Density. Renewables use an insane amount of space (arguably wind energy can leave some space literally below it). (I leave mining operations out for simplificat

Density. Renewables use an insane amount of space (arguably wind energy can leave some space literally below it). (I leave mining operations out for simplification because such operations are necessary for both renewables and fission energy). If you have seen what industrial-scale photovoltaic production can do to a rural area, you would at least consider this point. You need to build at least 1000a to cover the power output of even a small-scale nuclear power plant with PV. If you account for the load factor, you probably need something like 8 times as much. Of course, nuclear power plants could be build close to cities and people living in cities are not affected by the space usage, so the political equation is clear. edit: To put the space requirements into perspective. Germany has a (rough) requirement of 70GW of electrical power. To cover this with the (roughly) 1k hours of solar production and dense packaging of 1MW/a the country would have to install about 500000a of PV panels (plus some kind of storage over the year). That is about 3% of the currently used agricultural land. And covering here means putting up to 4m high steel structures on it, very close to each other. Generating the whole primary energy with PV would at least require five times the amount of space. Naturally, there are a lot of caveats (roofs, unused space, wind energy, storage, conversion efficiency...) but it should make clear why people are hesitant to accept such a buildup. Nuclear energy would, on the other hand, only require around 20-30 medium-sized powerplants for electricity or less than 100 of them for full primary energy generation (heating homes would be basically free due to waste heat). Of course, it would be much more expensive and you would have to deal with eithe proliferation and yet unknown error modes or an insane amount of radioactive waste, but you wouldn't need nearly the same amount of space.