What is bad about nunlear?

Answer 1

Nuclear power plants use radioactive materials to generate heat. Then like most power plants the heat is used to make water turn a turbine to generate electricity.

Early plants had some poor insulation so radiation leaked out into surrounding areas increasing cancer rates slightly and Chernobyl instead used graphite in place of water so the graphite caught on fire after they ignored safety alerts. American plants cannot catch fire and are insulated by a great deal of concrete and many other safety features. The worst meltdown in America exposed local people to less radiation than they would get by going into their basements.

The main problem with nuclear energy today is the waste that it produces. Some of this could be refined to further power a nuclear reactor but we classify it all as waste right now and as such it must be stored somewhere. Over many millions of years it will eventually change into less radioactive substances but storing it for that long is problematic.

Nuclear bombs create a very large explosion and expose people further away to extreme doses of radiation, as well as leaving radioactive material around long after all of that. Part of the concern with nuclear waste from the powerplants is that certain parts of it could be used to make small nuclear bombs, though legislators haven't had an easy time understanding which parts those are.