Ironically, I hear the ones that were shut down in Germany were some of the best maintained in the world and had very high "capacity factors" even when compared with other nuclear (fraction of time delivering power to the grid). It seems like the solution to poor maintenance is better maintenance? Some of the causes of recent poor French maintenance are analyzed here: https://player.fm/series/decouple/somethings-rotten-with-fre...

I assume you wouldn't seriously argue that rivers are the limiting factor to deployment of nuclear energy.

And sometimes it's the opposite https://www.worldstopexports.com/electricity-exports-country...

True France's infrastructure is not resilient enough on climate, they are also a bit in denial over that. Everyone have their weaknesses.

What method of energy generation has a track record of "clean" disposal? Old solar panels usually end up in landfill.

On a per-kilowatt-hour basis nuclear waste is pretty damn clean. The end product is carefully encased in absurdly over-engineered containment vessels. Environmental leaks are rare to non-existent. The aim is to store it underground where it will pose far less of a risk to humanity than the raw ore did before it was dug up.

Not clean, but contained.

Aside from supply chain inertia (and existing high demand for EVs) there's no practical obstacle stopping many mining operations moving to electric powered equipment, when such equipment becomes available.

> It's.. complicated. Nuclear is super clean at the consumption site, but not super clean at the mining site [0].

It's almost certainly not complicated. The CO2 produced by mining uranium is irrelevant compared to the CO2 produced by burning coal fuel.

> And then there's the problem that France's access to cheap uranium is a relic of extractive colonialism, and these countries don't exactly see the fair profits from France's hunger for energy [1].

Uranium is not a large contributor to nuclear energy cost anyway, so this is no argument against nuclear energy.

> So yes, France's energy is cleaner, but it's a complicated picture.

I don't see how it is "complicated". Nuclear is clearly much better than Germany's coal+renewable. (Renewable-only was not an option since wind and solar are extremely volatile.)