Is that really how the financing of these projects works, though, to say that dollars are simply diverted from renewables to fission? I think not. As a civilization, we surely have the capacity and the imperative to do both. (That said, we should absolutely stop giving trillions in subsidies and financing to fossil fuel projects.)

Not to mention, we have a land use problem. Far too much land is given over to grossly inefficient livestock rearing, but solar installations are hardly better in land use terms, much as I recognize their necessity.

In any case, sites for solar installations are hard to find. Same deal for fission plants, for obviously different reasons, and in spite of their impeccable safety record by the numbers.

Difference being, though, that for every fission plant that overcomes NIMBYism, you get a lot more generation, albeit with considerable delay before that generation comes online, as you note.

All of which is to say that, the realities are not straightforward, it is not a binary choice. We should build as much new, non-carbon-emitting generation as possible.

Energy is the principal civilizational force multiplier. Given the damage we’ve already done that we need to undo, we need as much energy as we can get.

While we’re on the subject, let’s drop the facile pretense that any of these generation technologies are actually clean. They all have environmental externalities. I think it’s incumbent upon us to fairly represent that, and to make a whole-system analysis of this problem.