To put aside the whataboutism first. Yes I have seen the consequence of coal mining, on both people and place, which is why I am pleased that the UK now has und

To put aside the whataboutism first. Yes I have seen the consequence of coal mining, on both people and place, which is why I am pleased that the UK now has under fifty coal miners, working in a few small scale open mines. From a peak of around 1 million down the mines. Coal is almost completely out of UK generation, and would be with no nuclear. It is presently the source of last resort - the few coal plants that remain spend most of their time idling. By 2025 there will be zero. If the authorities were able to show an ongoing period of best-practice, excellent management and regulation to ensure the industry (all industry) pays the environmental cost up front from their profit, I'd still be a vocal advocate of nuclear like I was in my naive twenties. No, every time there is systemic ineptness and a public purse left holding the bill for the after-closure clean up. Decades of renaming, cover-up, lies, official inquiries and ignoring the locals. Many of whom are like me - they'd love to accept it and perhaps work there were it not so criminally inept. Same would go for an explosives plant. :p Have confidence in a reprocessing plant that was going to make the UK billions of good Thatcherite pounds reprocessing the world's nuclear waste, that caused an international outrage, and has not actually made profit if you include the large leak and decomissioning cleanup. In fact even if you discount cleanup THORP looks pretty questionable as to whether it was really profitable at all. The UK is a small place, a major accident or Chernobyl scale catastrophe would be easily and rapidly nationwide as guessing, Sellafield is perhaps 300 miles as the crow flies from London - maybe 400 by road. I'm maybe about 40 or 50 miles straight line from the plant - it's 80 or 90 by road. A major sea incident would be similar. No one in the UK can get further than 70 miles from the sea. Authorities say it is safe, neighbouring country Ireland and others in Europe have been campaigning against Sellafield for decades. Not just nuclear activists that you would dismiss, but they have made governmental approaches at diplomatic level and within the EU. That's been because there have been countless incidents, reports of malpractice, official reports and public inquiries of lies and cover ups, and two or three official renamings so we'd forget about the scandal of the Windscale fire, or Seascale. This seam is so rich I am not going to mine it for you. That's all on top of the couple of dozen International Nuclear authority reporting incidents that must be reported. Extensive history of (inadequate) fines too. The TL;DR is Seascale / Windscale / Sellafield is a Western gold standard for how not to do it. It would take considerable evidence and persuasion for me to have faith and confidence in say the USA or French nuclear management competence. I'm entirely prepared to believe there is someone, somewhere doing it with excellence, but capitalism and communism appears to rule that out, so um, where now?