At the moment there is a major world-wide threat due to carbon emissions causing climate change. Climate models are complex, but there is some consensus that continuing our emissions will lead to serious detriment to many species, including our own.

The world is 80% powered by fossil fuel today, and we are adding more fossil fuel every day. Alongside each installation of variable renewables is an installation of dispatchable fracked gas. When the sun sets on California, something like 10 GW of fracked gas comes online for the night [1].

[1] https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&rem...

Meanwhile nuclear plants are the only 24/7 (often 18 months continuous) near-zero carbon energy source we know of. We have them deployed at scale around the world (take a look at France in previous link, who decarbonized their entire grid with nuclear reactors in about 15 years in the 1970s as a side-effect of building a grid that didn't rely on energy imports).

Beyond being near-zero carbon, nuclear reactors don't emit air pollution during normal operation like combustion does (fossil, biofuel). Air pollution from fossil and bio kills millions per year [2].

[2] https://www.who.int/airpollution/en/

Meanwhile, the threats from nuclear are: "what do we do with the waste?" and "what about Chernobyl and Fukushima?"

Because there's so much energy in the atomic nucleus, there is very little volume of highly concentrated waste generated in nuclear reactors (2,000,000x less than in electron-shell waste). So little volume that rather than dumping it out the stack like most power plants do, nuclear reactors store all of their waste from decades of powering cities on site, waiting for final geologic disposition. This waste sits benign in concrete casks that have never and probably will never injure anyone. Here's what they look like [3].

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUvvIzH2W6g

What is this final geologic repository? Well take a look at the Finns with the Onkalo repository. That's how you do it. Problem solved. [4].

[4] http://www.posiva.fi/en/media/image_gallery?gfid_2061=94#gal...

As for accidents, while Chernobyl did kill ~60 and cause up to 4000 early cancer deaths, Fukushima killed up to 1 person. This safety record, considering how much electricity has been pushed around, is actually impeccable and leader-class. By the numbers, nuclear reactors are much safer than baseline generators, and roughly as safe as wind and solar. [5]

[5] https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy

Of course this doesn't change people's minds. Facing climate change, the nuclear industry had better figure out how to communicate all this effectively while simultaneously reducing costs and improving safety, for all of our sake. While safety is already leadership class, the industry itself will not survive more Fukushima events due to human perceptions.

The nuclear industry hid under a rock hoping no one would notice it and protest it for decades. Now it has to come back out and explain why it's important and valuable.

For economics, if nuclear reactors benefited from their nearly carbon-free nature, they'd compete today. In France they're 30% cheaper than fracked gas.

In summary, the dangers from nuclear are minuscule compared to the dangers of climate change.