It’s that they cost so damn much
The cost of continued fossil fuel use is far higher.
rarely profitable
Profit should not be the motivation of preventing our climate disaster from getting worse. If the private sector isn’t able to handle it, then the government needs to do so itself.
And besides, the only reason fossil fuels are so competitive is because we are dumping billions of dollars in subsidies for them. Those subsidies should instead go towards things that aren’t killing the planet.
Would it be better to dump billions into nuclear power plants that won’t come online for a decade at least, or to dump billions into renewables that can be online and reducing emissions in under a year?
We should worldwide be putting trillions into both. Renewables should be first priority, but not all locations have good solar, wind, and battery options.
That’s your opinion. I think funding nuclear is just burning money and wasting time we don’t have.
You cannot run the entire grid on entirely renewable. We physically don’t have enough lithium in the world to make the batteries for it, and even if you don’t use lithium there would be untold ecological destruction to extract the rare earths.
Renewable and hydroelectric is a solution but not viable everywhere and hydro also causes massive ecological destruction
If we started building nuclear powerplants right now it would take 10-20 years before they’re even online. That’s 10-20 years worth of technology improvements that could make it obsolete, especially if we don’t pin our hopes on nuclear baseload and start building a grid that can be 100% renewable.
And that’s not even mentioning the truly massive budget overruns. Or the environmental impact of mining and refining fuel.
