First of all, they're not that powerful. I'm sick of science fiction doing things like restarting the Earth's core or restarting the Sun with nukes. Both objects output far, far more energy than any nuclear device we could build. For that matter, it's not like a nuclear bomb will irradiate all life forever, people live just fine in Hiroshima right now.
Secondly, most anyone who doubts nukes should have been dropped in WWII is an idiot. America had pretty much razed every industrial city in Japan to the ground with bombs by the war's close. They were saving Hiroshima and Nagasaki almost expressly to demonstrate their new toys. Even ignoring the potential Japanese deaths in the event of a ground invasion, can anyone give a rationale for the American government to spend more American lives in some futile war? Probably the most sound argument against the decision is that it had let the cat out of the bag so to speak, and led to an arms race. But in all likelihood, that would have happened anyways, just a matter of when.
Thirdly, why do people think it's more preferential to have coal plants pump sulfur directly into the air over nuclear waste being buried under some mountain in Nevada? It's not like you're ever going to visit the site or anything. Besides that, the nuclear waste isn't unmanageable, it could be used to generate power in breeder reactors, the only problem is that the aforementioned reactors outputs weapons-grade material and is banned by treaties. I don't know if there's a solution to that clause, maybe if the nuclear party bought other people's waste or something.
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