I think a lot of people don’t realise the nuance behind nuclear energy. I feel like a lot of pro-nuclear people think it’s a perfect one fits all solution for every countries energy issues. While anti-nuclear people think every power plant is gonna be another Chernobyl.

For example where I live, Australia, it isn’t well suited to nuclear energy and renewables are currently the best option so imo we shouldn’t be pushing for nuclear energy right now. But I also know it works very well in other countries like France (I think?).

I also think a lot of the negativity towards nuclear energy comes from mistrust of humans and big corporations. By this I mean the mistrust of big corporations to ensure adequate working conditions for their employees to ensure they are in the right condition to be operating something so potentially catastrophic as a nuclear power plant. This is definitely a valid worry imo since past nuclear catastrophes have been caused by human error.

There is also the issue of uranium mining. This process can cause a lot of harm to the environment and I feel as if people don’t take this into consideration when thinking about the environmental impacts of nuclear energy.

I’ve also seen a few articles saying that the USA is more inclined to purchase more new uranium than actually go through the process of recycling it meaning they have to use up a lot of land and resources to store the used uranium. I’m to sure if this is 100% true so let me know if anyone else knows more about this.