> Most European countries are looking for alternatives and nuclear power generation is heavily criticized there.
I'm not sure about "most". Germany is certainly phasing out nuclear. France has relied extensively on nuclear for decades, and it's a large export industry for them, so I'm not sure what the general sentiment is (a quick Google search didn't find anything conclusive). Here in the UK there does seem to be a general anti-nuclear sentiment (e.g. the (tiny minority) Green Party want to phase it out). We are building new nuclear, like Hinkley Point C, but they're unpopular mostly due to bureaucracy and financial nonsense (the vested interests and brinkmanship over the contract seems like a test run for the current farce over Brexit negotiations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_... !).
France is shutting down most of their plants in the coming decades, and Switzerland is shutting a few down too. Nuclear is genuinely facing a lot of opposition in Europe, particularly due to rising costs. In many cases popular sentiment is a driving force too though. That's probably the case in Switzerland (direct democracy) where there were a couple notable accidents right before a referendum. Bad timing and not really terribly newsworthy, but it really damaged public opinion.
I'm not sure about "most". Germany is certainly phasing out nuclear. France has relied extensively on nuclear for decades, and it's a large export industry for them, so I'm not sure what the general sentiment is (a quick Google search didn't find anything conclusive). Here in the UK there does seem to be a general anti-nuclear sentiment (e.g. the (tiny minority) Green Party want to phase it out). We are building new nuclear, like Hinkley Point C, but they're unpopular mostly due to bureaucracy and financial nonsense (the vested interests and brinkmanship over the contract seems like a test run for the current farce over Brexit negotiations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_... !).