alt Hacker NewsIf you believe in a climate crisis and are serious about it you probably want to run the numbers on different options and policies to see what works rather than saying yay this boo that. Running numbers on producing energy in say 15 years time which is roughly how long it takes to approve and build nuclear, and comparing it with projected solar+wind+battery costs for 15 years hence you tend to come with much better figures for the non nuclear. (see graph here with the trend https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/nuclear-vs-solar?hide_intro_po...)
China which is fairly sensible on this stuff and which plans to be world's largest nuclear producer by 2035 actually added 1GW of nuclear and ~300GW of solar last year because it's cheaper.
I'll give you maintaining existing nuclear makes sense. But as a British tax payer the cost of our upcoming Hinkley C is eye watering (£48bn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...)
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For China, nuclear power plants are still not very important, they build a lot new coal power plants.
"2025 also saw China commission 78 GW of new coal power capacity, which is more than India’s net coal power additions over a ten-year period from 2015 to 2024"
https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/built-to-peak-coal...
The reason why people tend to get a bit cheerleadery about nuclear power is because it has some great PR and it resonates with them.
It needs the PR because it is so unconscionably expensive. The public needs to be primed to consent to indirect and direct subsidies.
The reason China, US, France, it is because it shares a skills base and supply chain with nukes.
The reason Sweden, Poland, Iran, etc. build a few plants is because it shares a skills base and supply chain with a nuclear weapons program they might want in a hurry one day. It's always obvious for those countries who the existential threat is.
We can both build Nuclear that is safe and also build it faster. Its a matter of political will and reasonable regulation. Nations looking on the 100 year horizon would build nuclear and they would be newer and safer nuclear as time goes on. The next generation of reactors are safer and promise to be cheaper to build but the last of the GEN4 nuclear still are safe especially when we actually pay to have nuclear regulator inspectors. The things we are willing to be cheaper on are always the inspectors but never the permitting its so backwards.