The trouble w/ nuclear power plants isn't that the public hates them, it's that the bond market hates them. Even the sticker price is a little bit too expensive but it usually seems to take several times more money and time to build one than anticipated.

Now that renewables are so cheap, nuclear plants are not cost effective and require massive subsidies by the state.

The claim being made wasn't that nuclear power is universally popular, just that it is way more popular than datacenters.

People (in the US anyway, ymmv elsewhere) really, really hate datacenters and just vaguely distrust nuclear power (without a lot of conviction).

... People don't pay directly for either nuclear power plants or datacenters. The closest they come to affecting this is by passing and enforcing zoning regulations.

In any case, most of us would rather have one beating than six, but that doesn't mean we want one beating.