Getting rid of nuclear is stupid but so is adding new nuclear. Firmed renewables with lithium ion batteries and pumped hydro makes the most financial sense since the 2020s, especially in the US which has less seasonal solar resources than Europe.
At the same time Solar is always going to produce some power and the more excess generation you have to charge batteries and curtail hydro etc the higher that minimum worst case generation becomes.
Net result is you don’t need to build some huge battery bank to store energy from sunny days in the summer, you just ‘over build’ cheap generation and eventually you have no need for seasonal storage.
Are you talking about the typical nuclear plant which is often bespoke, or also considering modular reactor units which have (finally!) seen recent development?
> lithium ion batteries... makes the most financial sense
Correct me if I'm wrong but li-ion is still cost prohibitive for large scale energy storage on the grid. Things like V2G etc can help but those are owned by the drivers/consumers and not the state/electricity corps.
Modular units are firmly in the "I'll believe it when I see it, meanwhile keep the renewables building as fast as possible" category.
(also, everyone has forgotten about proliferation. The fighting around Zhaprozhia did remind a few people about the security risks, though)
Part of this is because of how absolutely f-ed up research in fission has been over the decades.
There is this graph if you can find it showing how much money was estimated to be spent on R&D, vs how much was actually spent. Basically by the 1980s or 90s, if investments were made, nuclear would've been much cheaper today. There's a bunch of things more, but it's not that nuclear is inherently expensive more than the fact that you need to spend money first to save it.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/batteries-smash-more-records-as-...
People play on the words ‘reactor’ but modular reactors themselves don’t actually solve any pressing issues and at least currently just cost more.
But yeah, the people who are trying to claim that nuclear is the only viable renewable energy solution to climate change haven't been paying attention to renewable energy advances in the past 10-15 years, and/or have been ignoring the massive budget and time overruns pretty much all nuclear plants have had in the past couple of decades, especially in developed nations that are trying to make sure they're built in a safe way.
But please, tell me why the laws of thermodynamics don't apply to renewables.
We would be powered 100% by solar but our laws here allow the utility to limit the size of our system.