> Even if you can completely rule out catastrophic failure, you still have a bunch of people who need to go to work every day and work with radioactive material

> Even if you can completely rule out catastrophic failure, you still have a bunch of people who need to go to work every day and work with radioactive materials. This is argument from extremes. Coal plants kill a lot more people simply by operating: they release radioactivity (and toxic heavy metals, and PM2.5 particulate). Gas extraction, processing, and transport also kill people (often the people who were occupying the land that the gas drillers want.) Ditto for oil. Wind turbine construction and maintenance also kills people. Solar panel construction involves working with toxic chemicals in far greater quantities than nuclear fission. You expose fewer people to smaller risks with nuclear than with its alternatives.[1] Also, wind and solar are dependent on either storage, for which we have no good grid-scale, months-long options yet, or globe-spanning petawatt transmission networks, if you're not going to accelerate climate change. Don't get me wrong. I love solar PV - the only energy production method that relies on modern physics. I love wind, too, because it doesn't involve boiling water to make steam to drive turbines, which seems hopelessly steampunk to me these days. I'd also love to see a worldwide transmission network - that level of international co-operation would be awesome. [1]. Gawd, I sound like a shill for nuclear. 2002 me would be horrified. But learning about climate change (and wanting industrial civilization to continue) forced me to confront my priors.