> What's the real solution here?
I haven't spotted this in this entire thread: managing energy consumption and more efficient distribution.
There's a massive demand for energy. Why? What's causing this? And is that demand really justified?
Vox did a really great piece about how managing consumption and distribution is a major part of the equation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfAXbGInwno
The controversial part is this: how do you do this? There are two totally naive approaches: either rely completely on free market dynamics, or heavily regulate how energy is consumed and conserved. Reality sits somewhere in between.
Then there's also a hard reality: optimization of consumption has a hard lower bound before the consequences become too painful. As a thought experiment, you could imagine a world with no electrical power plants whatsoever: but then you'd turn back the clock to how things were before the late 19th century. That's when you realize how electricity has shaped modern society over the past 150 years, but also how dependent modern society is on its availability.
Electricity is also a tradable commodity. It's a political and economical strategic asset. Part of why a radical shift isn't possible is because of existing interests who oppose anything that might cause a shift in power balances. I think it's important to recognize this as well. Especially in a discussion that promotes particular types of energy production over one another.
One potential scenario might be this:
Electricity has become superfluous. Nobody ever questions the intricacies of energy production and transport when they plug their smartphone charger in a socket. The vast majority of consumers are conditioned with the idea that a socket will always provide an infinite flow of power. It's only when power is cut off for whatever reason - brown outs, black outs, power is too expensive,... - that one starts to understand that this isn't always true. Having access to electricity isn't a human right after all.
The future might be painful in a sense that more and more people will be confronted with this painful truth. If not pro-actively and softly pushed through public debate; the circumstances - raising energy prices, availability,... - will force people to confront their own power consumption, the lifestyle they have build based on the assumption that power will always be available. It will also confront them with the inequities caused by all of this.
That's why I think it's a fallacy to perceive both nuclear and renewables as "silver bullet" solutions to avert such scenario's. Reality is far more complex.