> The dirty secret with things like solar and wind is that in order for them to work reliably they need to have large number of natural gas generators. Because

> The dirty secret with things like solar and wind is that in order for them to work reliably they need to have large number of natural gas generators. Because of this and other issues they really pose little threat to total fossil fuel consumption Of course they do. Because storage is not solved. That's why I said they are not a replacement without storage (among other reasons) As for the economical cases, nuclear is competitive in the long term if we do not require stupid high rentability. Given wealth is extremely strongly correlated to energy consumption, and we will have to get rid of fossil (even if we don't want, we will be forced to), the economy will restructure anyway, and we will be forced to do rational things rather than wishful thinking economy based on ridiculous hypotheses (eternal exp. growth) So in the long term, the governments will not really be able to allow or disallow things by incentives, if the world simply does not have any other solutions. That's not even what all the governments are doing today. China is building some nuclear power plants.