[vesche]

It's clear that nuclear power is superior to gas, coal, wind, solar, etc. However... nuclear power plants are expensive build, they take a very long time to build, and many countries are in the process of retiring their infrastructure [0].

The vast majority of active nuclear power plants in the USA were built in the late 60s to late 70s and typically took 10 years from the initial construction before they became operational [1]. Which means that almost all of our nuclear power infrastructure in the United States is ~35 to 50 years old. Optimistically, we can only hope that most of these plants will operate until ~2040.

Given how long it takes to build a nuclear power plant we really should have been building them all throughout the 80s, 90s, and 2000s- but we stopped building them in the late 70s. The only nuclear power plant that I'm aware that's been built since 1978 is Plant Vogtle which started in 2013 and is expected to be finished sometime this year.

Still, there is some hope for nuclear energy into the future with the Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP) [2] and the recent advancements in fusion power [3].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_phase-out

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_St...

[2] https://www.cfppllc.com/

[3] https://twitter.com/ENERGY/status/1602679966163906561

[bottlepalm]

A power generation system that can't lose power itself without resulting in a major disaster is far from 'superior'.

What I mean is the spent nuclear fuel must be kept cool at all costs, backups are finite. There's already been a few accidents and many close calls, none as bad as they could of been. Scale up nuclear to find how to bad it can get.

The NRC said so itself - https://www.science.org/content/article/spent-fuel-fire-us-s...

[vesche]

I think fear-mongering about nuclear power risks is really unfortunate. The rewards far outweigh the risks. Sure, we could live in a world where we could tell everyone to stop using so much damn energy- but that's not our reality. There's some really good data and charts here (especially the "What is the safest and cleanest source of energy?" diagram at the top) - https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth

In the USA we've poured an incredible amount of money into wind energy and it simply hasn't been very effective relative to the cost.