Question: how does nuclear energy impact the environment?

Andy Buckley answered on 13 Mar 2019:

Pretty low impact, actually. Most of the carbon footprint of nuclear power is in the concrete used to build it — like the steel forging used to build wind turbines, you need to build that into the environmental cost. In terms of actual operation, though, it’s low-carbon: there is some carbon footprint from uranium mining, but the point of nuclear (fission) power is that you don’t need all that much fuel. And afterward, since there’s not that much fuel there’s also not that much radioactive waste (not to dismiss the issue), and it’s quite do-able if properly designed and funded. On the whole it’s a pretty environmentally sound fuel source, not wildly different from renewables, but more reliable — it’s quite expensive now, though, because of public concerns over safety leading to very complex power station designs. Nuclear fusion would be much safer, and very clean, but hasn’t been shown to work as a power generation method yet.