I find it perplexing that some people can accept the 2-million-year recovery time for coral reefs, yet outraged due to Chernobyl's 24,110-year recovery [1]. If we had switched to nuclear we would be in much better shape.
Even if nuclear were built as fast as possible it can't replace fossil fuels fast enough to mitigate before major feedbacks kick in. We're left with significant decrease in energy use as the main thing that has to be done and that there's no will to do.
We need to get generation to carbon neutral within ~10 years. Nuclear can't do it on that timeframe, and conservation can't reduce to 0.
OTOH, wind and solar can reduce emissions by 70% and save money over the long term while doing so. Wind + solar + short term storage can reduce emissions by 99% and save money over the long term while doing so.
Getting from 99% to 100% will be hard and will require likely either long term storage or carbon capture, which will be expensive. But don't let that get in the way of getting to 99%.
Realistically, we probably need energy all of efficiency, renewable boom and nuclear, and more. We should get going as fast as we can, but definitely will not be done in ten years. It is not just electricity that needs to be got off fossil fuels, but also transportation, industry, heating etc. Very likely nuclear power will have roles to play too.
PS. I live in Finland, our electricity is already mostly clean, in large parts thanks to nuclear. Next we will need to clean up heating and industry, probably with a combination of electrification (heat pumps), storage (heat storage, hydrogen), renewables and nuclear.
What grid scale storage are you referring to? The only one I know is pumped hydro, and that's quite iffy efficiency wise, can be expensive, and you need the landscape to do it (I'm personally in a very flat area with nothing for a good thousand miles).
Legit question too. I know we have a bunch of nascent tech, but haven't heard of anything at scale.
It's perfectly possible, it would just take will. We'd need about 5000-10000 GW. Even if you take the very high cost of the newest U.S. reactor at 11.6 Billion for 1.12 GW, you get about 50-100 trillion. Gross World Product is about 80 trillion, so if you did it over 20 years, it's 3-6% of Gross World Product.
Nuclear would only have been the answer back in the 70s. We just cannot build enough of it fast enough while also convincing all the dumb (and less dumb) people that, no, a nuclear reactor has nothing to do with a nuclear bomb and CANNOT go critical and the damage from chernobyl wasn't even a nuclear explosion.
Meanwhile California adds about 5 gigawatts of solar power every year.
It's a classic case. The unimaginative always come up with solutions that don't work. "If only everyone would agree, we could have nuclear power plants" / "If only everyone would agree, we could have universal masking and vaccination" / "If only everyone would agree, we could have better public transit". Well, face it, everyone isn't going to agree.
That's why solutions like EVs and wind+solar win: their success is not conditioned on an impossible fact. Instead, wins can be incremental and progressive. You can put one EV on the road, and then two, and then more. You can put a few windmills in one place and more in another. It doesn't require you to convince everyone.
That is only true right now. There will be opposition to those ideas in the future, not to mention fundamental limitations of those ideas. There will be a return to nuclear power simply because it is a good idea and the anti-nuclear worldview is just outdated fearmongering.
