Originally Posted by turbo1889

Let's leave the nuclear (unless someone cracks the fusion secret) out of it as much as possible, dead burned dino crud in the air or radioactive poisoning that lasts for millions of years and causes permanent global genetic degradation in all species? If I must choose between the two I'll take the dead dino crud which eventually nature cleans up which is a much shorter eventuality then the millions of years of radioactivity.

I understand that there are some applications where nuclear power is the only thing capable of doing the job, deep space probes being one of them (once you get far enough out beyond the outer planets that solar cells don't work any more) but short of those super critical situations conventional dirty fission nuclear power is way worse then burning dead dino crud.