You're breathing coal and gas byproducts every single day, byproducts which are taking years of life expectancy, and it doesn't seem to bother anyone, but oh god "Chernobyl bad, let's close perfectly safe and working nuclear reactors". Germany is firing up coal plants because they're decomissining their nuclear reactors in favour of intermittent energy sources (Germany kwh price is 2x compared to France), we simply don't have time to do both at the same time
> Nuclear waste is difficult to deal with.
Intermittent energy sources produce a huge amount of waste and are a pain in the ass to recycle, not even talking about how to store that energy for later use.
> Nuclear is centralized, and vulnerable to attack.
Sure, but if a country is bold enough to start attacking nuclear reactors you can be sure you're not too far from full scale war and at that point it'll just be a small detail in the vast amount of violence and destruction that will ensue.
> Nuclear plants take ages to build, and are insanely expensive.
There is no magic bullet here, solar and wind are also a major pain in the ass to build and maintain. We have 8000 windmills in France, we'd need 55 000 running at 100% to produce enough energy for our current use
> I cannot fathom why nuclear is preferred to a safe, distributed, clean grid of solar panels.
Because there is no such thing
Intermittent energy sources only work if we stop using more and more energy, but since GDP = energy we're fucked [0]. We can't decommission both gas and nuclear at the same time and keep the same quality of life / growth expectations with solar and wind.
[0] https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/energy-and-us/wha...