system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Ignoring nuclear energy is a big middle finger for the planet and experts on the field, while making climate change not look like a crisis at all.

The  fight against Green House Emissions is focused on one big  transformation: the Energy sector, whose trending solution of the  present is to use renewable energy to eletrify everything we can, and to  produce hydrogen with everything we can't eletrify. (Biofuels for  extreme scenarios).

While trying  to achieve such goals, our natural gas consumption is rising, since it's  a perfect fit for the variability of Renewable Energy.

Meanwhile,  most countries ditch on nuclear energy, which is the perfect  replacement for coal power plants. Discussions surrounding it tend to  compare it with Variable Renewable Energy (VRE), and tend to be biased.

Statements  of "solar and wind are cheaper than gas at the moment!" are common, and  unfair, since they do not account with long-term storage any time, and  makes a bad comparison against any type of established energy.

This  further increased when nuclear's main problem are costs, which is a  very respected argument. Yes, while gas is truly cheaper than nuclear,  and, although it emits GHG, it can provide everything nuclear can  (energy-wise), but VRE alone cannot. On top of this, the decomission of  solar and wind is rarely put into consideration. These include  unrecyclable blades and foundations of concrete that are not removed  from the environment, and solar's toxic electronics that can be more  dangerous than nuclear waste. They also come with big, ignored costs,  while nuclear energy takes it into account.

The  worst is the hype surrounding hydrogen. If it ever comes to reality, it  doesn't become only a storage solution: it becomes a necessity for  transport and / or heat. As such, this necessity cannot be based only on  the excess of VRE. So, again, we will be dependant on the most  available process: steam reforming Natural Gas. The funny thing is that  even here nuclear can help, as itsresidual heat is a free source of  energy to produce hydrogen, which usually is dissipated into the water,  going to waste.

I am not saying  nuclear is asolution of everything, but it's a damn good, proven help.  Economics constraints should not be a reason alone to not adopt it. This  energy density would allow us to further evolve ourselves, and there  are tons of things humans put money on for the betterment of humankind,  such as space exploration.

People  mention Chernobyl, but this was one in a kind accident, almost half a  century ago, and experts did tons of work for the betterment of the  technology. Meanwhile, a Banqiao dam breaks in China, kills several  hundred thousand on people, while putting MILLIONS without home and  eletricity, but no-one is scared of them. Because they do not fear it.  They can't even imagine it happening to them.

Every  technology has problems that can be improved and bettered, and plenty of motivated people are working on making it better, cheaper, safer. But it seems that we live in a moment where supporting Renewable Energy and ditching  everything else is the "good thing" to do, even if that is actually  making our progress slower in the fight against climate change.

People  fear the complexity of nuclear energy, such as they fear more airplanes  than cars, although everyone knows that cars kill way more persons than  airplanes ever did. Nuclear is the "Shrek" that the city is afraid of,  even if he does save the princess at the end.

As long as this fear of a clean, dense and well-established technology,  and disregard of decades of hard-work done from highly inteligent  people, are we really allowed to say that we are facing a climate-change  **crisis?**


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EDIT: I usually don't edit posts, but I had to add this: wow! Never expected so many responses. I appreciate every point of view, and will try my best to give my opinion to everyone!
gpt
The point about nuclear costs isn't that it's not as economically good as gas.

It's that it's not as economically good as **renewables**. Governments should have invested heavily in nuclear plants around 1990-2000. But they didn't, and in the meantime renewables got cheaper to operate, more efficient in output, and have always been much cheaper to build and faster to get to breakeven generation.

Now with renewables the state they are, nuclear just doesn't make sense.  Yes, its better and safer than coal and gas, but for every million bucks you put into a nuclear plant you could get more out of putting that million bucks into renewables.

This only applies to nuclear generation, mind. The reason renewables got cheaper and better in the last 20-30 years is because there was continuing research in them. The same should go for nuclear, and with time nuclear may become a sensible option again.