I keep thinking discussions are stacked against nuclear unfairly. It's almost as if there are two different arenas to compete: (1) fossil fuels, which is by definition unsexy and ugly, but grandfathered simply because "we need them" now, and (2) everything else, who has to compete against each other on the criteria of "Fine, so we do have fossil fuels, what now?"

For example, in 2019, 80% of US energy consumption was from fossil fuels.[1] Natural gas has actually steadily gained market share.[2] In any objective discussion, this should be considered a massive shortcoming and people should be scrambling to find a better solution.

However, because fossil fuels only compete against themselves in public discourse, it's still considered a victory because gas replaced coal. And one of the reason gas became so popular? Because renewables are rapidly improving but they're still less reliable, so people need an energy source they can rapidly fire up when necessary. Enter gas.

And when people point out that we could be using nuclear instead of gas, they are shut down saying "Ewww, so it's better than fossil fuels, big deal, who cares about that now? Everybody knows fossil fuels are bad!" Nuclear, just by being non-fossil-fuel, is forced to compete in the "cool arena" against renewables, and loses out because it's old, expensive, and has had a series of memorable accidents. All the while these renewable plants are enjoying complementary relationship with gas plants, which is OK, because gas is just gas.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#/m...