The urgency of needing to deal with climate change mandates we do both renewables and nuclear.
We have the resources to push hard on both sides.
There's this idea that we should prioritize resources on one or the other. In my opinion, we have plenty of resources such that we'll reach diminishing returns (due to employment/skill/geographical/material bottlenecks) if we applied all of those resources to one or the other such that there's nothing lost by investing in both.
As an example, at very least we can address the siting constraints of nuclear by installing any new reactors at existing sites and maintaining and upgrading existing reactors. Solar and wind can both saturate an area and reach diminishing returns (see: duck curve) and require curtailment such that the resources become much less economic than you think they would be. And curtailment is not a totally bad thing, either.
So absolutely it's feasible to add more solar and wind (even to the point of curtailing a lot of it), but there's no time to waste by not also pursuing nuclear. We have more money than time (and costs of nuclear, if scaled out, are exaggerated).
The cost of nuclear is maximized when we're speaking of one site. That's why I mentioned scale out of nuclear. You're not going to get a beneficial learning curve unless you're building and siting lots of power plants with the same contractor(s).
Even with inflated costs, however, the extremely high latitude of the UK and its need for wintertime heat mean that the amount of renewable curtailment needed to ensure sufficient carbonfree wintertime energy make nuclear still cost competitive in a carbonfree scenario.
Generally speaking, no halfway competent investment in carbonfree energy should be opposed, IMHO. We don't have time to fight such internal battles when we're fighting anthropogenic climate change.
We have the resources to push hard on both sides.
There's this idea that we should prioritize resources on one or the other. In my opinion, we have plenty of resources such that we'll reach diminishing returns (due to employment/skill/geographical/material bottlenecks) if we applied all of those resources to one or the other such that there's nothing lost by investing in both.
As an example, at very least we can address the siting constraints of nuclear by installing any new reactors at existing sites and maintaining and upgrading existing reactors. Solar and wind can both saturate an area and reach diminishing returns (see: duck curve) and require curtailment such that the resources become much less economic than you think they would be. And curtailment is not a totally bad thing, either.
So absolutely it's feasible to add more solar and wind (even to the point of curtailing a lot of it), but there's no time to waste by not also pursuing nuclear. We have more money than time (and costs of nuclear, if scaled out, are exaggerated).