Nuclear is unfashionable, because there's huge growth potential among wealthy industrial countries, but because it's not "liked" there's very little actual growth.
Its unfashionable for new capacity because much of the low-hanging fruit opportunities are plucked, and it has high upfront costs, and, while good from a climate and air pollution standpoint, it is still one of the most enviromentally destructive energy sources.
Also, while it doesn’t induce climate change, it can be vulnerable to climate change.
You could make climate change worse through bad natural water management. E.g. you could create a desert, or something in between.
When I think about the giant five valley hydroplant in China, the giant Euphrat hydroplant or the giant Nile hydroplant of Aegypt, I think its more the abscence of political force which could move ten thousands of people out of the way.
[1] https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/conl....
But the big ones built in the last 100 years are going to stick around for awhile.
"In the late 1970s and 1980s, a public campaign to prevent the construction of the Franklin Dam in Tasmania saw environmentalist and activist Norm Sanders elected to the Tasmanian House of Assembly as an Australian Democrat. Brown, then director of the Wilderness Society, contested the election as an independent, but failed to win a seat.[3]"
From
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Australian_Gree...
The founder of the Green, Bob Brown, now opposes wind farms in Tasmania.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Brown#Opposition_to_a_Tasm...
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2018/06/07/kathleen-wynne-ran-en...
They were in power for ~11 years, but thanks to their "green energy" programs they not only lost the election, they lost political party status and have yet to regain it.
Renewables are not cheaper.
"The FAO estimates that the renewable generation subsidy program will cost the Province a net $2.8 billion over the first three years of the program, from 2020-21 to 2022-23. The FAO's three-year cost estimate is significantly higher than the Province's cost estimate of $1.3 billion reported in the 2020 Ontario Budget."
These long-term "green energy" programs were expensive, and the government knowingly lied about how much it would cost.
Thanks for blackouts when it's cloudy and not windy.
France is still the model country when it comes to nuclear power. Even in 2035, nuclear will be less than 10% of its energy mix.
Macroeconomics has unfortunately fallen out of fashion on todays curricula at schools/universities.
Nukes get less competitive every day. Lately, already paid-for nukes are about on par with fresh-built solar or wind,big you neglect the disaster liability subsidy. But wind and solar costs are still falling.
Oh, sure, IF you have a vast set of mountains and much water, let's say Norway, developing hydro is obvious. Just a bit more populated countries, let's say Swiss do want both simply because one offer good power for most of the year but not enough safety to relay on and so having two systems is better than one. If you have no suitable areas, let's say Mongolia, and you do not have the tech for nuclear... Than they are both unfashionable.
That's the practical "fashionable" or "unfashionable" part. Anything you can have, is fashionable if gives you something useful, anything who can gives you something useful but you can't have........
That's why they are a big business for very few developed countries supply chain. Do NEVER forget that anything at a certain scale is a matter of know how, supply chain and raw materials. Formally knowledge is "open in science" but that's just PR, in the modern world almost without public research and public universities knowledge is power and is in private hands to a point of being a danger for the society at a whole.
A Pelton wheel is fundamentally different in every detail from a steam turbine. Useful Pelton wheels have been made in village smitheries. They are readily mass-produced, and last many decades without need for service.
> We just don't have reasonable places to keep daming
Isn't super true from an energy perspective.
First this wont work during the cold season and how incredible inneficient is this going to be?
I think we must stop to outsource providing cheap energy to poor countries and tap on our.shoulders how green we are. Lithium batteries? Fine, but no lithium mine round my corner!
https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/10/24/frances-massive-ne...