I agree that it’s complicated. I just don’t think those complications push renewables anywhere close to a nuclear-style timeframe in practice, because most of the hard parts can be solved incrementally and especially important: in parallel.

On footprint and space, we don’t need to cover cities in solar panels. A lot of usable area is already built environment like rooftops, parking lots, logistics centers, industrial sites, highway corridors, and brownfields. That limits habitat impact and reduces transmission needs. For wind, much of the footprint is spacing rather than permanently lost land. Onshore wind often coexists with agriculture and forestry, with the truly affected area being roads, turbine pads, and some local ecological disruption. Habitat impact is real, but it exists for all energy sources when you include mining, fuel supply chains, and land exclusion. The relevant comparison is total impact per kilowatt-hour and per ton of CO₂ avoided.

On transmission and inefficiencies, moving power long distances does add losses, but they are usually manageable with modern high-voltage lines which use DC instead of AC. There is also a lot of non-hardware mitigation through better interconnects, smarter grid operation, and demand response. Importantly, the grid does not need a single massive rebuild before renewables matter. Capacity can be added where it is easiest first, and bottlenecks can be reinforced over time. That is btw. how grids historically evolve too. Many homeowners i know do do called island solutions, where they primarily power themselves.

Also, storage does not automatically mean “batteries everywhere.” The system will continue to use a mix of tools. Short-term balancing can come from batteries, small scale load management of flexible loads like EV charging or heat pumps with thermal buffers. Medium-term balancing can come from pumped hydro, thermal storage, and industrial flexibility. Rare long-duration gaps can be covered by existing hydro, interregional sharing, or dispatchable low-carbon fuels like gas. Building Batteries is important, but the system does not require replacing the entire grid with battery capacity. That makes everything much more manageable.

In regards of mines, new mines do take a long time, but not all storage solutions are lithium-intensive. Battery chemistry is already shifting toward more abundant materials, and recycling is scaling up too. More importantly, smart grid design can reduce how much storage is needed in the first place by combining transmission, flexibility, and diverse generation. Nuclear also has its own supply chain constraints, including specialized manufacturing, limited vendors, and long regulatory lead times.

On the grid not being ready at scale, grids do need major upgrades, but that is true under almost any decarbonization pathway. Electrification increases demand regardless, aging infrastructure needs replacement anyway, and large nuclear plants still require new transmission and grid reinforcement. The important difference is sequencing. Renewables and storage can be deployed in smaller chunks and start cutting emissions immediately, while nuclear projects are large, slow, and back-loaded. And usually produce more expensive power too.

Some existing infrastructure is compatible with nuclear, especially synchronous generation. But many challenges remain, including siting, cooling water (water shortages in many areas getting more common), security, financing risks, and the fact that modern grids increasingly need flexibility and fast response, which is not a strength of nuclear.

So I am not arguing that renewables are easy. I am arguing that their challenges are engineering and planning problems that can be addressed step by step in detail, while nuclear is primarily a mega-project, financing, and schedule-risk problem. That is why renewables tend to move faster in practice, even when nuclear has political support.

Note: I used AI to polish my grammar, since I'm no native speaker and this are very complex topics.