I know a lot about energy policy, through involvement in the policy development process.

Fossil fuels are having a catastrophic effect on the environment and we must stop using them except in the very few cases there is no choice.

The clear path to doing that is renewable energy, which now is cheaper in almost every case. There are no unknown problems to replacing the use of (almost) all fossil fuels, it is a matter of money and resisting those who would burn the world for profit.

At a high level nuclear on the other hand has all the problems fossil fuels have:

* It produces pollutants that will destroy the world. We have very little nuclear power compared to fossil fuel. If we had the same amount, built by the same capitalist group that bought you the 737 max we would have a Fukishima every year. Correctly handled low level nuclear waste is not so bad. But it costs a lot of money to correctly handle, and the handling of it is invisible. It is an invisible unnoticeable poison (at least CO2 has some benefits - if you are a plant) If we had 1,000 times as many reactors low level waste would kill us all in 100 years. Just like the last 200 years of dumping CO2 into the air is doing

* Worse: It produces high level waste. Not much, but enough to be a problem. It is like low level waste invisible and unnoticeable without specialised equipment, or noticing that you are dying some time after you encounter it. It lasts for 200,000 years. It has to be kept away from living matter all that time. Where? How? What sign can you write today that people will be able to read in 200,000 years? At any discount rate you care to think of the storage of the waste is many times more expensive than any benefit that accrues now. Those costs are paid by future generations so we can ignore them. Immoral, but we can.

There are glimmers of technological solutions:

* Fusion - Yea right

* Energy amplifiers. No body has ever built one, but in theory a thorium powered energy amplifier could consume the worst waste and transmute it into safer forms. An energy amplifier would also provide continental scale (to coin a phrase) electricity. Why have they not been built? Perhaps because they are useless in making bombs, and the real attraction of a nuclear industry is making bombs.

> We may not survive the consequences of fossil fuels, in our lifetime. Not sure how nuclear waste can be worse than that.

Fossil fuels are destroying the world as we watch. In the worst case scenario civilisation collapses (much like post Roman Britain).

Nuclear - if pushed to the (il)logical conclusion will destroy the world such that normal human life becomes impossible in many places.