Few people who support nuclear power are against renewables, they are against fossil fuels. Coal mining is dangerous/destructive, burning coal is poisoning the

Few people who support nuclear power are against renewables, they are against fossil fuels. Coal mining is dangerous/destructive, burning coal is poisoning the oceans and has killed many, many people. For example, even with the advanced air pollution controls on coal plants in Europe, an estimate is that over 20,000 deaths are caused per year due to burning coal. I am not sure how many of these deaths Germany is exporting every year to countries downwind, but it isn't zero. https://news.mongabay.com/2013/06/burning-coal-responsible-for-over-20000-deaths-a-year-in-europe/ https://news.mongabay.com/2013/06/burning-coal-responsible-f... A NASA estimate is that the use of nuclear power has saved approximately 1.8 million lives in the years 1971-2009. https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/kharecha_02/ https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/kharecha_02/ Long term, coal usage is also obviously a big driver of climate change. What many don't realize is that natural gas, it might be as bad for climate change as coal due to methane releases during the extraction and transportation of n History will not look kindly on those who want to shut down nuclear power and keep coal and natural gas. Unfortunately trying to rely only on intermittent power sources has huge storage requirements due to weather along with daily/seasonal variation. If grid energy storage was a simple problem it would have been done decades ago. For example, one estimate is that for Germany to rely on solar and wind would require about 6,000 pumped storage plants which is 183 times their current capacity: >...Based on German hourly feed-in and consumption data for electric power, this paper studies the storage and buffering needs resulting from the volatility of wind and solar energy. It shows that joint buffers for wind and solar energy require less storage capacity than would be necessary to buffer wind or solar energy alone. The storage requirement of over 6,000 pumped storage plants, which is 183 times Germany’s current capacity, would nevertheless be huge. https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/144985/1/cesifo1_wp5950.pdf https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/144985/1/cesifo1_wp5...