The grounds really aren't that reasonable. Nuclear has potential for catastrophe, but coal and other fossil fuels are a constant ongoing catastrophe by their very nature even if you disregard climate change. It would take many, many nuclear disasters for nuclear to come even remotely close to killing as many people as fossil fuel energy generation already has.
Arguiung that we should stick with nuclear because it's cleaner than coal is like saying we should continue with gasoline fueled cars because they're cleaner than horses. It's looking at the wrong competition.
Huh? This analogy makes no sense to me at all. Which is cleaner is only incidentally related to my point. Nuclear is safer than goal in terms of deaths caused by such a tremendous margin that no single nuclear catastrophe could possibly even make a dent.
The point is nuclear is not competing (just) with coal, it's competing with every other alternative and combinations of alternatives. For nuclear to be preferable it has to beat all of them, not just one of them. Comparing it to just coal is a species of strawman argument.
Nuclear is the only alternative on a scale that can actually replace fossil fuel plants in a reasonable time scale. It does beat coal oil and gas. Solar, wind and hydro aren't going to come close to fulfilling our energy needs on their own (probably ever, certainly not in the next several decades).
> Nuclear is the only alternative on a scale that can actually replace fossil fuel plants in a reasonable time scale.
Why do you people keep saying that? It's not true, and it's obvious that it's not true. It's not true in two ways: renewables can do so, and nuclear can't do so (too expensive, too risky, too dangeous for proliferation).
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/903/coal-and-gas-are-far-more-...