[benjaminsuch]

As a german, can't agree more. From what I get talking to people is, that they have an irrational fear of a nuclear holocaust and nuclear waste.

[drran]

Why «irrational»? It just to add color to your message, or you truly believe that radiation contamination is harmless?

[theshrike79]

People are bad at statistics.

The probability of a catastrophic event in a modern nuclear plant is vanishingly low. Even the overworked ancient plants from the 60's and 70's we are currently running are exceedingly safe.

People will rather take constant death from coal power than risk a low-probability event.

[arethuza]

Not sure I would describe a fear of nuclear holocaust as "irrational" - had the Cold War gone hot Germany would have been very heavily targetted.

Mind you, I'm not saying that justifies the current fear of nuclear power but then again it doesn't really surprise me. Maybe it's just a lingering fear of anything with "nuclear" in the name.

[rizkeyz]

We live at the dawn of cyberterrorism, I'm glad we are stepping out of nuclear now.

[goodpoint]

Not only cyber. A nuclear power plant makes an excellent target for terrorism or war.

Even if the attack is completely unsuccessful it would cause panic.

Furthermore, highly centralized electricity generation makes the distribution network very vulnerable as well.

[selfhoster11]

It's not impossible to purpose-build hardened, incompatible, read only systems that can submit telemetry to the outside world while only providing actual control on-site (or via restricted channels). Stuxnet wouldn't have happened (or would have been a very rare event) if they built their system this way.

[DocTomoe]

Here's a radical idea: Maybe your potentially dangerous industrial machinery does not need to be directly connected to the internet?

[BlueTemplar]

Hopefully the few computers needed do not use generalist OSes and aren't connected to the Internet either ?

[Zardoz84]

And why you need any electric central connected to internet ?