If the discussion was simply: “see how cool of a technology nuclear power is; see how nuclear powers the latest mars rover” I would not guess there would be a lot of backlash. However in this thread you see a lot of: “wind and solar has some problems too”, or “nuclear waste is better then the warming of the planet”.
The problem with pitting nuclear as a solution to the climate disaster is that there are existing technologies that can solve the energy part of it, those technologies are primarily wind and solar. And there is ample reason to be skeptical about how well nuclear could solve it. So naturally when someone states that nuclear is good actually at solving the climate crisis, a natural response would be: “well actually, it isn’t. Wind and solar is”.
It doesn’t have to be and isn’t the entire solution. But no activist calling for the end of nuclear electricity is doing any favors to climate action.
So the nuclear from 1970 may still be operating, and operating somewhat cheaply, but that doesn't mean that nuclear as a technology still matches the technological productive capacity of our economy.
The thermal conversion of steam to electricity used to be considered dirt cheap, as far as the overall cost of electricity: low capital costs that last a good amount of time. The primary expense was fuel.
Zero-fuel electricity generation capital costs are starting to eclipse the thermal conversion capital costs. This has huge implications for what we should think of basing our future grid upon.
Take natural gas for example. Turbine-driven generators followed by a steam cycle-combined cycle- have completet obsoleted thermal-only gas plants. It's why coal is so much more expensive than gas.
The world is different, and nuclear only seems like a solution because we paid massive capital costs at a time when the competitive environment was entirely different. We no longer live in that world.
I don’t see the debate as existing nuclear vs. new wind and solar, but as new nuclear vs. new wind and solar.
(The US has mostly been doing a pretty good job of this, upgrading and maintaining the existing fleet and even adding a reactor here or there, although we have had some unforced errors like how some nuclear power plants in California were shut down early.)
But it's also useful as a way of understanding these systems. It's often insisted that you CANNOT replace baseload power with solar and battery, and yet you, in fact, can. Adding other energy (including nuclear) and storage sources as well as long-distance transmission help tremendously, in this case by about a factor of 2-3x or so in cost.
If you can't tell, I'm bothered almost exactly equally by those arguing against nuclear as I am by those who argue against solar and wind. Both "sides" are wrong because either options would suffice and are safe. But it's much cheaper to just do both, or expressed in another way, allow us to emit the least amount of carbon emissions possible without freezing anyone to death or causing pipes to burst or dealing out energy poverty.
The deepest flaw of nuclear is that it has failed to show good experience effects. This alone marks it as a doomed technology, when it is facing competition with strong experience effects. Unless this changes, things will only get worse for nuclear, not better.
However, the 2 plants that started under Obama were failures, with one getting cancelled after spending $9B on a hole in the ground and the other about to come online after going 2x+ over time and money budgets. Westinghouse, the maker of the AP1000, went through bankruptcy as a result. All prospective AP1000 projects have been halted.
No generator in their right mind would order one without huge additional subsidy from the government, guaranteeing against construction risk.
Where are they?