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Today is apparently the day for climate scientists to give their hot takes on the eternal battle between renewable and nuclear advocates. Let me add my two cents: both are important, and we should align incentives to allow market mechanisms to drive cheap decarbonization. 1/5
New nuclear in US today is pretty much dead. The economics are abysmal, driven by huge cost overruns. But preventing existing nuclear power plants from shutting down (and largely being replaced by cheap gas) is a very cost-effective mitigation strategy carbonbrief.org/mapped-the-us-… 2/5
That said, the US is not the world. The economics of nuclear in places like South Korea and China doesn't seem too bad, and there they could play a large role in future decarbonization. 3/5
There also is potential for the development/deployment of new nuclear technologies, be they small module reactors, the ever-loved thorium reactors, nuclear fusion, or something else over the 21st century. 4/5
The important thing to realize is that there is no silver bullet to climate change, only silver buckshot. Nuclear won't be -the- solution, but it'll be part of our global decarbonization portfolio. How big a role depends on economics of both nuclear and renewables at scale 5/5
