Well, in part due to the nuclear weapons programs, the US and Soviet governments told a lot of lies about nuclear energy in the 01940s, 01950s, 01960s, and 01970s. A lot of the science on things like nuclear fuel enrichment isn't actually available publicly, even today, only to people whose families have been interviewed to make sure they will lie if the government orders to.
So the US Secretary of the Navy is in a position to make an informed decision about nuclear reactors—and he's chosen to run a significant part of the US Navy on them—but the voting public is not.
You’re missing the last bit, though. It’s “believe the science, when the science agrees with my ideas”. The truth is, a lot of those people claiming IPCC should be listened to conveniently ignore the bits in the IPCC reports that don’t align with their opinions. Also, nobody has time to read the reports and spend years training to actually understanding them.
We are overall woefully uninformed about these things, to the point that the majority of people in some recent opinion polls in Europe believe that nuclear power plants emit greenhouse gases.
This argument is facile. We have a for profit energy sector that doesn't want to invest billions of dollars to see returns in over a decade when they can build wind turbines next month and start making money immediately. If you want nuclear power it needs to be a national investment (see France). No amount of NIMBY can stop coal plants. It seems silly to think that's the thing holding back nuclear adoption.
The "BY" in "NIMBY" gets larger with nuclear imo. Nobody cares if a coal plant is built miles out of town, but sentiment is big that nobody wants a nuclear plant in their state
So the US Secretary of the Navy is in a position to make an informed decision about nuclear reactors—and he's chosen to run a significant part of the US Navy on them—but the voting public is not.