Solar and wind are diffuse, low-density, energy sources. This is why you need to use a lot of land to collect that energy and therefore a lot of panels and turbines. This also implies a lot of land for mining the necessary metals, and a lot of land when they are inevitably decommissioned. There are costs to this in a world which has a growing population numbering in billions and growing per/capita energy needs and which is going through environmental collapse already.
This is NOT a bad faith argument. Wind and Solar may never be viable outside of niche areas. Wind and Solar may not even be that great against climate change given that they are not viable without fossil fuel base-load (natural gas companies are some of the biggest proponents of wind and solar these days).
Nuclear just so happens to be an energy source that doesn't release carbon into the atmosphere, doesn't need fossil-fuel base-load, and has minuscule land-use requirements. All I argued is that it is inevitable that we will have to rebuild our nuclear infrastructure because there aren't any other options.
I didn't take that angle, so why bring it up?
Solar and wind are diffuse, low-density, energy sources. This is why you need to use a lot of land to collect that energy and therefore a lot of panels and turbines. This also implies a lot of land for mining the necessary metals, and a lot of land when they are inevitably decommissioned. There are costs to this in a world which has a growing population numbering in billions and growing per/capita energy needs and which is going through environmental collapse already.
This is NOT a bad faith argument. Wind and Solar may never be viable outside of niche areas. Wind and Solar may not even be that great against climate change given that they are not viable without fossil fuel base-load (natural gas companies are some of the biggest proponents of wind and solar these days).
Nuclear just so happens to be an energy source that doesn't release carbon into the atmosphere, doesn't need fossil-fuel base-load, and has minuscule land-use requirements. All I argued is that it is inevitable that we will have to rebuild our nuclear infrastructure because there aren't any other options.