Comment by sfn42
2 hours ago
The argument about affordability is quite ridiculous in a world that is becoming uninhabitable as a direct cause of the "affordable" alternatives.
We could easily afford to use nuclear, and we wouldn't have to rely on it entirely - we have many alternatives such as solar, wind, hydro, geothermal etc. I'm also quite confident that economy of scale would improve the fuel cost, and the higher investment would make breeding and other nuclear technology advancements much quicker than they are and have been. Not to mention fuel cost is quite insignificant in nuclear energy.
We can however not afford the consequences of fossil fuels. We are already severely impacted by global warming and it will get much worse very quickly. I think this chart conveys the severity of our situation very well: https://www.dpg-physik.de/veroeffentlichungen/publikationen/...
Affordability most definitely figures into which avenue forward should be taken. It cannot be used to justify fossil fuels over nuclear, but it can be used to justify renewables instead of nuclear.
Nuclear doesn't have a "get out of economics free" card just because fossil fuels are to be eliminated. I understand the desire of nuclear fans to pretend otherwise.
I'm not a "nuclear fan", I'm a "don't destroy the planet fan". I'm not saying we should build nuclear instead of renewables, I'm saying we should build it instead of fossil fueled generation. It seems you agree with this, so I'm not sure why you seem to be arguing against it.
Until the day that we stop burning fossil fuels entirely, we should be building nuclear to replace it. If it's more expensive that's fine, I don't think it would be, at least not significantly, but I can't prove it and I don't care either way, it doesn't matter. What matters is replacing fossil fuels as fast as possible. It's probably already too late, and the powers that be don't give a shit anyway so none of this will actually happen but this is what we should do.