The current alternatives suck. Renewables are unreliable and produce massive waste themselves. What we need is nuclear, but I only ever hear the same people complaining about fossil fuels, complaining about nuclear. It's extremely safe. Like it's not even close.
If we can maintain the status quo with better technology, it will be adopted. It's just not there yet. Hence, we stick to what we have.
The liberal position on these societal problems is "take things away until the problem is fixed" which I find incredibly ironic, while the other's is "free market drives innovation when it's overwhelmingly necessary."
Energy capex is fungible, and nuclear energy is the most expensive. It is also carries the highest risk of cost overruns and underestimation of decommissioning costs.
Why spend a penny on fission nuclear when renewables are cheaper, have shorter lead times by decades, and are vastly less financially risky?
I always find the framing of these discussions very sad.
Nuclear doesn't have to be expensive, there are many historic examples of safe reactors built for very reasonable costs. (French and earlier American reactors especially.)
Unfortunately there seems to be zero appetite to discuss let alone fix the killing of nuclear power though an absolutely crazy regulatory framework.
The French underestimated their decommissioning costs by a large factor. They will spend decades paying that down with no power being generated from the plants they are closing down.
If we can maintain the status quo with better technology, it will be adopted. It's just not there yet. Hence, we stick to what we have.
The liberal position on these societal problems is "take things away until the problem is fixed" which I find incredibly ironic, while the other's is "free market drives innovation when it's overwhelmingly necessary."