To address your concern you have to think about accumulation. I addressed this in some of the other comments but I'll try to tie it all in here.
When considering cleanup, there are only two events (that I'm aware of) that weren't covered by insurance: Chernobyl and Fukushima (3 mile was substantially under the maximal payout from insurance). Another user commented how they found data suggesting that the cleanup for Fukushima was 200bn. When I looked for cleanup for the total disaster (including tsunami damage) it was more than double that. When looking at natural disasters even just looking at the damage to the US in just the last year we easily went over that 200bn in cost. It is a damned if we do, damned if we don't problem. But something to look at is that even including these disasters, there have been fewer human lives lost per kWhr than (almost) any other energy source, which includes solar and wind (took me for surprise when I found out, and I already knew it was really safe. Hydro is super safe though). Climate aside, it is extremely safe. Something also to note is that much of the irradiated areas from Fukushima are now livable and more space is becoming so every year (really most places you can safely live in, but we have pretty strict standards for public rad limits. Most places there you would be under nuclear worker upper limits, which is below detectable increase in cancer rates). It isn't this "these areas are unlivable for thousands of years" scenarios that you hear. People live in areas where we had the stupid idea of dropping bombs. The difference with nuclear is that cost of damage is both temporarily and physically local, so it is much more obvious than more abstract concepts like pollution (or the 200k that die a year in the US by coal ash).
I actually think about the energy problem as a negative sum game. Hopefully one day we'll get to a positive sum game where we can make the planet better, but right now it is about doing the least damage (until we learn to terraform in a major way). When you put it in this perspective you realize that all options end up having a net negative utility, but that doesn't mean we should just give up. We need to do the best that we can till we can play a different game (a positive sum one. And we will get there). But until then we have to remember that we're humans and bad at understanding risks. So we have to use the right tools, and when looking at the evidence I think the vast majority of those that do agree.
Like I said, I want to be honest. Nuclear isn't going to save the world, I'm not sure fusion is going to either. But we have to play the game and do the least damage we can until we can play a positive sum game. Until then, no matter what we do, we do some form of damage.
There's also a few common misnomers that I want to address. People point out France reducing their nuclear load, from >80% to 50% in 2025. I honestly see this as something we should emulate. Nuclear is there for load balancing. Load balancing (see Duck Curve) is the reason we still use coal for our grid. It is all about a well diversified energy portfolio and meeting the specific criteria of where you need to provide power to. The other thing is people say that it is nuclear vs solar or nuclear vs renewables. This is laudable. We want renewables. We encourage them. It is nuclear vs fossil fuels or (the closest argument I can make) nuclear vs betting on new batteries being developed in time (which to mean "in time" means a few decades ago).
I'll leave you with a saying that is often repeated: "When it comes to nuclear, those that know the most fear the least." And I ask anyone that has concerns to not just talk to random strangers on the internet, but ask nuclear physicists why they do what they do.
And as for space travel, I did some work in that area. I'm not actually convinced that fission is the answer. If anything, maybe a stop gap, but a potentially dangerous one at that (rockets still frequently explode).
And again, I'm MORE than happy to address concerns, at least ones that I know the answers to. I speak out not because I am pro-nuclear, but pro-Earth. Frankly the reason we need nuclear is because we needed to be investing in renewables and battery tech substantially more decades ago. Until then, we can't take high risk gambles without a backup in place.
It seems you missed the whole characterization of nothing is 100% safe. At some point there has to be an acceptable loss. Or rather, we have to try to do the least damage. But yes, people will die. But because we have electricity, more people will live.
I'd been unaware of Banqiao until a few years ago. Its scale overwhelms me. And yet the chain of institutional, engineering, and circumstancial events triggering it offer a huge set of cautionary lessons to nuclear advocates. I recommend reading the history closely.
Today, and for another 300 years, Fukushima and Chernobyl have effectively no inhabitants.
Zhumadian city, inundated by the Banqiao disaster, is home to over 7 million souls.
Once dam breaks cease being raging floods, life resumes, for those not fully extinguished, in a matter of weeks or years. Not centuries.
And the factors in assessing, avoiding, mitigating, alerting, and responding to risks are all remarkably similar to those of nuclear installations, save the very long-tail disasters.
