Fine, then why isn't coal being held to the same standard, which is what you're de facto choosing if you don't want nuclear power. The coal industry has an incr

Fine, then why isn't coal being held to the same standard, which is what you're de facto choosing if you don't want nuclear power. The coal industry has an incredible amount of negative externalities, with the costs and damage largely ignored for most of their life. Fly as spills[1] are incredibly damaging, yet the coal industry still gets to store their waste in open air ponds that occasionally spill in to major rivers. Even in the areas where solar can be used, are you going make sure that industry pays (at least party in advance, for the same insurance) for not only their manufacturing costs, but also the cleanup and disposal of all those PV cells that necessarily would be distributed over a wide area? Are you also going make sure the wind and/or solar industry takes responsibility for all of the batteries t hat would be necessary to use their schemes? When you're talking keeping a national grid active on variable sources of power like wind or solar, those battery costs will easily surpass the generation costs. Since we are talking about cheap batteries that can supply decent amounts of current, that means lead acid[2]. Do you really want to distribute that much lead? Did you include the costs of the insurance to clean that up, too, including enforcement to make sure the lead doesn't simply end up in the landfill (or worse)? The only expensive part about nuclear is the initial development cost. Running the plant isn't particularly expensive, and the fuel and waste costs are practically nothing and those costs are isolated to only a few locations. Everybody else tends to get away with socializing their long-term cleanup and disaster costs. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_ash_slurry_spill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly... [2] future technologies could change that, but until we can buy it commercially its just vaporware and wishful thinking