In a recent study, researchers from the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE), and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) questioned the planned development of new nuclear capacities in the energy strategies of the United States and certain European countries.
So for grid reliability, it would be better to build (e.g.) a distributed fleet of 100 MW reactors than a single 1 GW reactor?
Yeah that would likely improve it, but then you’re paying as much for the fuel as the renewable grid’s total cost and much more on top of that for security and O&M. You also need to quadruple uranium mining overnight to just do the first fuel load for enough new generation to keep up with new wind and solar installs.
Rather than going to more and more tortured extents to try and make nuclear work, we could just do the thing that’s working extremely well. In the absolute worst case where we assume medium and long term storage is impossible rather than not yet necessary, the total emissions from the residual thermal generation over tue next century are less than the emissions from delaying the transition to try and make nuclear work.