Comment by eru

> Nuclear was not stopped by the environmentalists, it was stopped by the fact that it cost 4X more than coal at the time.

A big part of that is the insane culture of safety around nuclear. In a sane field like highway engineering or healthcare, you come up with the statistical value for a human life (or a statistical value for a quality adjusted life year), and then use that to make decisions about eg how much money to invest to make your highway a tiny bit safer.

Nuclear is forced to act as if the statistical value of a human life is pretty much infinity. While coal is allowed a finite and rather low effective value for a human life.

> It could have been half a century or more ago if we actually cared.

Interesting. What makes you think so?

Btw, just because China made solar cheap with huge amounts of effort doesn't mean that was necessarily the best use of those resources ex ante.

Just like going to the moon with Apollo wasn't necessarily a good idea. Nor do the wonders of computers justify world war 2.