Anyone who tries to use Chernobyl or Fukushima as reason to not peruse nuclear power doesn’t have any understanding of nuclear energy or what went wrong in either case.

The RBMK reactors used in Chernobyl are poorly designed and to cut costs. And even then....

... it took an experiment with unqualified personal, a project leader who had no respect for safety or his subordinates and was overconfident and didn’t think anything could go wrong, and a government coverup of a fatal flaw in the safety systems of the reactor to cause...

... the disaster. They also didn’t believe the reactor exploded either because of a lack of understanding of the reactor.

Fukushima was a second generation plant that was in the process of refuelling and was actually supposed to be decommissioned already.

There were 2 sites that got hit just as bad and the third generation reactors at the other site that had better safety measures fared much better and without incident. Also only one of many reactors at 2 different sites had any problem.

Neither of these would ever have happened at a Candu reactor and especially nor the newer models. Chernobyl could never happen in anything other than an RBMK reactor which is fundamentally different from any other reactor. A CANDU reactor would have dared even better at Fukushima

But what about nuclear waste? Spent nuclear fuel can be recycled and used in other applications. Medical isotopes, breeder reactors which can use spent fuel from other reactors as fuel itself, fuel for low powered power plants like those used in space probes, research reactors...

Spent reactor fuel has a lot o peaceful uses. Not only that but if we’re being accurate the biggest threat from uranium isn’t even radiation, it’s a heavy metal like lead and radioactive or not it’s very, very bad for you the same way lead is.

With reactor improvements, continuing safety enhancements, and more applications of spent fuel nuclear is one of the safest and cleanest ways to produce electricity. I suspect that our biggest problem will be figuring out what to do with the uranium that is no longer radioactive.

Nuclear also has a smaller ecological footprint too. A reactor needs a fair amount of water for cooling and turbines but it doesn’t require damming up rivers like hydroelectric does and produces exponentially more power per square metre.

Anyways nuclear is the way to go