Nuclear is the clean energy MVP. If only the industry actually believed this too. Industry advocates need to stop telling people how safe it is. That comes from a place of perceived weakness. Instead we need to take pride in being the safest and tell society why it is unbeatable. Right now it’s like: “Oh hi, I’m sorry, we are extra safe, we love renewables too and love working with them, sorry, maybe decrease regulations a little, we can always be safer, I’m sorry about Fukushima which hurt nobody, we will go modular I think, sorry.”

Maybe us pro-nukes would be a little more tolerant of #wind and #solar if their grid integration efforts and subsequent electricity market rules were not solely designed to kill off perfectly good #nuclearpower plants. And if you think there is a level playing field out there for wind, solar and nuclear to battle it out on merit, you are smoking crack. Everything is rigged against nuclear. The political institution pushing climate mitigation often hates nuclear power.

This is the paradox: Until we have the proper alternatives ready to do, we HAVE to burn fossil fuels to run civilization. This is the unfortunate case given fossil fuels are dangerously warming the planet. So when climate activists demand we straight up stop fossil fuel usage now and ask questions later, they don’t know what they are talking about.

A common attack on #nuclear advocates is that we are trashing #wind and #solar. Wind and solar have so many limitations and drawbacks that simply talking about them is considered trashing them. Explaining why we need nuclear means telling the truth about renewables. 1/ The fact is simply this. Wind and solar make the act of decarbonizing grids to completion harder because they are variable intermittent sources of power we can’t call on. This is a physical fact that has been handwaived away since the original push to use those sources. 2/