> We can't afford to pour more money into maybes when we have proven, simple, extremely safe, highly distributable technologies like solar and wind.
I guess me and you disagree in that I view nuclear as proven, safe [2] & highly distributable (the Candian nuclear reactor is in many countries). There's a lot of FUD around nuclear & a not insignificant amount of it is funded by oil companies because they recognize how big a threat nuclear is to them [3]. It's aided by the fact that there may be legitimate security concerns although it's really hard to separate that from fear mongering to maintain the current status quo world order based around oil.
> Wind: In an average year, nobody would die. A death rate of 0.04 deaths per terawatt-hour means every 25 years, a single person would die; Nuclear: In an average year, nobody would die – only every 33 years would someone die. Solar: In an average year, nobody would die – only every 50 years would someone die.
So nuclear sits roughly between solar & wind in terms of deaths to generate said power & this includes all nuclear accidents (& of course single large scale events distort the typical deaths observed whereas solar & wind are baseline deaths that doesn't really change with improved tech as it does with nuclear). There's no safer, cheaper & as scalable a technology to wean off of fossil fuels. I wish there were & it would be nice if solar & wind were that, but they're not.
[1] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspec...
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-f...