By 2050 it will be easily possible to power the world using renewables. Ending nuclear at that point doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me.
Disregarding electric dams because, while wonderful, those depend heavily on the country geography and I assume a lot of countries cannot build enough of them. (but we should build as much as we can of those, just don't expect 50% hydroelectricity everywhere)
Norway 98% since 2016. Costa Rica 98% since 2015. Scotland 97% in 2020. Uruguay 98% in 2021. New Zealand pushing close to 90%.
> Are we talking 90%, an the entire year, without creative accounting?
I don’t know what this means. If a country reports that X amount of energy came from a particular source in a particular year, that means the entire year. And if you believe these countries are lying and doing “creative accounting”, then the burden of proof lies with you to prove it, not for me to disprove it.
So except for Uruguay (which does look interesting), most countries mostly use renewable dispatchable sources which are perfect. But not all countries have the hydro potential / population ratio of Norway. We should use hydro as much as we can but we are limited by geography; once everything that can be used is we are stuck with nuclear, wind or solar. Maybe Uruguay could be an example of country that manages somehow with mostly solar/wind; I need to look into it. Thank you.
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/180592/european-cooperation-...
The sole closed nuclear plant (Fessenheim) was the oldest one, disputed by neighboring nations Germany and Switzerland (all owning stakes in it!) for seismic-related risks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fessenheim_Nuclear_Power_Plant...
A new reactor (Flamanville-3, an EPR) was ordered in 2004, work began in 2007 for a delivery in 2012, it is not delivered yet and 6x times over-budget. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
A huge program (55 to 95 billions euros) aiming at upgrading all existing reactors in order to run them for 60 or even 80 years was launched and runs: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_car%C3%A9nage
Governments adopted sustained nuclear R&D budgets. See «Graphique 1», French ahead: https://www.ecologie.gouv.fr/energie-recherche-et-developpem...
Governments also sold reactors to Finland (running project, way over-budget and delay), China (2 reactors, over-budget and delay, and they stayed offline or at low-power for a full year after an incident) and the U.-K. (this is a running project, already late and over-budget).