Well, not really. While the probability of an accident is indeed low (but not super low by any means, as near misses are often not publicised), the damage/cost of an accident follows a heavy-tailed distribution. As a result the average cost is extremely high.
So high in fact, that there is no market price for it. As a result no nuclear power plant worldwide is insured - the risk is directly born by the society. If we re-distribute the risk to the private sector there would simply be no nuclear power plants.
Regardless if you are pro/contra nuclear - this 'market view' is strong indication that the risk can't be easily dismissed.
Of independent interest: Some studies even conclude that this is one of the rare cases where we observe a distribution without a first moment in real life.
That's a very confident and incorrect statement.
https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/n...
As for accident vs costs of cleanup, like I said, new plants are designed not only to eliminate accidents from causing failures, but also such that if a failure happened, it would be completely contained.
"The main purpose of the [Price–Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity] Act is to partially compensate the nuclear industry against liability claims arising from nuclear incidents [...]."
"By 1966 it had become apparent that the industry would still be unable to obtain adequate private insurance, so the act was extended until 1976. [...] In 2005 it was extended again through 2025 via the Energy Policy Act of 2005."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear...
The technique the US Military uses to destroy enemy power grids is to detonate a ball of long stringy aluminum confetti/Mylar above the enemy power substations. The destruction is apparently substantial.
Check out Mylar balloons and power lines (lots of compilations on YouTube if you don’t believe me.
Over a substation I could see it causing a lot more damage though.
It's a bit more subtle than that. As far as I understand, the thin wire might melt, but its vaporized remnants would be enough to keep an arc going between the phases or a phase and the ground. Then the protection devices at both ends of the line would detect the short circuit, turn off the line, wait for a bit of time (enough for the vaporized remnants and ionized air to disperse), and turn the line on again automatically. Since most high-voltage power grids have redundant circuits, it's likely that no consumer would lose power even for a moment.
The inherit risks are supremely low and the catastrophic failure mode for nuclear plants isn't a nuclear winter, in the absolutely worst case it's a contamination of the area where the plant was built (Modern nukes are all about containing failures. So even while they've optimized for not failing, they've also optimized for what happens when failure happens).
Nuclear waste isn't nearly as difficult to deal with as NIMBYs are. It's pretty easy to find enough room and locations to store nuclear waste, the harder part is convincing people that's a good place to store it. For example, a single abandoned mine could house decades worth of nuclear waste. Nuclear plants produce almost no waste and the waste they do produce is entirely self contained. Further, more modern breeder reactors produce even less waste and the waste they produce ends up having a low level or radioactivity at the end of it.
For the national defense argument, Every single power generation method has an output line to tie to the grid. Why would you attack a cooling tower (which would take a bunch of heavy duty explosives) when cutting a few MW transmission lines would have the same effect and require bolt cutters?
The only reason not to build new nuclear is because it's more expensive than the current crop of green tech and it will take longer to bring online. Existing nuclear should keep operating until the grid is decarbonized.