Beautifully articulated, but I have to disagree with you on nuclear power. We're close to the point where renewables and battery tech are a solution to all our power needs. Remaining obstacles being primarily political / geopolitical.
Meanwhile, after 70 years we're still no closer to a safe long term solution for nuclear waste. Every new and untested nuclear reactor design falls into the same pro-innovation bias of failing to address it's own unintended consequences. Like the utterly wild and rarely estimated cost of decommissioning older plants.
Incidentally, Finland just took a key step today towards issuing an operating permit for the Onkalo repository. After today, the permit is mostly matter of bureaucracy, and the final disposal of spent nuclear fuel could start by the end of the year.
The issues with renewables and nuclear waste are similar. The general solutions have been known for decades, but progress has been slow, as people have been unwilling to commit to them.
They're not remotely similar. The consequences for a spill of nuclear waste - either from a storage facility that's been compromised or hit by a strike during a war, or for example the sinking of a delivery ship that's transporting waste - are enormous. Ditto the largely unsolved costs of decommissioning.
Meanwhile, after 70 years we're still no closer to a safe long term solution for nuclear waste. Every new and untested nuclear reactor design falls into the same pro-innovation bias of failing to address it's own unintended consequences. Like the utterly wild and rarely estimated cost of decommissioning older plants.