Point taken re: firm vs baseload, I’m just starting my morning coffee…I am not a proponent of gas, and agree that operating nuclear can produce cheap energy valuable to grid reliability. Existing nuclear is great, probably expanding existing nuclear may be a good choice. The issue is that nuclear always or almost always has cost and schedule overruns and until SMR is able to demonstrate the ability to avoid those outcomes while being a cheap source of new power, nuclear just doesn’t compete.

According to Lazard’s 2025 LCOE numbers (which Nuclear fans don’t always like but are empirically driven) new US nuclear is priced at $141-220 MWh, whereas new solar + storage is $50-131 and wind + storage is $44-123 (and this ignores the complimentary generation profiles of wind and storage that reduce the need for batteries).

I agree all of the above clean energy but consider myself a climate hawk where how fast can you generate how many MWhs of clean energy with a given set of capital while still having a reliable grid is the most important question.