Liking nukes falls into the same category as liking dams: I want to believe they aren’t going to happen because they are economically infeasible. The same money

Liking nukes falls into the same category as liking dams: I want to believe they aren’t going to happen because they are economically infeasible. The same money would buy significantly more capacity in wind/solar/storage. The sticking point with dams and nukes is the same thing: the sheer cost of finding a suitable location, preparing the site, then pouring thousands of tons of concrete (and that has to be exactly the right concrete with no shortcuts). So yeah, I will happily support policy which includes considering nukes when it also includes considerations that I am interested in, but I am not supporting any subsidies for nukes and dams when that money is far better spent elsewhere. The catch there is that the folks that want the nukes and dams will get my support in principle, then trade someone else’s support for subsidising nukes and dams for support of legislation around guns for teachers or “religious freedom” (aka the right to discriminate based on race or religion) or something else I loathe. So the nukes and dams people get their nukes and dams by spending all the money that could have gone to cheaper power, and we get extremely regressive social policy to boot. So given the horse trading that goes on, I can not support dams and nukes for any reason, because even though I believe they are economically infeasible the people that want to build them will trade away things that I consider more valuable than money. For the nukes and dams people, it is far more important to funnel government funds into their (friends’) companies. Nothing else matters: climate change, social well-being, healthy economy … they just don’t care. Check out the Trump administration in the USA with their continual whittling of environmental protection in favour of fossil fuels, or the Morrison government in Australia with water rights rorting. There is simply no room for negotiating with these people because they are not rational actors.