I mostly agree except transmission is not cheap, and further I’m not convinced transmission across a continent is even possible even with crazy high voltage DC lines which currently don’t exist. The current massive projects are going to take several years for just a few lines, it would take an insane ramp up in production to do the entire continent. While we’re working on that nuclear can be built reasonably fast without political hurdles blocking every step of the way. That’s not to downplay the need for recycling the waste which will need to be invented regardless because the waste already exists. I’m also not convinced renewables can ramp up production on a scale that would be able to replace in excess of 100% of the demand within a few years, but I guess I’ll have to look that up. Your concerns about nuclear are valid, but rebewables won’t magically solve all the problems of reliability and scale, we’re going to need a baseload and nuclear has proven for decades that it can do the job.
I mostly agree except transmission is not cheap, and further I’m not convinced transmission across a continent is even possible even with crazy high voltage DC lines which currently don’t exist. The current massive projects are going to take several years for just a few lines, it would take an insane ramp up in production to do the entire continent. While we’re working on that nuclear can be built reasonably fast without political hurdles blocking every step of the way. That’s not to downplay the need for recycling the waste which will need to be invented regardless because the waste already exists. I’m also not convinced renewables can ramp up production on a scale that would be able to replace in excess of 100% of the demand within a few years, but I guess I’ll have to look that up. Your concerns about nuclear are valid, but rebewables won’t magically solve all the problems of reliability and scale, we’re going to need a baseload and nuclear has proven for decades that it can do the job.