My thesis was "I don't consider nuclear to be sustainable. Here's why I think it's not sustainable." I wasn't saying "It's worse than coal.", I wasn't even saying "There are NO circumstances under which anyone should ever build more fission plants." - - I don't particularly have a strong opinion on whether coal or nuclear are worse but offhand I suspect the answer is coal -- it's definitely in the same broad category of causing non-remediateable pollution. So I probably wouldn't suggest spending a shitload of money to replace nuclear plants with something that's at least qualitatively similarly bad like coal.
I would suggest spending 20% more to get an actually sustainable solution to baseload power. But I would understand someone who says:
- 20% is way too low, actual cost would be much more
- 20% more isn't worth the benefits vs. what else we could spend the money on
- Even if fission isn't environmentally sustainable, we should still use it instead of coal
But arguments like these will not hold any water with me:
- Fission can't possibly poison land even though it has before
- Something that will eventually poison large amounts of land if neglected for 2,000 years is "environmentally sustainable"
- Fission is better than coal so you're not allowed to claim that fission isn't "sustainable" because that makes you an opponent to progress and we have tell ourselves lies about that to make progress happen.
But you were making an argument about how unholy dangerous nuclear plants are as a reason not to build them, barely even mentioning cost. If that danger is real it should be more important than those billions. There's also a fourth option of tearing down nuclear plants and replacing them with a mixture of wind solar and coal, to mitigate that enormous danger at a reduced cost.
If the danger isn't actually enough to motivate plan 3, then you were massively overselling it. Even more so if it's not enough to motivate the cheaper plan 4.