> We have about a football field's worth of spent fuel sitting in casks and pools. That's not per reactor; that's in total in the US since we started running nuclear power stations
Yes I know.
Counterintuitively, this makes it politically worse, as people can imagine a football field much more easily than approximately the mass of Mt. Everest in CO2 every 5 years.
People :P
> Far more compact than batteries,
Yes but irrelevant; assuming 20% efficient cells at 10% capacity factor, you can store 36 hours of output in a (~10cm~ edit: 1mm)[0] thick layer of battery under each cell (not that one should put the cells there, this is just for a sense of scale).
> wouldn't compete with other large scale transitions that need batteries like electric cars
True in some senses, false in others; they're both competing for the same investment money.
> and would work even during either a week-long blizzard, tornado, or hurricane.
Kinda, depending on the details. There are weather conditions that interfere with safe running of nuclear plants, and in the other direction if you have a large power grid (so all of North America except Texas), the blizzards and hurricanes don't affect the whole zone anyway.
> Batteries offset the power needs from dusk to dawn, but most solar farms do not build capacity for extended (multi-day to week) outages.
For now, sure; but that's a choice to go for low-hanging fruit first rather than an obligation.
> A single tornado let alone a hurricane could wipe out gigawatts of solar or wind capacity.
That sounds like a problem with planning permission or construction if the plants can't cope with wherever they happen to be installed.
> Diversification in energy sources is a good thing. […] I strongly disagree that everyone needs the same solution.
Absolutely agree. Even the fact that the average combined price of PV+LiIon being comparable to nuclear hides the variation in both (and those are just two options).
> the US must take an aggressive role in reducing its own fossil fuel emissions within its borders, since those are the only emissions we can directly control. Diplomacy and economic incentives can only go so far across international borders, but building an maintaining ties overseas is obviously of great importance for that reason. None of this "America First" crap.
Yes indeed.
Thing is, I'm not American, so my perspective here is "appealing to American politicians only works if you can tell them what's in it for them", and a big part of that is jobs for people in their state, and that is something I can't map on to any particular power source…
but I'll leave that to others, politics is so not my thing.
[0] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=20+watts+*+36+hours+%2F...