Cost is an issue for nuclear only when the costs of pollution and other externalities are not factored into fossil fuels. Plus, there is an unjustified fear premium with nuclear. Unjustified because it’s not based on fear not fact. On what might happen as opposed to what has or has not. If we don’t solve the climate crisis, the issue of where to store spent nuclear fuel will be moot. Just pick any of the vast swaths of uninhabitable areas of the planet.

Tax carbon. End the corporate welfare to oil and coal companies. Get over the fear premium. And all of a sudden low-carbon forms of energy make a ton of economic sense, including nuclear.

Not that they don’t have a point about sacrificing, or at least making rational compromise regarding, some sacred cows. We are going to have to make some compromises. George Black published a serious, very tough-minded consideration of exactly this knot of necessary decisions in Spring’s OnEarth Magazine.