[yongjik]

Okay, then let's look at Japan, which pretty much shut down nuclear in 2011. And this is the result:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Japan#/media/File:Ja...

Japan, one of the most technologically developed place in the world, cannot use renewables when they shut down nuclear. Instead they turn back to coal.

I'm not saying renewables are always inferior - e.g., California would be a perfect place for solar. But in every story I've heard of, when nuclear power is turned off fossil fuels pick up the slack.

[pfdietz]

Sigh.

First, 2011 is nine years ago. Utility scale solar has declined in cost by a factor of about 5 in the last decade. Decisions made even then do not say anything about how solar would compete today. Wind has also declined considerably in cost in that decade, although not as steeply.

Second, the argument I was making was that renewables beat new nuclear. I wasn't arguing that renewables beat fossil fuels unencumbered by CO2 charges, or even necessarily existing nuclear plants in which the construction and financing costs are sunk. So your observation is irrelevant to the claim I made.

I have to wonder why you guys never notice that the anti-renewables arguments you make are such non sequiturs. Myself, if I found defending my position required I resort to bogus logic, would reevaluate whether what I believed was actually true.

[yongjik]

Germany and Japan had nuclear plants back when global warming was nobody's priority. It was competitive with fossil fuels then.

Now that nuclear power is fallen out of favor, they went back to fossil fuels, instead of renewables, because it's cheaper for them.

So apparently the advances in renewables didn't just make renewables cheaper: it also made nuclear more expensive than fossil fuels!

Or, maybe, nuclear is now considered "more expensive" largely thanks to the huge negative PR.

[pfdietz]

Continuing to operate their existing reactors would certainly have been cheaper for Japan. So the decision to replace them with fossil fuels (now LNG + CC, not the fossil fuels of decades ago) wasn't driven by economics.

[fomine3]

After 2011, nuclear plants in Japan need to be audited that means plants must be stopped near the future. It causes massive power supply crisis so power companies built power plant as fast as possible. IIRC LNG power plant is said fastest plant to build and start operating.