Better or worse, it is difficult to get public support for moving from with terrible results that trickle out nearly invisibly over time to a system that still has disasters but whose disasters appear as a few big booms.
Clearly, the public is more motivated by a move to solar, which actually appears safe whatever its real overall costs would be.
The problem is that while nuclear power may be potentially have the best cost-benefit of any power source, economics and human psychology seem to imply that nuclear power as it will appear is going to be visibly dangerous something human psychology finds less desirable than the poisonous and costly status quo (see evolutionary game theory etc).
Engineers ... love to solve logistical problems and push their solutions on humans, whether these solve the human's problems or not.
Oh yeah, given the choices I'd way favor a pure solar/wind economy, with pumped hydro storage. But if we need a power plant to keep us going until then, I'd rather it be nuclear than coal.
Honestly, I'm getting optimistic enough these days to think solar may be ramping up fast enough that we couldn't kill coal any faster with nuclear; by the time we built up our nuclear capacity significantly the solar would already be ready to replace it.
(Ignoring the fact that natural gas has already been stabbing coal furiously in the chest for several years now.)
> The problem is that while nuclear power may be potentially have the best cost-benefit of any power source...
Over what time horizon?
The problem with Nuclear Fission is that it leaves behind waste that is no longer be put to any constructive use but...
1) Must be stored securely for decades, since it can be used in dirty bombs.
2) Must be stored safely for centuries/millennia, since it can leak in the environment an make a large area unsuitable for human dwelling over time frames way longer than any (most) of our current institutions have been around (and thus there is no guarantee that knowledge about the risks will be preserved).
This pretty much rules out any private, for-profit entity. The risk of their owners realizing the commercial benefits upfront and then disbanding the corporation without assuming the cost of cleanup is simply too high for this to be even considered from the point of view of the public good.
I am willing to give governments the benefit of doubt concerning requirement #1. They already have to deal with this type of problems and have the know how to do it, but the legal framework must be defined very clearly to prevent some demagogue from abjuring of commitments taken 20 years ago in the name of some pie-in-the-sky scheme. For requirement #2, it is impossible to be certain. Changes of regime do happen, and it would be unwise to expect any particular government to stay around for more than a couple of centuries.
There is only one institution known to me to have a proven record of muddling through and even waxing during uncertain times, (more or less) committing to a mission over millennia. And you can add knowledge preservation over dark ages as the cherry on top of the cake. So I guess you can have your nuclear power plan, and enjoy a relative certainty that it will continue to be taken care of, for as long as it needs to be, if you are willing to let the Catholic Church manage and operate it.
Clearly, the public is more motivated by a move to solar, which actually appears safe whatever its real overall costs would be.
The problem is that while nuclear power may be potentially have the best cost-benefit of any power source, economics and human psychology seem to imply that nuclear power as it will appear is going to be visibly dangerous something human psychology finds less desirable than the poisonous and costly status quo (see evolutionary game theory etc).
Engineers ... love to solve logistical problems and push their solutions on humans, whether these solve the human's problems or not.