We can hope that all countries will find the space for all the solar panels, wind turbines, have some convenient height differences for hydro power and pumped energy storage, money for li-ion storage for the night or windless days, grid upgrades to get it from where it's produced to where it's needed...

or we could apt remove coal_plant && apt install fission_plant on the same surface area and be certain that we'll be done in the 15 years that this takes to build.

I'm very much afraid the former isn't going to cut it. I also know solar is cheaper if you compare kWh produced by panels on roofs to kWh produced by nuclear plants, but we need to increase our energy production nearly tenfold and renewables only won't make it easy to get there. We need to continue on both fronts, we can't rule out nuclear if we want to avoid this disaster. Best case the money is wasted. Currently, the best case is that we'll succeed and the average case a disaster.

> You're arguing for nuclear on the basis of its build speed? That doesn't seem to be born out in reality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#/media...

I'm not sure what your point is by linking to just that graph without context.

No one denies that nuclear makes up the majority of France's generating capacity. It's more debatable as to whether or not France is capable of building them out at competitive prices compared to renewables. It's worth looking at the ongoing cost disaster that is Flamanville unit 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...

Short version: supposed to be 54 months to build at €3.3 billion, is currently now targeting 180 months of total construction time at €19.1 billion. Not a good look.

The point is that nuclear is indeed capable of being built rapidly. Over the span of 15 years France went from 10% nuclear power to 80%. You claim that nuclear can't be built at speed, and that this isn't borne out by reality. This is not only untrue, it is the opposite of true: it was borne out by reality.

You're making a sharp pivot here, away from construction time to cost. Yes, nuclear is much cheaper when the same design is built repeatedly instead of first-of-a-kind reactors. This is already well known.

Solar and wind are cheaper in terms of raw generation costs, but don't actually offer a path to decarbonization because of their intermittency. Solar and wind are cheap when they supplement fossil fuels. But they need to be paired with storage to be used as a primary source of power, and we don't have a feasible plan to provide that much storage let alone how much it'd cost.

> Over the span of 15 years France went from 10% nuclear power to 80%.

Ok, that's much more fair. Thanks for pointing out the fallacy.

> we don't have a feasible plan to provide that much storage let alone how much it'd cost.

I think part of the idea behind smart grid initiatives is to use electric vehicles as part of the storage mix: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_grid

Not sure if you're writing that off as unfeasible, but clearly there are solutions being thought about, and there are companies in the market today selling storage with costs going down every single year. It's not unreasonable to think that the 'feasible' plan for storage is to, well, simply buy/install it; which becomes cheaper every single year.

Also, solar thermal plants (no storage required) are a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power

> Not sure if you're writing that off as unfeasible, but clearly there are solutions being thought about, and there are companies in the market today selling storage with costs going down every single year. It's not unreasonable to think that the 'feasible' plan for storage is to, well, simply buy/install it; which becomes cheaper every single year.

Yes, it is. There's enough known lithium deposits to produce 5 minutes worth of storage. With current mining techniques, there's an estimated 20 minutes worth of storage. [1]

> Also, solar thermal plants (no storage required) are a thing:

Solar thermal is more expensive than nuclear.

1. https://dercuano.github.io/notes/lithium-supplies.html

The plant was fully capable of continuing operation, but they're restricted in how much they can increase the temperature of the river used for cooling. There has been no demonstrated impact of reactor cooling on fish populations, so this is really just the government shutting down the nuclear plant just for the sake of it.

Hmm I wonder if there’s a link between the fish in the river being fine and the regulators preventing the reactor from boiling it in the summer ?

Large parts of build speed issue with nuclear is regulation. If we could just get a permit to build done in a reasonable amount of time and then not stop progress again and again it would make a big difference.

Given the price tag for Fukushima is at $187 billion and rising, arguing for deregulation _should_ be a hard sell.

The axiom 'safe, cheap, fast; choose any 2' doesn't even apply to nuclear. It's more like choose 0. You might be able to argue for some version of 'safe' by talking about actual fatalities from nuclear energy being low, but I think the 5000ish square kilometers of exclusion zones from Chrenobyl/Fukushima should be part of the conversation about 'safety'. Safe for people perhaps, safe for property, apparently not. So maybe choose 0.5?