> First of all, I'd like to point out that the whole nuclear energy was pushed a lot by politics in the 1950s.
No. If anything, that has set back nuclear tech for a century, as the designs funded were designed for weapons manufacturing first, energy second. Nuclear is very convenient (very infrequent fuel shipments) and powerful. Which is why well-funded navies use it extensively. The US Navy, for instance, has a perfect track record, under much harsher conditions.
> We still don't have a long-term storage solution for the nuclear waste produced by the power plants
We do, actually. Breeder reactors. If it is energetic enough to pose a serious threat, it's energetic enough for fuel. Once we have extracted most of the useful energy, the waste is much less dangerous and can be dealt the same way we deal with other hazardous materials.
> If a wind turbine is decomissioned, you simply strip it, melt it and make a better one.
I don't think it is as simple as that. Source for this claim? Re-purposing for other applications I can buy
> and don't forget about waste from decomissioning the actual buildings
It's basically the reactor vessel, which is not that big. The entire plant is not radioactive, after all. In fact, it is LESS radioactive than a comparable coal power plant, which can't even be built nearby, as it would trip all sorts of alarms in the nuclear power plant.
> Japan is just as technologically advanced as Germany, yet one of the nuclear plants, as predicted by Kraftwerk (the band), blew and fucked up the whole northern Pacific.
It was a decades old design that had a design flaw which was documented AND IGNORED. And yet, it survived a major Earthquake AND a Tsunami. If that's not safe I don't know what is. It would have been fine if not for more fuckups, like incompatible power so generator trucks couldn't be connected, even though they were dispatched. It's worth it to point out that Fukushima's reactor shut down as designed. As did other nuclear power plants, which experienced no issues at all.
> Building a new nuclear power plant now is betting against a huge leap in battery technology. If that leap happens it's bye-bye for fossil fuels.
Look, I'm all for renewables. But we are not there yet for baseline power, which a few (modern!) power plants could easily provide, supplemented by solar, wind, geothermal. Powering things like an aluminum power plant with renewables is going to be a tough task.
> so don't think its powers plants to be 100% safe.
Nothing is 100% safe. Solar panel installation kills more people per year than all nuclear accidents ever, combined. And most nuclear power plants running today are ancient designs, because it's difficult to get permits to build more, due to public perception. But you wouldn't use the safety record for a car built in 1960 to claim that cars nowadays are inherently unsafe, would you? Why use the same argument for nuclear power plants? We need to replace the old junk with modern power plants.