NIMBY is also another factor that delays new nuclear plants. That said, safety is another big concern here. Although not at an nuclear energy facility, there was that incident recently at Los Alamos National Laboratory researching nuclear weapons where they placed 8 rods of plutonium next to each other that could have triggered a disaster. Very high safety standards are required, and humans are known for making stupid decisions.
I see nuclear as a transitory source of energy. It doesn’t emit any greenhouse gases and FAR better than fossil fuels. We could easily transition to it faster and more cheaply than solar, wind, etc currently. Deaths associated with fossil fuel energy greatly exceed those associate with nuclear energy.
Burning fossil fuels needs to stop and we need to bring down carbon levels to what they were 20+ years ago. Ideally, transitioning to nuclear would be cheap/fast while we build out solar and wind infrastructure, and research how to make these sources of energy more effective.
However, I’m not a policy nor energy expert by any means. I’m just some random person on the internet.
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson is on my reading list, and the next book I’m reading after I finish Death’s End by Cixin Liu (not solarpunk, but hard scifi).