Renewables and storage have gotten so cheap that the areas where nuclear might still be competitive have greatly shrunk. Right now, the best remaining places for nuclear are in eastern Europe away from coasts. Even there, nuclear is at best competitive with optimistic assumptions.

This also means that, globally, renewables are much cheaper than nuclear in most places. In a global economy, energy intensive industries will migrate to these renewable-rich regions as fossil fuels are phased out. The relative energy ghetto regions will not save their heavy industries by going nuclear.

Luckily EV mandates have been rolled back nationally (although not in my state yet). That’s a sure way to drive up the cost of storage anyway, when maybe battery storage is better served for this power station purpose instead.

Obviously using used car batteries might be a way to recycle these more effectively than what is currently available.