Uninhabitable? Most of the evacuations were unnecessary, and there would have been less loss-of-life if most people sheltered in-place. In the year following the event, nearby residents received less than 20% of lifetime natural background radiation, about 2 chest CT scans, or a bit more than an airline crew, and less than a heavy smoker.

As for waste, dry casks are plenty good. The material is glassified, so it can't leach into ground water, and the concrete casing means you get less radiation by sitting next to one, as even natural background radiation is partially blocked. Casks are also dense enough for on-site storage, needing only a small lot to store the lifetime fuel use of any plant. A pro and a con of this method is that the fuel is difficult to retrieve from the glass, which is bad for fuel reprocessing, but good for preventing easy weapons manufacturing.

Meanwhile, coal pollution kills some 8 million people annually, and because the grid is already set up for it, when nuclear plants close they are replaced with coal or oil plants.

Upgrading the grid is expensive, and large-scale storage is difficult, and often untested. Pumped hydro is great for those places that can manage it, but the needed storage is far greater, and in locations without damable areas. Not only would unprecidented storage be necessary, but also a grid that's capable of moving energy between multiple focus points, instead of simply out of a plant. These aren't impossible challenges, but the solutions aren't here yet, and nuclear can fill the gap between decommissioning fossil fuels and effective baseline storage.

Solar and Wind don't have the best disposal record either, with more efficient PV cells needing more exotic resources, and the simple bulk of wind turbines making them difficult to dispose of. And batteries are famously toxic and/or explosive. Once again, these challenges have solutions, but they aren't mature and countries will stick with proven methods untill they are. That means more fossil fuels killing more people unnecessary. Nuclear can save those people today, and then allow renewable grids to be built when they are ready.

100% minus the energy requirements of AI 🫠

Also, there’s still no solution to nuclear waste beyond burying it and hoping that no one digs it up.

what about shit like lead? Or arsenic? That shit doesn't go away, yet we still use it all over the place, maybe not arsenic, but still lead is huge.

But Fukushima did render a fairly large area uninhabitable, and the ongoing cleanup is still costing billions every year.

ironically, there has been research to determine that a lot of the initial evacuation actually exposed people to MORE radiation, than had they not evacuated, interestingly, they did see an increase in cancer rates, and what not, down the road. However, it wasn't statistically significant compared to other stats from other places.

So even if it did matter, it seems in terms of healthcare, it was a statistical anomaly, more than a concern.

Plus now we have some really cool radiation detecting networks that are volunteer(?) led, it's been a while since i've read into this, but these systems give us a MUCH better idea of what's happening now with radiation, than when it happened. So if it did happen again, the results would be even better.