Technology

IT IS SAFER, CHEAPER, AND LESS POLLUTING THAN LITERALLY ANY OTHER OPTION!

It's not cheaper. New nuclear power plants are so expensive to build today that even free fuel and waste disposal doesn't make the entire life cycle cheaper than solar.

most personal trips can be done safely and easily using an E-bike (much smaller batteries that can be produced en mass with existing supply chains) and cars should be reduced in usage outside of particularly rural areas where they truly are a necessity (which is a tiny portion of the overall population).

E-bikes are often not an option for many reasons. Needing to bring cargo, bad weather, danger from other traffic. If they were actually such an amazing option everyone would be using them because they are hella cheaper than cars. Even in the netherlands where bike infrastructure is great, people are extremely car-centric.

Personally I think subsidised public transport is a much better option.

And nuclear is not cheaper and it doesn't even factor in waste storage and decommissioning otherwise it would not have been viable. Right now when a nuclear plant is closed the operator walks off scot free and the cleanup costs are borne by the public. The mining of the uranium is also pretty polluting. There's a lot of this externalisation to make it viable.

The only reason it worked in the past was that the governments were building nuclear arsenals and invested in nuclear industry (note that this industry was not necessarily capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium but still, it was about building up an industry). It's no coincidence that most countries relying heavily on nuclear power are also nuclear armed.

Also, environmental pollution is also a safety issue. Don't just look at human deaths. Even Fukushima was a major disaster despite not leading to many deaths. The regulation is there for a reason and that still didn't manage to prevent Fukushima (not talking about Chernobyl there because that was just human idiocy fucking up at its worst). And other first-world countries have also had meltdowns.

Personally I also feel bad about dumping our waste problem on future generations. That kind of thinking is exactly what led to the climate crisis. But admittedly this is a lesser issue for nuclear in particular because we do this with pretty much everything (as this article also mentions)

Imo, if we want ethical and green, then billionaires should be taxed more heavily for the good of us all.

I think it would make more sense to replace cost-effective with cheap. It may be cheaper to use a process that makes it likely 80% of the population dies in 35 years, but that's a huge (non-monetary) cost. The overarching issue is our current economic system ignores those costs that take a generation or more to come due.