Further the nuclear industry is one with a very poor track record of promises versus delivery. The cheap power, for instance, tends to turn into expensive power when plants need to be refurbished at mind-boggling costs (such as here in Ontario where we've gone from the cheapest power in North America, courtesy of huge hydroelectric benefits, to one of the most expensive because of our nuclear legacy). And the waste issue remains a significant issue.
Nuclear was a great alternative to fossil fuels. It is a very poor alternative to alternatives (wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, etc), and simply increasing energy efficiency.
But new reactor designs (thorium, etc.) avoid the black swans and all of the interdependent complexity. We should be deploying them.
Thorium reactors do not work reliably (just have a look at those that where actually built). The current designs do not work - we don't even have an idea how to do it right in theory. They absolutely are not less complex and are not in any way safer than any other nuclear reactors.
(Not entirely sure if that's because people with serious illness are scared of the work "nuclear", or if it's because the President couldn't pronounce it...)
It's especially weird in Carter's case since he was supposedly a trained nuclear engineer.
"The painstaking process required each team member, including Carter, to don protective gear, and be lowered individually into the reactor to disassemble it for minutes at a time. During and after his presidency, Carter indicated that his experience at Chalk River shaped his views on nuclear power and nuclear weapons, including his decision not to pursue completion of the neutron bomb."
Besides: nuclear had its chance - they blew it because of greed and sloppiness, the usual thing that happens when large organizations deal with complex issues. I am 100% sure that even with novel reactor designs the same "human factor" would generate accidents like we have seen with the old designs.
A lot of smart people being very very sloppy.
Filmmaker Adam Curtis mentioned the risks of the type of boiling water reactors cooling systems such as those in Fukushima I,[36] and claimed the risks were known since 1971[37] in a series of documentaries in the BBC in 1992 and advised that PWR type reactors should have been used.
Fukushima had been warned their seawall was insufficient to withstand a powerful tsunami, but the seawall height was not raised in response"
Still no indication of greed, sloppiness, cut-corner mentality and general incompetence?
Stopping making more doesn't make the problem go away (...at least for many thousand years). I'm more optimistic that current waste will be reprocessed or stored safely if nuclear power generation continues than if it all gets quietly forgotten.
I couldn't find a good document from a quick googling, but this was high on the list: http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/log2013.html 81 launches and 3 failures. I don't particularly like those odds.
In any case, I'm not sure people realize just how little waste has been produced by volume. Even with the once-through fuel cycle, it's a manageable issue. The biggest problem remains NIMBYism and posturing. It might not be a silver bullet, but it's the damn closest to it.
If we were realists about Nuclear energy like other forms of energy, we should have been entering a golden age of Nuclear right about now.