Even if it really is safe now, it's going to be hard to sell the public on nuclear when we keep telling them how safe it is and how Chernobyl was a one-time Communist screw-up, and Fukushima only happened because it was an old design, and every other excuse listed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_nuclear_disasters_and...
Dropping the ball wasn't a one time thing, and it's going to be hard to talk people into believing we somehow now finally will stop dropping the ball, or that we have foreseen every possible edge case, or that the worst-case scenario really isn't that bad.
> Radiation release during explosion and fire at Russian nuclear missile test site
> Thor missile launch failures during nuclear weapons testing at Johnston Atoll
> Goiânia accident
A lot of these aren't accidents related to use of nuclear for power generation.
Chernobyl, three mile island, Fukushima, and Lucens are just the civilian ones and thats _a lot_ for something "totally safe" in a short period of time relative to our long term future... and thats 4 different parts of the world with different governments and engineering standards!
Those "weren't that bad", but it'll be hard to convince the public the next one can't be worse, larger scale, longer lasting, and with more cancer. Even if the science is there, the trust isn't.
Dropping the ball wasn't a one time thing, and it's going to be hard to talk people into believing we somehow now finally will stop dropping the ball, or that we have foreseen every possible edge case, or that the worst-case scenario really isn't that bad.
So, then, how do we do that?