It’s fair to point out that distribution has its own dilemmas, as does storing excess energy. But those are secondary in my view. As far as public policy goes, given that nuclear energy are big public expenditure endeavors, in my view the economics need to make sense to the public to justify nuclear power generation.

Another factor is, of course, time. Is it worth investing in nuclear if the objective is to cut GHGs by X year, when we know a nuclear plant would take Y years to come online?

One big unknown is the total amount of electricity consumed. If the assumption is a relative decline or stable amount of global demand in the future, then nuclear makes limited sense, whereas a spike in demand, possibly caused by unmitigated AI energy demand, could warrant recalculating the cost-effectiveness of nuclear energy.