Yes, people do study nuclear engineering. I was considering that path myself in university, but ended up going more towards science and doing several years of research in nuclear physics labs instead.
I'm very glad I didn't end up doing nuclear engineering. The nuclear industry stagnated and failed to address cost problems and bad project delivery (cost overruns, delays, etc).
And then between 2010 and 2020 renewable energy scaled up and became incredibly cheap, in fact the cheapest source of energy in most countries: https://about.bnef.com/blog/scale-up-of-solar-and-wind-puts-...
Between 2010 to 2019 wind energy become 70% cheaper and solar became 89% cheaper: https://www.lazard.com/media/451082/lcoe-8.png
Battery costs have dropped 75% over the last 6 years: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/report-levelize...
> I think there's a perception problem.
Somewhat, but the nuclear industry did a massive PR campaign to address that.
Blaming perception or "green activists" or "fear of scawy radiashun!" is an easy straw-man for them, but the real obstacles are more practical and harder to address: the economics of nuclear are not good. This is compounded by a problematic history of delivery problems.