Once they’re built there doesn’t have to be much on-site work.

But reactors take years to build and have large staffs that are there 24-7. If the site is closed to habitation due to former nuclear testing… that doesn’t seem to fit.

Besides - nuclear takes up a far smaller footprint than solar/wind (and ought to be near water). Why stick it out in the desert?

Oh - and they tend to have extremely sensitive radiation detectors that freak out if anything is ever over a background level. Think of all the false alarms

(That's why the land became contaminated in the first place.)

...as deadly as the contamination of the planetary atmosphere that occurred while we all waited patiently for the grand solar nirvana that did not come, is not here and will not come?

What is the death toll from this "contamination?"

Anything like the death toll from the trichlorosilane explosion in Japan that killed more people than the radiation released by Fukushima?

We should not be trashing National laboratories with solar junk that will be electronic waste before today's toddlers finish college.

mining the uranium, keeping it secure, and disposing of the waste. External costs.

The question was, “… Why stick it out in the desert?” (“It” referring to a nuclear plant.)

My suggestion is that there would be fewer “siting” complaints.

there might be many complaints about mounds of mine tailings, often in indigenous lands.

My point is that these externals are also "siting" issues, if we look at the whole life cycle of the reactor plant. I'm trying to learn to think in these terms.

…the byproducts of mining (tailings &c.) will be the same regardless of where a reactor is built.

Of course, in theory, this supposed reactor might be a “Gen IV” reactor which burns the “waste” from our fleet of “Gen II” reactors.

Regardless of the “generation” of the reactor, the externals should not be affected by the location where it is built.

no matter where a reactor is sited.

What I'm saying is that whether the (supposed) reactor is located as indicated, or, in downtown LA, the costs associated with mining (if there is mining required) waste disposal (if there is waste) and so on, will be the same.

...of nuclear energy, while ignoring the life cycle of everything that's worse.

The nuclear industry is 70 years old. Every time there is the release of trivial amounts of radiation leading to no loss of lives to radiation, morons carry on as if it the end of the world.

This is an example of selective attention morphing into ignorance that kills people.

I invite anyone so carrying on to show that in the 70 year history of commercial nuclear power world wide to show that in that 70 year history nuclear power, including the bogeymen at Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island - which people have burned a lot of coal, oil and gas to discuss to the point of absurdity - has killed as many people as will die in the next 48 hours from air pollution. That would be 38,000 people.

Reference:

: Global burden of 87 risk factors in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 (Lancet Volume 396, Issue 10258, 17–23 October 2020, Pages 1223-1249). This study is a huge undertaking and the list of authors from around the world is rather long. These studies are always open sourced; and I invite people who want to carry on about Fukushima to open it and search the word "radiation." It appears once. Radon, a side product brought to the surface by fracking while we all wait for the grand so called "renewable energy" nirvana that did not come, is not here and won't come, appears however: Household radon, from the decay of natural uranium, which has been cycling through the environment ever since oxygen appeared in the Earth's atmosphere.

Here is what it says about air pollution deaths in the 2019 Global Burden of Disease Survey, if one is too busy to open it oneself because one is too busy carrying on about Fukushima:

Now I know that antinukes, rather like antivaxxers don't know any science, and actually despise science. Nevertheless Lancet is one of the most prominent medical journals in the world, and the authorship of this document consists from highly educated, highly trained medical and epidemiological experts from around the world.

I invite antinukes to find reports of deaths from radiation in this document and to compare to them to the 7 million people killed every year by head up the ass petty objections to nuclear power.

An antinuke complaining about mine tailings is rather like Ron DeSantis complaining about racism, or Donald Trump complaining about corruption.

The whole damned planet is in flames from fossil fuel waste, people are dropping dead from extreme temperatures driven by fossil fuel waste, crops are failing around the world, vast oceanic ecosystems are being destroyed and to what kind of contemptible nonsense do we have to listen.

Two antinukes complaining about citing nuclear plants?

No sense of decency. None.

Nuclear energy saves lives:

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

It follows that antinuke ignorance kills people.

Disgusting.

No sense of decency...none.

...if the Energy Department already owns land, and we want to continue supporting new energy industries which would need land... Is this what they call a 'no-brainer'?

The only thing I feel needs to be considered is that any grid-connected energy production should probably be as localized as possible to the various areas it will be servicing, but maybe a large centrally located hub of energy generation that is intended to be stored in batteries or hydrogen and then distributed via transport is what they are thinking about?

with renwables, before we tear up farmland, forest, and pristine lands. Highways, canals, parking lots, rooftops. And Superfund-grade sites, to prevent other usages of dangerous pollution locations.

The objection is often made is that it will cost more to locate power generation in the built environment, but this ignores the external costs of damaging other locations. These kind of market-based arguments always ignore eternal costs.