Yes, we need a massive increase in the supply of energy. Solar is the only way we're going to get it. We're adding solar at a 1TW / year rate. We're adding nuclear at a rate of ~30 GW / year.
and that's just the first three hits, there are so many more. TMI won't come online for years, it's planned for 2028, but we will have to see. It was shut down in 2019 because it couldn't compete with gas prices. Microsoft is buying at inflated prices to subsidize clean energy, but solar is also clean energy and when backed by batteries it is price competitive with gas.
The news was because "whoa Microsoft is paying for nuclear" not because "whoa nuclear makes a lot of sense."
There's only so many uneconomic nuclear reactors to start back up.
I'm honestly baffled by the persistent irrationality of nuclear supporters.
This is a solved problem. The investment required to build grid storage for renewables, the TCO, the scalability, the capacity, and the build time, are all objectively better than nuclear.
So what's the real story? What is this obsession with an outdated last-century technology really about?
Any large group is composed of different motives; here are a couple of possible ones:
- Renewables are not, or not nearly as much, big profits for big business. They don't require the capital investment of fossil fuels or nuclear, and therefore they don't have the large moats of those businesses.
- Anti-liberalism (or reactionaryism): Destroying liberalism is an openly stated goal for which many will sacrifice singificant wealth and cause significant harm. Nuclear is counter to anti-nuclear liberal campaigners of yesteryear (I think conservatives often have little idea of changes since the Cold War era; they still talk about 'Communists', etc.)
Which was followed by climate change denying conservatives who found their position untenable embracing nuclear power being able to create a culture war issue in debates about climate change.
All in the name of preventing the disruption of their fossil assets by stymying renewables.
Peter Dutton in Australia which now lost is the perfect example of this with his ”coal to nuclear” plan leading to massively increased emissions for decades to come.
