General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: All nuclear plants should be shut down, IMHO. [View all]jeff47
(26,549 posts)The sad truth is the countries that have "turned away from nukes" turned right to fossil fuels. Because that was the only thing that could provide a replacement for their nuclear plants in a short timeframe.
What I would love is a distributed grid with solar on everyone's roof supplemented by wind turbines. We have nowhere near the capacity to do that yet. We'll get there, but it's going to be a while.
So we're left with "what do we do in the meantime".
Nuclear plants have caused disasters. Local disasters. It's really, really awful for those who lived next to Fukushima or Chernobyl. Meanwhile, fossil fuel gas plants are causing a global disaster.
So in the short run, we should keep the nukes going to avoid the CO2 until solar and wind can replace them.