Like what? And have you researched new generation reactor designs, like molten salt reactors? They address most of the problems with existing reactors, which are for the most part 50 year old technology.
What we can be certain of is that, by the time construction of such a plant is completed, wind+solar+storage will be overwhelmingly cheaper. Building out solar is right now the best use of every climate-disaster prevention dollar. In the near future, storage will compete, as iron-air batteries come online, and long-distance transmission. Each dollar spent elsewhere, whether on building or patching nuke plants, or patching or fueling coal plants, brings climate disaster nearer.
>In the near future, storage will compete, as iron-air batteries come online, and long-distance transmission.
and if this doesn't happen? You're willing to risk our survival?
>Each dollar spent elsewhere, whether on building or patching nuke plants, or patching or fueling coal plants, brings climate disaster nearer.
You're equating coal plants with nuclear? Wow, you have quite a cognitive bias there. Nuclear plants have 0 carbon emissions, they don't contribute to global warming once constructed, and construction doesn't generate enough carbon to nullify that advantage.
Renewables can't meet our needs unless new technologies are developed. Nuclear CAN in its present state, and can do so even better if technological progress is made. Both must be pursued.
Iron-air battery tech is proven. Now it just needs industrial-scale build-out, which takes time: the factories need to be built before the battery farms.
Renewables can, in fact, meet our needs with already mature technology. All that is uncertain is which choices will turn out cheapest. If it were not those batteries, it would be others, or underground compressed air, or molten salt, or liquified air.
No, they cannot. Industrial processes require far more power at all times than can be delivered by renewables.
For example, aluminum refining.
Solar can displace coal for some uses soon, and it will, but ultimately both renewables and nuclear are needed.
Nobody but you is talking about coal and nukes being interchangeable. But it is a fact that both boil huge amounts of water for steam to drive through huge turbines that need frequent, expensive maintenance, and need elaborate cooling apparatus to turn the steam back into water. Both have large, unavoidable operating costs that make them uncompetitive vs. tech that does not.
Coal has the extra cost of mining and transporting coal, and environmental catastrophe. Nukes have huge corruption overhead and life-cycle costs, and long, long delay between spending money and getting any power at all out, with a strong likelihood of never, instead, plus risk of regional disaster.
It is not a fact that both renewables and nukes are needed. We already know that nukes are not needed. (Rather, you wish that nukes were needed.) With every nuke project that collapses, it gets better that it was not anyway needed. What is tragic about the failures is that so much was wasted that could have been used to build out non-dead-end generating capacity.