If you consider the complexity of running a whole grid out of intermittent sources of energy and the long term vulnerability of the logistic chain required to produce PVs, the long term costs and risks are not so clear cut.

For China which has the mineral it probably doesn’t make sense but for Europe, nuclear is a solid alternative especially when you consider that you can probably significantly extend the life time of the already existing power plants. Even if we ultimately transition to something else, it’s better than coal and gas in the meantime.

How is the hype for a limitless clean energy source, something that could benefit every aspect of humanity more than any other invention in human history considered “weird”?

There is no grid that can be sustained on solar and batteries or wind and solar and batteries or wind and solar and pumped hydro and batteries. Possibly geothermal for base load could replace nuclear and natural gas plants, combined with renewal energy and battery storage.

> It's more complex, more expensive, less adjustable and more risky.

None of this happens to be true.

A single nuclear power plant is big and complex, but the amount of electricity it produces is so much more than renewables that this difference vastly overshadows the first one.

Last I checked, resource use and land use are at least 10x less. And of course production is actually the smaller part of the cost of electricity, transmission (the grid) is actually the bigger part (60/40). This gets several times more expensive with intermittent renewables.

Making the more expensive part of a system several times more expensive to at best save a little bit on the cheaper part seems...foolish. It's like the old Murphy's law "a $300 picture tube will blow to protect a 3¢ fuse" translated into energy policy.

And whether LCOE is actually cheaper with intermittent renewables is at best debatable. Factor in system costs and it is no contest. Intermittent renewables today generally only survive with massive subsidies both in production and deployment, with preferential treatment that allows them to pass on the costs of intermittency to the reliable producers and last not least fairly low grid penetration.

What happens when you have more than 80% intermittent renewables in a grid we could observe in Spain. Since the #Spainout, the grid operator put the grid in "safe mode", which means no more than 60% intermittent renewables. Quick quiz: if that is "safe mode", what does that make >60% intermittent renewables?

Here the Finnish environment minister:

""If we consider the [consumption] growth figures, the question isn't whether it's wind or nuclear power. We need both," Mykkänen said at a press conference on Tuesday morning.

He added that Finland's newest nuclear reactor, Olkiluoto 3, enabled the expansion of the country's wind power infrastructure. Nuclear power, he said, is needed to counterbalance output fluctuations of wind turbines."

https://yle.fi/a/74-20136905

Which brings us to adjustability: intermittent renewables are intermittent, you are completely weather-dependent and cannot follow demand at all. It is purely supply side. Or have you tried ramping up your PV output at night on demand? Good luck with that.

While no energy source is completely safe, nuclear happens to be safest one we have.

Solar and battery have had immense investment to bring down that LCOE. Where can we get if we invest similarly in nuclear.

lol at wind though. that's not real.

That's only true because both solar panels and batteries are produced in China off cheap coal power.

LCOE is not a fundamental metric. EROI is and it's pretty bad for photovoltaics.

There's this weird dissonance where people don't seem to want to admit that someone championing the same cause as them can be really really dumb about it. Must be a plant, couldn't possibly be that a lot of people take stances on positions due to their emotional reaction and don't always look at the evidence first. That's just them, not *US*.

Why are you implying that Germany has decarbonized their grid? Germany has a long term goal of decarbonizing the grid, but it isn’t there yet. They made the decision to keep coal plants burning and shut down their nuclear power plants. And even years later in 2025 they continue to burn coal - the most dangerous and dirty source of power ever invented.

>…The share of electricity produced with fossil fuels in Germany increased by ten percent between January and the end of June 2025, compared to the same period one year before, while power production from renewables declined by almost six percent, the country’s statistical office

>… Coal-fired power production increased 9.3 percent, while electricity production from fossil gas increased by 11.6 percent.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/fossil-electricity-prod...

The direct deaths caused by burning coal are significant. I didn’t see any current estimates for those being killed downwind from Germany's reckless burning of coal, but overall the EU has a high death rate:

>…Europe, coal kills around 23,300 people per year and the estimated economic costs of the health consequences from coal burning is about US $70 billion per year, with 250,600 life years lost.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030147972...

Never mind that all those coal plants are also contributing to climate change and are poisoning the oceans enough that many species of fish are not safe to eat. The waste problem from coal will also be a problem for future generations to deal with - not all the ash from burning coal is being deposited in people's lungs.

In 2023, I saw a stat that in 2023 about 17.0% of Germany electrical production was from burning coal. As a comparison, I believe that before the phase out of nuclear power, it generated about 25% of the electricity.

If Germany wanted to shut down nuclear power plants after they had decarbonized their grid, that would be their choice - shutting them down when you are still burning coal is almost unbelievable. I don’t think future generations will look kindly on countries who shut down a clean form of power while they still are running the most dangerous and dirty form of power generation ever created.

Sorry. I'll tone it down going forward.

The (authoritarian?) nation of Finland has already solved the problem of what to do with nuclear waste: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_re...

I watched a very interesting documentary about Onkalo, which happens to be on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayLxB9fV2y4

The West is losing information war with Russia - see the downvotes. Sites are infested with Russian bots and useful idiots helping the genocidal regime.

> the stuff that makes working reactors is the most difficult part of making a working weapons

I'm unaware of this to be true. Civilian reactors are hardly-at-all-enirched uranium reactors. Creating highly enriched uranium or plutonium are completely different processes.

There's a fun game you can play with countries that build nuclear power plants: "guess the existential threat".

In each case it's pretty obvious. Either they have nuclear weapons that share a supply chain and skills base or there is an existential threat out there.

In Poland's case you can tell when they started seeing an existential threat from when they suddenly got interested in building a plant.

I've heard and think I've read multiple times that Greenpeace was fueled by Soviet monies to prevent Western energy independence and economic takeoff.

I don't have sources and would appreciate if anyone has anything to offer on this.

Also nuclear requires a powerful state to manage it safely, which has peace-related side effects.