NIMBY, overregulation driven by FUD that's often funded by other entrenched energy interests, misguided do gooders that decades ago were worried about global wa

NIMBY, overregulation driven by FUD that's often funded by other entrenched energy interests, misguided do gooders that decades ago were worried about global warming (now climate change) who also hated nuclear because it's less environmentally friendly than renewable. That last one is tragic. We could have a massively smaller carbon footprint right now if we'd gone big down that path, presuming we also dumped resources for research into alternative uses for spent fuel & safe long-term storage. Instead of buying an electric cars that right now are powered by fossil fuels producing electricity (potentially even less efficient if the energy still comes from coal) electric might have hit their "killer app" stage a few years ago. (I'll concede that battery tech might not have advanced any faster with cheaper clean electricity and so we might still be just as ICE dependent as we are now) At this point nuclear might be moot. I'm not sure, honestly. But we seem to be approaching a tipping point where off-peak storage mechanisms for renewables are almost maturing enough for national-grid scale build outs. This would make the faster & cheaper build out of renewables (compared long expensive nuclear builds) more viable as replacements for plants that are currently needed for base load capacity, which is where nuclear's economic sweet spot is at. It takes a relatively longer time to ramp up/down the output of nuclear plants compared to others, and they have high overhead to begin with relative to others (natural gas plants that ramp down in off-hours don't have to pay for the gas they don't but) so while more flexible variable output nuclear plant designs are maturing they may be too late in the game. Right now the future for nuclear appears to be more niche applications. Relatively portable rapidly deployable units for instant infrastructure, for example. (I believe this is currently under research by US military) Anyway, that's a bit of a digression. The TLDR is sociopolitical facts killed nuclear (caveat: China is going very big on nuclear, they still see value there) and we've now reach a point where the issue is moot(ish).