[pfdietz]

> But note this is all hand-wavy future talk, whereas in the here and now, the over reliance has led to higher fossil fuel use.

I don't see how this claim could make any sense. Are you saying that if we didn't have renewables, we'd be using less fossil fuels? How could that be? In the US, nuclear construction flatlined long before wind and solar came along. Were renewables not coming on now, the alternative would be fossil fuels, and in particular natural gas. Elsewhere, coal would have been the alternative.

Perhaps you're saying that IF CO2 charges were added, nuclear would have been favored. But with CO2 charges, renewables are also favored, and likely dominate at a lower CO2 charge level than would be required for nuclear. Getting the last bit of generation fully defossilized on a nuclear grid would require truly enormous CO2 taxes, perhaps as much as $1000/tonne.