It takes time to come to the realization that a lot of what we do is inefficient because that’s just what people are used to doing. Some towns survive solely due to coal mining, and they see it as an existential threat if it were shut down. Nuclear power also takes very knowledgeable individuals, years of planning, and many resources to get started. Coal is cheap, dirty, and primitive.

Nuclear also isn‘t even a good energy source. Way too expensive and the waste is a problem for millenia. Renewables + hydrogen/battery/mechanical energy conservation is simply superior. Fusion would be cool too

Nuclear is a great energy source. My state (Illinois) generates over half of all its energy from nuclear. France is a great example of a country that maximizes the potential of nuclear energy. The waste is not a problem if it’s stored properly. The much bigger problem are carbon/methane emissions which are fucking our climate right now. Also, nuclear waste can be reprocessed to make it less volatile and radiotoxic, but that requires an advanced application of technology.

Batteries and solar absolutely yes, we need to be scaling up battery technology as fast as possible, particularly sodium-ion batteries for static energy storage from solar power. The biggest problems with wind/solar is the actual storage of the energy. No wind? No power. No sun? No power. That’s why you need batteries, and battery technology has only gotten good enough in the past couple years.

Scaling up hydrogen is very difficult, it’s extremely volatile, and can realistically only be used in large scale power plants because transporting hydrogen is extremely expensive. Fusion could be good, but it’s still being worked on, and who knows how long it’ll really take for us to have a practical implementation.

France only pushed for nuclear, because they need an excuse for the costs of their nukes and nuclear submarines. The disadvantages of high cost and nuclear waste remain.

France’s 80 years of nuclear waste takes about the space of an Olympic swimming pool and half.

In a millena, it’ll be 150 swimming pools, and that’s assuming we haven’t found a way to repair/reuse/recycle it in 1000 years. Or not decided to just yeet it on the nearest inhospitable planet via railcannon or something.

Nuclear waste is a non issue.

If it’s such a non issue, how come we still don’t have a single long term storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in the world? After more than 70 years of nuclear energy production.

We do, it’s called (really big hole)[en.wikipedia.org/…/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo…]