This was already a little sad, but now that the economic case has turned decisively against nuclear power, with things going badly for basically every nuclear project and things going better than expected for most renewables it's becoming absurd.
Sorry, but you are the one making judgment calls and "enjoying being correct" here. I'm advocating for nuclear power, and I also understand the battle is mostly lost, so please don't act smug like this. Other than the economic case, there are massive hurdles on the way of a 100% renewables world, which I hope will be overcome, since that's obviously the way the world is going forward to now.
1. Producing large quantities of power
2. Continuously, for several decades
3. Hiding most of the costs until long after those responsible have become unaccountable
On top of that, while reliable and cheap renewables are “nearish future”, fusion tech is potentially not much less “nearish”, and would enable people to go back to living in Northern Europe, America, Asia, etc.
Note: I’m not trying to espouse or argue for a particular approach here; I’d trying to suggest some reasons why there might be so much (and such long-lived) “fawning over [nuclear] technology”. This is just some mildly educated guessing on my part.
Hence why the article describes one of the projects under consideration is a massive renewables concentration in northern Australia (the population of that area is a rounding error), with the goal of exporting to Asia via undersea cable.
Nuclear is worse in every other way except space used, and Earth is huge.
I will never understand the fawning over a technology that has proven so lackluster under human control. (Nuclear is fantastic with rigid controls such that the US Navy implements, but this never happens is commercial fleets)
Australia will be at 100% renewables before the first nuclear generator would come online if you broke ground today. We should stop mourning nuclear and keep ramping renewables and battery production. The model is proven at scale.