pollutants have no half-life -- they're forever.
There is a 3700 acre coal mine fire that has been burning in Pennsylvania since 1962, causing the town to be abandoned:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire
It's the same problem with anything -- even solar is silicon. Take a look a the environmental history of Silicon Valley for a morbid lesson in how wrong that can go.
That is a very interesting point - would I rather live next to a DuPont chemical plant or a nuclear power plant? I think I would choose the nuclear power plant.
Edit: With the nuclear plant I at least have feasible means to monitor any danger by myself.