Modular reactors - the "just swap for coal plants" sort - are about 5 decades overdue, need another decade (or more), need more grants and subsidies to get there and won't be low cost. There may yet be some serious growth for nuclear but it will come later than it might have once (if ever) the Right's Wall of Denial comes down and the current opponents of climate action turn to using the seriousness of the climate problem to promote nuclear instead of downplaying it in support of not having emissions reductions ambitions or nuclear as the right's climate solution.
Criticisms of others for not having nuclear as the solutions (after handing off the issue in "you care so much, you fix it" style to environmentalists who they knew wouldn't support it, in the mistaken belief their "alternative energy" would be a spectacular car crash, leaving the fossil fueled status quo unaffected) is not the same as having nuclear as their own policies and committing to them.
Take Barnaby Joyce - who insists The Greens must support nuclear if they are serious - who's nuclear "policy" is no more than the empty symbolism of overturning the emptily symbolic ban on nuclear power, with (not so emptily symbolic) absolute support for fossil fuels. If he and his ilk have their way it would be all the way to RCP8.5 and beyond, as an inalienable right. Meanwhile the renewables success story is only going to grow. Russia's actions - and responses to it - will reinforce that renewable energy growth.
Modular reactors - the "just swap for coal plants" sort - are about 5 decades overdue, need another decade (or more), need more grants and subsidies to get there and won't be low cost. There may yet be some serious growth for nuclear but it will come later than it might have once (if ever) the Right's Wall of Denial comes down and the current opponents of climate action turn to using the seriousness of the climate problem to promote nuclear instead of downplaying it in support of not having emissions reductions ambitions or nuclear as the right's climate solution.
Criticisms of others for not having nuclear as the solutions (after handing off the issue in "you care so much, you fix it" style to environmentalists who they knew wouldn't support it, in the mistaken belief their "alternative energy" would be a spectacular car crash, leaving the fossil fueled status quo unaffected) is not the same as having nuclear as their own policies and committing to them.
Take Barnaby Joyce - who insists The Greens must support nuclear if they are serious - who's nuclear "policy" is no more than the empty symbolism of overturning the emptily symbolic ban on nuclear power, with (not so emptily symbolic) absolute support for fossil fuels. If he and his ilk have their way it would be all the way to RCP8.5 and beyond, as an inalienable right. Meanwhile the renewables success story is only going to grow. Russia's actions - and responses to it - will reinforce that renewable energy growth.