Ruining the earth because you watched a Chernobyl documentary

True, assuming we keep being absolutely paranoid about it for the next couple of thousands years or so, and provided solar and wind power doesn't keep developing.

something else to think about- nuclear waste is, and has been since the beginning of the use of nuclear power plants, relatively east to store. in fact, you can recycle and repurpose old defunct mine shafts that sit below the water table and seal them in there so that there isn’t any risk of contamination, so mankind is continuing to get some use out of them.

Lol. Well- it’s certainly a valid concern troubling many minds for awhile now- how to warn the future should the knowledge of today be lost. That said…. I like inspectora’s take- and in a less humorous reply I would say that ultimately human beings and most animals really, are reasonable good at figuring out places not to go. So in scenario A, tens or hundreds of thousands of years in the future they may still be very much aware of nuclear danger- if not scientifically at least some vague ghost stories not to go to “that cave” or what not. If all knowledge is somehow lost- if at some point people just forget about the 100k+ year important thing- they’ll likely figure it out. If you get close enough to get serious rad sickness they’ll probably at least avoid the place, and if they only get close enough to increase cancer risk that’s probably fine. If they lack the technology or advancement to figure out the problem or even notice a problem- average life expectancy is probably low enough

that a lifetime cancer risk increase isn’t the thing that will be doing most people in.

Yeah, ghost stories from 1,000s years ago now-adays attract ghost hunters and TV shows about cryptids.

So think of all the young technologies. Lots of them have higher body counts in their first century right? But… no matter how many people have died from aviation accidents- how many of those would it take to render 150,000 square miles unsuitable for humans… for 3,000 or more years? After a mass shooting, people may have trauma, but there’s nothing inherently dangerous or that prevents the building from being used as soon as it is cleaned and repaired. If 100 people died on a stretch of highway in a single day, it could be up and running in as little as a few days with no one who didn’t see the news the wiser save perhaps some road side memorials. If an oil tanker spills… we may see the effects for generations- but it is unlikely there would be significant impact over thousands of years from a single incident. Almost every other type of major incident known lacks the long term effects of nuclear incidents, and of those that have the potential to linger most require cumulative…

occurrence to produce serious effects. Heavy metals remain dangerous effectively forever. Not that we are letting that stop our quest for the “bright” electric future- but things like leaded fuel only became serious health hazards after decades of daily cumulative events by hundreds of thousands or millions of people. It only takes on nuclear power plant accident, one time, to leave potentially an entire city or county or in some places provinces or even countries dangerous or deadly for human habitation for thousands or hundreds of thousands of years. To borrow a thought from Karlboll- if we have near perfect planning and design and construction, near perfect diligence and practices, constantly, for thousands of years, we can say that most of the potential for danger has been mitigated. Barring the unexpected of course- which it is a bit hard to be prepared for that which you don’t expect, but still.