I wouldn't trust it that way, no. They might last decades. They also might not. It's a gamble on any single drive, or even a few mirrored drives.
File system also matters. Modern ZFS has error checking that can handle some level of bit rot. Older formats generally don't.
If it's over 7 years or so, I want to get the data off of there.
- as opposed to +
WELCOME TO THE RABBIT HOLE
I upgraded my datahoarding server to a pair of 18TB hard drives on ZFS with mirroring a little while back. It'll be several years before I need to upgrade again, but I expect that when I do, SSDs will be cheap enough to go that route.
Already have a 10Gbps fiber connection to that server, so the hard drives are the bottleneck.
Commercially pressed discs don't last forever, but longer than burnable discs. IIRC, they used to say 50 years for CDs, but in practice, it was a lot less. More like 20 or 30 if you store and handle them nicely. Easily less than 10 if you don't.
Hard drives go bad over time; I don't like trusting spinning platters much over 7 years. They can be OK, but they can suddenly stop working whenever.
SSDs are about the same as spinning platters.
China built a few Ap1000 designs. The Sanmen station started in 2009 with completion expected in 2014 (2015 for the second unit). It went into 2019. The second, Haiyang, went about the same.
This is pretty similar to what happened in the US with Volgte.
And 5 years is what nuclear projects have promised at the start over the years. Everyone involved knows this is a gross lie.
Nuclear is nothing bog standard. If it was, it wouldn't take 10 years. Almost every plant is a boutique job that requires lots of specialists. The Westinghouse AP1000 reactor design was meant to get around this. It didn't.
The experts can stay where they are: maintaining existing nuclear power.
Renewables don't take much skilled labor at all. It's putting solar panels on racks in a field, or hoisting wind blades up a tower (crane operation is a specialty, but not on the level of nuclear engineering).
Then we just move the problem. Why should we do something that's going to take longer and use more labor? Especially skilled labor.
Money is an imperfect proxy for the underlying resources in many ways, but it about lines up in this case. To force the issue, there would have to be a compelling reason beyond straight money.
That reason ain't getting to 100% clean energy in a short time. There is another: building plants to use up existing waste rather than burying it.
... it's currently not possible to store the renewables anywhere
Every time someone argues this, it's immediately obvious they haven't actually paid attention how the storage market has been progressing.
Next, you'll probably talk about problems with lithium, as if it's the only storage technology.
If you're going to do that, then also consider the co2 output of all the concrete needed for nuclear power plants.
No, you just pay out the nose up front.
If I had money to invest in the energy sector, I don't know why I should pick nuclear. It's going to double its budget and take 10 years before I see a dime of return. Possibly none if it can't secure funding for the budget overrun, as all my initial investment will be spent.
A solar or wind farm will take 6-12 months and likely come in at or close to its budget. Why the hell would I choose nuclear?
Magnetic platters absolutely do break down from sitting around. Bearings and other mechanics can also go bad. For those things, a professional recovery operation could still get the data if you're willing to pay, but the drive itself should be thrown out.
Edit: keep in mind that with bit rot, the drive may superficially function just fine. Your data may even be 99% correct. That 1%, however, could cause unrecoverable problems, such as videos that glitch in the middle.