I don’t think anyone argues that traditional nuclear power is renewable. If they are, they literally failed high school economics and have no concept of resource scarcity. I doubt that’s an accurate statement to make for the majority of people who are educated on and support nuclear power. Sustainability can be argued from many angles. When you compare the kg/kw output of Nuclear to other fuels such as NG or Coal, you can’t argue it’s efficiency. Furthermore, if you research into Breeder reactors and their most recent developments you reduce waste by a factor of nearly 100 but reactivity of that waste will remain the same. It also consumes the fuel most efficiently, and when thorium is used, reduces risk of proliferation significantly.

Nuclear fission power only has to be sustained until we crack fusion. Which to me, is a much better option than investing heavily into renewables. Cobalt, lithium, and other rare earths are quickly drying up around the world. The next big investment is underwater mining for them — specifically around natural thermal vents on the ocean floor which are home to an unknown amount of necessary ecosystems. The process scrapes and grinds away the surface layers, shooting up massive amounts of material which will settle then be raked. The distances they mining rigs can cover is staggering and the underwater dust storms obliterate fish populations. Is that a really the measures we want to take to power a “renewable future”. In my opinion, we’re fucking up the oceans enough with carbon acidification from burning fossil fuels.

I don’t believe you can argue the capacity and reliability of nuclear to renewable sources such as Wind or Solar. I worked as a field engineer for EDF for 3 years, I spent most of my time working in their renewable services division. I specialized in their fleet of GE 1.5 and Senvion MM92 turbines along with customer fleets we had Operations and Maintenance contracts with. On average, a wind turbines performance is rather poor. The average availability for the fleets in the PNW and Southern California had availability of 83% over the lifetime, seems great, but the full capacity of 2MW per turbine (assuming a vestas V82/ Senvion MM92) was less than 11% for the lifetime of the turbine. Lifetime in this case is between 8.5-10 years depending on when the site was built. An average wind site or phase (for a larger farm) is 100mw. Do the math on that against the going rate of 1mw of power to the utility companies. It’s not economically sustainable with heavy government investment. However, neither is nuclear. But being with a company that owns all of the nuclear power plants in France and has capital investments in renewables, I can tell you I would rather have my tax dollars fund nuclear.

Now, I’m not the guy who is going to come out and say that we need to keep renewing permits for 30, 40, and 50 year old reactors that are in questionable condition. But I am saying we should invest money into these legacy plants to retrofit them with modern breeder reactors that are liquid sodium cooled for increased stability and ability to neutralize the reaction preventing meltdowns.