I am pro-nuclear, but I don't think that's exactly the correct argument for nuclear power. I think we can cover the current level of energy consumption with sol

I am pro-nuclear, but I don't think that's exactly the correct argument for nuclear power. I think we can cover the current level of energy consumption with solar and wind. The problem is that we want to live in a future where the world consumes at least 10 times more energy than now. This might seem like an outrageous number, but it's not. The average energy use per capita in the world is 3.5 times lower than in the US. At the least we want the rest of the world to reach the living standards of the current average American person. But we also know that AI will consume exponentially increasing amounts of electricity. The exponential function is funny, you don't notice it until it explodes in your face. Right now AI uses a non-negligible but still small amount of energy, but the growth is clearly exponential. In a world where the energy is not a constraint, in a few decades AI will consume more energy than the rest of the economy combined, although it will be difficult to say what "the rest of the economy" will mean with a world where everything will be powered by AI. Nuclear has the potential to fulfill all this future growth in energy requirements. The fundamental problem of nuclear is not safety, or waste, or proliferation. It is cost. And this is a solvable problem. The total cost of the 4 Barakah reactors you mentioned was $32 billion, or $5.7 billion/GW. The cost of utility solar is about $1 billion/GW, but the capacity factor is only about 30%, while the capacity factor of nuclear is about 90%. So $5.7 at 90% is still a bit more expensive than $1 at 30%, but if the cost of nuclear goes down by a factor of 2, it's at the same level as solar. And there is no reason to think such a reduction is not possible.