Some differences between the airplane analogy and the nuclear plant analogy:
1) When a plane fails catastrophically, the impact is limited to a smaller geographical area.
2) Pollution from the failure of a plane doesn't involve what is estimated to be a century-long endeavor to cleanup.
3) The toxicity from plane failures do not invade nearly every facet of life, making entire areas unlivable.
I am not a proponent of nuclear energy because we do not have a way to handle the full lifecycle, including failures. We will have this someday, but the idea of "well throw this waste into a rock formation somewhere and hope it doesn't cause a problem because it takes hundreds of years to handle" is just not reasonable. Even today, the Hanford site in Washington is leaking radioactive shit into the Columbia River and there is no estimated date to complete this cleanup.
I completely understand where you're coming from but you can't just take nuclear energy in a vacuum. Of course if the alternative was between nuclear power plants and the miracle energy drive which runs on dreams and produces terrawatts without any risks and any pollution then there's no question.
But that's not the world we live in. Today we have renewable energy, which is promising but not yet ready to be our sole source of energy. Then we have fossil energy which wrecks our climate at an alarming pace. Then we have nuclear which has its own set of problems but at least won't contribute to global warming.
Sure it's a tragedy that Pripyat and Fukushima are now unlivable and will remain so for a long, long time. But global warming will probably make entire continent-sized stretches of land effectively unlivable. That's what you should be pitting nuclear reactors against.
1) When a plane fails catastrophically, the impact is limited to a smaller geographical area.
2) Pollution from the failure of a plane doesn't involve what is estimated to be a century-long endeavor to cleanup.
3) The toxicity from plane failures do not invade nearly every facet of life, making entire areas unlivable.
I am not a proponent of nuclear energy because we do not have a way to handle the full lifecycle, including failures. We will have this someday, but the idea of "well throw this waste into a rock formation somewhere and hope it doesn't cause a problem because it takes hundreds of years to handle" is just not reasonable. Even today, the Hanford site in Washington is leaking radioactive shit into the Columbia River and there is no estimated date to complete this cleanup.