Simply taxing CO2 emissions and maybe reinvesting some profits (into electrification and renewables) should do just fine.
The problem is people have to pay for these changes. This means potentially:
- General increase in prices/decrease in disposable income
- Danger for competitiveness of domestic industries
- Uncertain second-order effects/additional risk
Just consider electric vehicles-- pushing for no new combustion-car sales starting in 2025 would be political suicide in a lot of democractic nations, simply because people actually value future wellbeing on a planetary scale less than what's in their own pockets right now.
There is absolutely no need to go nuclear for electrical power at this point IMO-- it's not cost competitive, not sustainable and extremely unpopular, too.
Your assessment of nuclear power is completely wrong. Nuclear is the cheapest, most sustainable and widely supported source of clean electricity. Even in Germany more people support nuclear power than oppose it.
In additions, most recently built reactors finished neither on time NOR on budget, and most of those were just expansions/additional blocks for existing plants, which is a big "free" decrease in risk/problems already compared to new plants (compare that with renewable costs which are trending down).
Nuclear is also absolutely not sustainable: Mining fuel is a dirty business and reserves are limited.
Nuclear proliferation is another undesirable side effect, and both nuclear waste and decomissioned plants are difficult and expensive to clean up.
Regarding popular support:
What is your source for this? Maybe it is talking about delaying decomissioning of existing plants to keep electricity prices lower? I am extremely doubtful that this "support" could be leveraged into securing new places to build plants anyway.
Also consider that specifically the German electricity mix is basically 50% renewables already-- scaling that up seems more doable, faster, cheaper, and ultimately environment friendly than starting to build nuclear plants on a massive scale NOW.
Lazard doesn't account for energy storage and grid expansion so it shouldn't be used to compare intermittent and baseload energy sources. If there's political will NPPs can be and are constructed on time, like in ROK, PRC or 70's France.
Your argument about sustainability even more so applies to renewables considering how much more resources have to be mined to build such low density and intermittent energy source. Also, renewables occupy a lot of space that can and should be rewilded.
Using nuclear reactors to produce nuclear weapons is not easy (see Iran) and nuclear waste can be stored underground. Decomissioning of NPPs can be done after 80 or 100 years of operation which is a crazy long time given how short the lifespans of wind turbines and solar panels are.
Germany electricity mix is 50% renewables yet right now it's emitting 8x more CO2 per kWh than France. I wonder why that's the case? Maybe energy policy should be more about decarbonisation rather than building renewable capacity?
The problem is people have to pay for these changes. This means potentially:
- General increase in prices/decrease in disposable income
- Danger for competitiveness of domestic industries
- Uncertain second-order effects/additional risk
Just consider electric vehicles-- pushing for no new combustion-car sales starting in 2025 would be political suicide in a lot of democractic nations, simply because people actually value future wellbeing on a planetary scale less than what's in their own pockets right now.
There is absolutely no need to go nuclear for electrical power at this point IMO-- it's not cost competitive, not sustainable and extremely unpopular, too.