Are you willing to live next door to a nuclear plant? People don't experience coal related problems unless they live in areas that are heavily polluted. Sure it impacts them and everyone else but it's perceived less harmful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Onofre_Nuclear_Generating_...
Everyone knows the externalities of nuclear power and it gets priced in to any discussion of new plants in 2019. The fear (about meltdowns) and concern (about waste) typically outsizes the actual risk substantially.
But most people don't seem to realize that coal far more produces aerosolized radioactive waste, other carcinogens, and as a result, cancer, per watt, than nuclear. Even if you assume every single nuclear plant melts down. Burnt coal is just absymal for public health, but it doesn't get the scary branding that nuclear power does.
Most of the people in my friend group actually live next to one. Zero issues, and it's an old communist party-built one.