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It's the least bad option for generating the base load. Although properly managed wind or hydro can deliver some, it's usually not enough.
That being said, I do think some of the fears are justified. It's about tradeoffs: do you want a low level of constant pollution (coal), or a catastrophic disaster once every 100 years (nuclear). Then there is also the waste, which is "solved" only if you permanently sacrifice some area, and hope geological movements or underground water don't touch it. So it's should definitely be an important part of the mix, but the risks shouldn't be dismissed.
France can serve as a positive example. Imo they are doing energy policy right.
If you look the death rate from nuclear per energy generated, it's suuuper low, like lower than most renewables. Also most nuclear disasters come from very old reactor technology, and bad decisions / mismanagement.
Yeah, I'm not very confident that we managed to eliminate mismanagement. It's a constant threat in any organization. Luckily most companies don't deal with nuclear materials.
Fair enough, but we we can learn from the past and limit the harm that mismanagement can even do. For example, Chernobyl had so many preventable things go wrong, and even then it all had to happen at once. So much of that has been addressed on a structural level and with better training and procedures, not to mention that there are modern reactor designs that fail safe and won't meltdown at all.
We'll never eliminate the human factor, but nuclear power plants now all come with big concrete buildings around them just in case.