Dear god, nuclear power plants are deliberately overengineered to an absurd degree so they don't malfunction, and there are so many regulations, practices, and rules involved in the operation of one it's almost ridiculous. Hell, they can theoretically take a commercial jet crashing headlong into them, and even then they'd still trigger a failsafe just in case.

Plus, nuclear plants have extremely tight security, with one guy noting that some have more security than military bases. By the way if you break in, they are well within their rights to shoot you dead on the spot.

We've figured out how to make them safer to utilize for decades, and barring extraneous circumstances, such as the delibrate ignoring of safe practices (Chernobyl) or an already-occurring natural disaster (Fukushima) they're generally pretty solid, and even then part of what contributed to Fukushima was the fact that recommended safety measures were not taken against tsunamis and earthquakes despite being warned about the issues such vulnerabilities could cause prior to the incident.

Like the image they have in their heads is green goo in yellow barrels, and when they get there they find out that actually, nuclear waste is boring as shit

Nuclear power is the way forward. The alternatives are:

We keep burning fossil fuels and all boil alive from climate change

We use solar and wind; there isn’t enough, and there certainly aren’t enough batteries; inevitably, the wealthy get the energy and the poor are miserable

We give up our modern lifestyle and return to the Bronze Age, where no one has access to enough energy and people die early as a result

Our current nuclear reactor technology is crap compared to what is possible, and people resist it whenever they can. Despite this, it has saved almost 2 million lives. What could we do with better, more widespread reactors? What could we do with non-polluting electricity hundreds of times cheaper than we have now? Human advancement has always been slowed by the limits of available energy and knowledge. Wouldn’t it be great to solve our energy crisis, and in so doing, to give ourselves access to millions more scientific researchers as prosperity is brought to developing nations? 

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"I’ll admit it: The colossal gray steam-producing nuclear reactors are not as pretty as their wind and solar competitors. Like any energy source on the market today, it has its flaws. If radioactivity escapes, it can increase locals’ chances of getting cancer. Greenhouse gases are emitted mining and transporting the uranium. Opening a nuclear plant is a tremendous initial investment, especially because the nuclear industry is no longer receiving government subsidies (but the fossil fuels industry does).

So why in the world would someone be in support of nuclear power after all those drawbacks? Here’s the kicker: The process of nuclear fission is pollutant free. It emits no carbon, methane, nitrous oxide or any other greenhouse gas. Because the uranium must be mined and transported, nuclear energy unfortunately creates a footprint. But a simple comparison of emissions is convincing enough — according to the American Chemical Association, nuclear releases 65 tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent gases per GWh on average, while natural gas produces 602 and coal produces 1,045 tonnes per GWh.