The mining and waste are much smaller scale due to the incredible energy density of nuclear.

Look at how ugly coal gets, for the same amount of energy. Kids down in the mines, miner's strikes when it ended, people dying of smog. All sorts of terrible things derived from coal need to be included in this comparison.

The only thing nuclear really has against it is that when it goes wrong it can go really wrong. And people have thought about those modes of failure quite a bit, so why don't we see if they've come up with something?

We should try nuclear and see where it goes.