Your first statement is manifestly untrue. We ran societies solely on renewables for over 5000 years. But we certainly can’t run our present society solely on renewables. Actually, I think nuclear energy has an important role in creating a zero emission society; there are places its just too difficult to get renewable energy to with current technology. But it’s not a silver bullet; we can’t run our present society solely on nuclear energy either. We need to be clear-headed about the limitations and, yes, risks of using nuclear energy, so that we can make smart decisions about how to use it and not create another huge environmental problem for our great-grandchildren to deal with.

Many internet nuclear enthusiasts seem to imagine that we could just swap fossil fuels for nuclear energy and carry on our merry way with nothing much changing in society; but that’s not any more realistic than doing that by swapping fossil fuels for renewables. We are never going to be able to maintain our society as it is now without fossil fuels; things will have to change in a very big fundamental way. I’ve observed that nuclear energy enthusiasm on reddit has tended to act as a form of climate quasi-denialism. Misguided faith in a tech solution that will just fix everything without major social repercussions ultimately prevents us from acknowledging the difficult and unpleasant reality that large structural change is necessary, change that will inevitably impact the standard of living of people in wealthy countries for the worse.