[mpyne]

The only people who think thermal power generation is a false dichotomy are those who haven't tried to spec out power generation schemes that rely completely on unreliable renewables. Specifically, renewables have a much different capacity factor than thermal power designs (like coal or nuclear) and therefore require a very heavy investment in energy storage schemes, especially if the plan is to go 100% renewable.

Even in Germany, which is the example everyone points to, 80% of the shift away from nuclear has been towards coal. Even natural gas would be better than shifting to coal! And despite only shifting 20% of that generation to renewables there have been increasing problems with frequency variation and brief power interruptions on the grid due to the much higher variability in power output from renewable.