As opposed to brown coal? Because that's what we got instead, and it's much more deadly, much more radioactive, and the toxic waste it produces is not properly controlled like for nuclear.

Of course pollution looks bad when you have to barrel it, instead of just shitting it out into the environment (atmosphere, etc) and saying "we'll stop doing this in a couple decades, don't worry".

I understand that brown coal isn't what people had in mind when they opposed nuclear; they would rather have wind power, solar power, maybe magical fairy dust, but they didn't consider that, practically, we will stick with brown coal.