In 1954, the USS Nautilus, the world's first nuclear-powered submarine, was commissioned, and since then America's nuclear vessels have traveled a distance equivalent to 6,000 times around the globe with no serious incidents. Meanwhile, when a combination of disasters, the Tohoku earthquake and a resulting tsunami, caused a shutdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in 2011, hysterical academics claimed the western coast of the US was going to be poisoned.

How can smart people be so wrong about nuclear energy when we are now 70 years into running nuclear-powered subs and aircraft carriers without issue? Their record is truly unblemished.There have been no leaks. (1) 

If you care about emissions from energy production and poor people not freezing to death, you know wind and solar are too ridiculously underpowered to do the job - despite nearly $200 billion in subsidies wind and solar account for less than 5 percent of energy product. Natural gas has been terrific, and of course emissions have dropped due to that while keeping costs for heating and cooking low, but nuclear energy is the cleanest pro-science solution of all. So why are Union of Concerned Scientists, Natural Resources Defense Council, and so many other activist groups against nuclear research and development too? 

(1) Though two submarines have sunk, one was in a deep-dive test and the other was just an accident, and their demise had nothing to do with the nuclear reactor. Some trace leaks were detected in the mid-1990s and quickly repaired but that was less radiation than sailors would have gotten flying in an airplane for a year.