The US has seen few major dam failures, though several have ocurred. Johnstown (1889) saw by far the most deaths, 2,200 (it spurred creation of the Red Cross and massive reforms to liability law), but see also the St. Francis (431 souls) and Teton (11) failures, and near misses or ongoing risks at Oroville, Isabella, Glen Canyon, among others.
Elsewhere, there are the cases of Vajont (2000+), Machchu (5500+), and others.
Again, the failures largely accrued from institutional hubris, engineering insufficience, lack of domain knowledge (often deliberate ignorance or denial), poor overall management, lack of disaster preparation, drilling, or readiness, communications breakdown (see Banqiao's comms loss), and inadequate resonse in light of imminent or present threat.
None of these are domain-specific to hydraulic civil engineering or absent from nuclear engineering projects.
To address your concern you have to think about accumulation. I addressed this in some of the other comments but I'll try to tie it all in here.
When considering cleanup, there are only two events (that I'm aware of) that weren't covered by insurance: Chernobyl and Fukushima (3 mile was substantially under the maximal payout from insurance). Another user commented how they found data suggesting that the cleanup for Fukushima was 200bn. When I looked for cleanup for the total disaster (including tsunami damage) it was more than double that. When looking at natural disasters even just looking at the damage to the US in just the last year we easily went over that 200bn in cost. It is a damned if we do, damned if we don't problem. But something to look at is that even including these disasters, there have been fewer human lives lost per kWhr than (almost) any other energy source, which includes solar and wind (took me for surprise when I found out, and I already knew it was really safe. Hydro is super safe though). Climate aside, it is extremely safe. Something also to note is that much of the irradiated areas from Fukushima are now livable and more space is becoming so every year (really most places you can safely live in, but we have pretty strict standards for public rad limits. Most places there you would be under nuclear worker upper limits, which is below detectable increase in cancer rates). It isn't this "these areas are unlivable for thousands of years" scenarios that you hear. People live in areas where we had the stupid idea of dropping bombs. The difference with nuclear is that cost of damage is both temporarily and physically local, so it is much more obvious than more abstract concepts like pollution (or the 200k that die a year in the US by coal ash).
I actually think about the energy problem as a negative sum game. Hopefully one day we'll get to a positive sum game where we can make the planet better, but right now it is about doing the least damage (until we learn to terraform in a major way). When you put it in this perspective you realize that all options end up having a net negative utility, but that doesn't mean we should just give up. We need to do the best that we can till we can play a different game (a positive sum one. And we will get there). But until then we have to remember that we're humans and bad at understanding risks. So we have to use the right tools, and when looking at the evidence I think the vast majority of those that do agree.
Like I said, I want to be honest. Nuclear isn't going to save the world, I'm not sure fusion is going to either. But we have to play the game and do the least damage we can until we can play a positive sum game. Until then, no matter what we do, we do some form of damage.
There's also a few common misnomers that I want to address. People point out France reducing their nuclear load, from >80% to 50% in 2025. I honestly see this as something we should emulate. Nuclear is there for load balancing. Load balancing (see Duck Curve) is the reason we still use coal for our grid. It is all about a well diversified energy portfolio and meeting the specific criteria of where you need to provide power to. The other thing is people say that it is nuclear vs solar or nuclear vs renewables. This is laudable. We want renewables. We encourage them. It is nuclear vs fossil fuels or (the closest argument I can make) nuclear vs betting on new batteries being developed in time (which to mean "in time" means a few decades ago).
I'll leave you with a saying that is often repeated: "When it comes to nuclear, those that know the most fear the least." And I ask anyone that has concerns to not just talk to random strangers on the internet, but ask nuclear physicists why they do what they do.
And as for space travel, I did some work in that area. I'm not actually convinced that fission is the answer. If anything, maybe a stop gap, but a potentially dangerous one at that (rockets still frequently explode).
And again, I'm MORE than happy to address concerns, at least ones that I know the answers to. I speak out not because I am pro-nuclear, but pro-Earth. Frankly the reason we need nuclear is because we needed to be investing in renewables and battery tech substantially more decades ago. Until then, we can't take high risk gambles without a backup in place.