Additionally, if there was a nationwide push to nuclear power, we'd have cheap, clean energy -- putting a sizable dent in both clean drinking water & climate change at the same time.
I think you confused it for The Hague, which is in The Netherlands.
The sun doesn’t shine at night, the wind doesn’t blow all the time, and batteries often are astronomically expensive and impractical at large scales. Solar and wind vary greatly, both over an individual 24-hour period, and seasonally throughout the year. A nuclear plant is producing its maximum capacity 93% of the time, as opposed to wind (34%) and solar (24%). To get 1 GW of reliable energy at any given time, you need 3-4 GW of wind and solar in the hope it will be enough, as opposed to 1.1 GW of nuclear. (Worth noting that coal is only 48% reliable).[1][3]
In order to build a grid that is able to meet demand consistently and reliably, you would have to massively overbuild renewables so they were able to meet peek demand, and deal with the issue of huge load shedding during times of overproduction. See section 5 and 6 of [1] for a study of what it would take to reach 80% and 100% renewables for California. To reach 0% fossil fuels, a total of about 7GW of nuclear power (the equivalent of 4 Diablo Canyon plants) would reduce needed wind by 11.5GW (the equivalent of over 5 million wind turbines) and solar by 5.7GW (the equivalent of 1.8 million rooftop systems). When you only need 40% the capacity, even double the cost is cheaper. Nuclear is only expensive when you compare it to coal and natural gas, which are baseload generating power sources. Again, with intermittent renewables, it is cheaper to build nuclear than to massively overbuild solar, wind, and grid level batteries.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
[3] https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity
No nuclear power plant ever created has stopped costing money yet, even ones that have been closed for 30+ years. They are costing taxpayers millions per year, each, for the foreseeable future. How can anyone know for sure what the actual cost will end up being?
Meanwhile, the cost per Mwh of batteries is very likely to fall, considering that almost every major economic centre started building battery gigafactories during the pandemic and new chemistries are already viable for cars.
I suspect that energy storage will soon be so obviously the right choice that even if someone decides to make a nuclear plant today, they won't finish it because it won't make financial sense.
Nuclear power is prohibitively expensive even in a best-case scenario. All estimates that have indicated otherwise simply ignore most of the costs. Political decisions socialize the costs to the state and future generations. Even in the US.
Read up on the current costs of closed plants like Rancho Seco in the US, recent developments around EDF in France, and the statements from Sweden's riksgalden for more info about this. TLDR, you are paying for closed nuclear plants already, and so will your great great great grandchildren. They will pay all their lives for plants that won't give them a single watthour of power. This is a monumentally bad idea IMO.
How about we instead make a nationwide push on things like hydrogen gas from seawater and solar?
When the hydrogen gas is burnt, it creates salt-free H2O as a byproduct, and in the meantime it's a good energy storage solution to solve the intermittence of renewables.
Your grandchildren will praise you instead of curse you.