I would consider it a failure to use a crapton of non-renewables to get to the point where we have unreliable, un-controllable renewables, which continue creating CO2 emissions due to how badly we store energy and in the best of cases still create more risks to lives and the ecosystem through hydro, than nuclear (I'll get to that further down). All that, when you have a perfectly fine self-stopping mechanism that produces orders of magnitude more energy at a controllable rate that could be built in one place rather than "arranged" to be moved (CO2 emissions again) whenever the weather patterns change.
Again this is absolutely bonkers that people would start thinking that being pragmatically for nuclear is being against renewables, because I AM NOT. I am entirely for the investment into research and development around renewables, I am entirely for the replacement of as much of the coal used by renewables, I entirely for a world where we would benefit greatly from renewables. But stop mistaking nuclear for oil on your self-inflicted side of things, because nuclear CAN carry this transition without continuing to wreck the environment, and oil-gas-coal could do that while entirely messing it up, but renewables alone absolutely cannot.
And by the way I have no problem with intermittency of access to power, I am actually open to the idea. But why try to sell that idea to everyone when they don't actually have to compromise on their consumption if nuclear carries the production? Instead of calling it a day by saying that it's an "intermittency angst", have empathy for those who would indeed be worried about it and find SOLID arguments to explain why you seem to know that it's either not a problem or that it is a problem worth living with (or in the case of energy availability, without).
For what it's worth, here's the combined 17-countries European output of wind power at a resolution of about a day on the scale of about a year in 2017[0]. Tell me how that fits nicely with the high constant consumption of any given country, and how you'll install enough of these in places where you get a relative 10-100x more power (i.e. offshore) without having to fight people, and tell me how you'd do that without tremendous energy and material consumption in the making. And then tell me how sea currents aren't likely to change due to climate change and make your efforts moot at an unpredictable rate[1][2] for not just wind but solar too.
AGAIN, as in EVERY response I made, I am pro-renewables. I'm also pragmatic about their role in addressing the immediate issues with CO2 emissions and what physics will pragmatically allow us to reliably extract from them at the level of the world. Local initiatives to develop something around an area that steadily produces renewable energy and is robust against unpredictable weather pattern changes AND doesn't cost an arm and a leg (without the emotional investments of VCs lowering the $$$ needed) AND does not create substantial CO2 emissions during the lifetime of the product, I'm 1000% for that.
For the maintainable, long-term, high-output power, it's called nuclear and it has led to an order of magnitude less deaths of ecosystems and people in the world, even when including the headlines-making Fukushima and Chernobyl, than just about one or two dams failing in Europe the same century. For a power output that is significant enough that it can offset the gigantic energy density that oil and gas offered the world for its development during the last ~200 years, without creating more CO2 after its construction and without having to move every time the wind changes yet again.
[0] https://i.imgur.com/HsJJ1NE.jpg
[1] https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2950/arctic-ice-melt-is-changi...
[2] https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07052018/atlantic-ocean-c...
