Nuclear energy is a vital part of solving the climate crisis
I am utterly baffled by these old solar and wind advocates who suddenly NOW are becoming big advocates of nuclear power.<p>I have gone the complete opposite and for GOOD REASON! I was a big advocate for nuclear power some 10-15 years ago, because we were promised that thorium reactors, pebble reactors and a whole host of other innovations were around the corner. Not to mention wind and solar at the time seemed to not have made any dent in electricity production.<p>But to suddenly abandon renewables now in 2019 when wind and solar is seeing staggering success and really impressive price drops while every nuclear reactor is profoundly delayed and over budget is simply odd.<p>We have been talking about nuclear power for decades and invested massively in it, yet got little to show for.<p>Prices are not dropping. When you bring up the safety issue advocates are quick to point out todays reactors are much safer. When you point out today&#x27;s reactors are extremely expensive and slow to build, they counter with that is just because of safety.... eh well yeah. You cannot have a cake and eat it too.<p>Nuclear power is NOT CHEAP! No private company is willing to insure them. Hence governments have to give insurance for free. That means the tax payer. Chernobyl cost tax payers 235 billion dollars to clean up. Fukushima cost tax payers 183 billion dollars to clean up. Nuclear power is getting a free ride because they are not pay for this. That is a massive subsidy to nuclear power.<p>Solar and wind meanwhile is beating coal on price even without subsidies. Yeah sure... it doesn&#x27;t always shine or blow wind. But we have a multitude of storage solutions: thermal, pumped hydro, flow batteries, gas-to-power and there are many good solutions for adjusting power usage on demand to fit lower production.<p>It seems like these nuclear advocates have not even investigated all the storage solutions that exist before going crazy about nuclear power. These solutions will only become more viable as we get a bigger renewable mix, because it will cause the spot price of power to drop really low, making it profitable for companies to buy and store power.