The alternative to nuclear is to either use fuels with a massive carbon footprint, or introduce a level of energy suffering on the population that is beyond the pale.
You are exactly right - this is the only way.
They know if not for ideological/political reasons/influence no nuclear plants will be build because it is just too expensive. If I can build double (now, the difference is rapidly increasing) the capacity using wind or solar why should I build nuclear? People who propose to do otherwise are the ones who are insane.
Just look at wind power in Sweden they only really invested in wind in the last 3 years: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Sweden
Build all the solar, wind whatever you want. Doing so while ignoring the low return on energy security alone is a fools errand.
I’ve sat through meetings where carbon credits have been touted as the greatest weapon to transition the world away from fossil fuels. Carbon credits.
I’ve heard very reliable stories from China about business entities solely set up to generate unbelievable volumes of carbon credits to take advantage of this accounting trick.
I think the opposition you see is to the counterproductive moves of the past two or three decades where enormous amounts of money have been thrown at present renewable strategies and the world is worse off from an energy perspective.
Surely, you know that wind power has had a lot of trouble expanding in Sweden due to huge opposition from every community against building wind turbines on their land. Everyone likes the idea of wind power until they try to build a huge turbine on their backyard.
Sun power, in Sweden, in winter, is clearly not going to cut it... even in the southern areas that still get a little bit of sun in winter, you don't get nearly enough power.
Hydropower is great and Sweden produces lots of it, but again, highly unlikely it can build new damns with the current regulations.
The only options left seem to be coal and nuclear. I hope you don't propose to just use coal.
Nuclear power, while expensive to build, is reliable and plenty. No one proposing that it should be one of the options for countries like Sweden is insane.
Couple that with off-shore wind in one of the windiest places on earth[1] together with solar during the summer wind lulls and you have all you need.
This is why storage is not being built in Sweden, energy is simply too abundant and cheap.
From this one can see how the idea that somebody will bomb out a nuclear power station somewhere in Europe gets non-trivial probability.
So nuclear power really cannot be safe when this planet allows crazy guys to gain enough power.
As for coal then consider that an electric car that uses electricity from a modern coal plant with over 40% efficiency generates less CO2 than a gasoline or diesel car.
So rather than building nuclear power, the states should invest to upgrade older coal power plants from their 30-35% efficiency to 40-45% and quickly phase out petrol cars while expanding on renewables.
This is an argument that ignores reality completely. How many attacks have there been against nuclear power plants by crazy guys even when we've had nuclear power throughout some of the most dangerous periods in history, including the Cold War and the current Ukrainian conflict?