This can all be disproven using simple logic and analysis.
You claim that nuclear is short sighted, but then you claim we should be using renewables. Where do those renweables get their energy? From nuclear.
Thats the entire reason we are trying to get nuclear working. Fission was a nice first step, it showed the world the power of nuclear and proved that it was a concept that works. But now we need to get fusion working as it is the future. Its the third to last power source humanity will ever harvest. All the energy generated by renewables are simply byproducts of nuclear, so why not cut the middle man and harvest the nuclear directly?
Its easy to make the argument that we didnt have to pay the upfront costs of the sun, but the sun itself isnt renewable. Even if you invested fully into renewables now, for humanity to last long term you would STILL have to eventually go nuclear. And what about deep space habitats? They cant use renweables pretty much at all.
Why the fuck would anyone care about wasteful space colonization and the next million years when we aren’t even close to solving our current problems?
Renewables are significantly cheaper than nuclear and will remain so for the foreseeable future. The “cheap nuclear energy” Germany got a few decades ago isn’t as cheap if you include the costs of managing the nuclear waste. By the way, Germany intends to find - not build - a long term nuclear waste storage construction site by 2070. Right now the “temporary” solution of dumping everything into caves is used.
Once we start colonizing space - and only then - does it make sense to start discussing the viability of nuclear energy. That will be centuries off.
You claim that nuclear is short sighted, but then you claim we should be using renewables. Where do those renweables get their energy? From nuclear.
Yeah… a nuclear fusion reaction that has about 18*10^29 kg of hydrogen available at its disposal and is conveniently placed in a vacuum, mostly unaffected by gravity other than its own, with magnetic fields enabling it.
When we speak of nuclear as a source of electric energy, it’s about nuclear fission. And it’s not like we’re not trying, nuclear fusion research is going on since over 60 years, with insane amounts of money invested into it and yet no result that is practical for large scale electric energy generation.
Its easy to make the argument that we didnt have to pay the upfront costs of the sun, but the sun itself isnt renewable. Even if you invested fully into renewables now, for humanity to last long term you would STILL have to eventually go nuclear. And what about deep space habitats? They cant use renweables pretty much at all.
If you think humanity (or actually, any form of life) can sustain once the sun no longer exists as it does now (probably becoming a red giant), you’re probably wrong. But that consideration is of no importance when talking about covering today’s energy needs
