First U.S. nuclear reactor built from scratch in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia::ATLANTA — A new reactor at a nuclear power plant in Georgia has entered commercial operation, becoming the first new American reactor built from scratch in decades.
Remember that blanketing the world with solar panels isn’t exactly great for the environment. Rooftops makes a lot of sense, but the cost goes way up, an maintenance becomes a nightmare. The footprint of nuclear is much smaller
The footprint of solar is significant, but still nothing compared to agriculture. E.g. The area used to grow corn to make ethanol in the US is ~ 3x what you’d need to fully power the US on solar.
~96000000 acres used for corn, ~40% of that is used for ethanol. That makes 38.3e6 acres. First estimate I found for area of solar panels to fully power the US on solar alone was 14.08e6. That makes corn for ethanol 2.7 times the area of solar panels if all that was used was solar.
Yeah agriculture isn’t great for the environment either, but that doesn’t actually make solar any better
But what I’m saying is that the land used by solar isn’t all that significant, and it’s also costed into the price of solar farms. To power the US purely off solar would require significantly less land than is currently used for ethanol production alone. I’d say the environmental good of solar (cheap, renewable power) significantly outweighs the cost of it.
For the transition off fossil fuels to happen quickly it needs to be economic, and solar is a big part of making it economic. Nuclear is just too expensive