> The empirical evidence has nuclear being uncompetitively expensive.

France nuclearized 75% of its grid in the 1980s while the solar folks were faffing around. It's not a cost issue, it's that anti-nuclear folks have choked out the industry.

We need to take the boot off the neck of nuclear. Wind and solar aren't an avenue to moving up the tech tree of civilization, which will involve using vastly more power.

We don't actually know how much that cost France, sine it was mixed in with their military nuclear effort. French auditors threw up their hands trying to figure out the actual costs.

What we do know is their attempt to build more NPPs now has gone spectacularly tits up, with costs completely out of control. This should make one view their earlier efforts with great suspicion. Have they become much worse, or were earlier problems concealed?

> moving up the tech tree of civilization

Life isn't Civ 6, there is no tech tree to climb.