Can Nuclear Be Safe?

On my post “Adventures in Biofuels,” a reader notes:  One thing I notice is you continue to point to nuclear as an option.  Do you really believe humans can build a facility, operate it efficiently and dispose of the waste safely?  I do not.

I don’t see any a priori reason that human beings can’t control nuclear energy.  In the first place, even with 60-year-old technology, it’s already several orders of magnitude safer than fossil fuels in terms of deaths and illnesses. Most environmentalists don’t want to admit this, but it’s completely true.  On top of that, we have the promise of “advanced nuclear,” and, while that means several different things like aneutronic fusion and liquid fluoride thorium reactors, all of this looks extremely appealing (albeit a couple of decades away from commercialization).