[lexpar]

You say "without considering accidents", but I'd argue that accidents are usually negligible to begin with. Yes there were the "big" incidents early in the history of nuclear power, but besides being huge public relation disasters, these disasters are not so "big" compared to other energy production accidents (e.g. offshore drilling, mining, etc).

Yes 100% solar/wind would be virtually accident free, but if you argue this point too hard you let the perfect become the enemy of the good.

I always like to point out to people (it often surprises them) that the province of Ontario gets more than half of its energy from nuclear plants [1]. How often do you hear about horrible accidents in Ontario? Not so often - there hasn't been a major clean up required since the mid 90s. And these are facilities built in the 60s! Anecdotal, but this is the sort of "quiet evidence" of nuclear safety that is easy to ignore.

[1] https://www.ontario.ca/document/2017-long-term-energy-plan-d...