nuclear is not a long term solution (but comes with long term problems)
How is nuclear not a long term solution? Especially with the small-scale reactors that're becoming available?
Scaling up carries with it a few problems. First of all, it's difficult to throttle nuclear generation to meet demand . . . usually reactors are kept running at a set rate above demand, and the excess energy is lost. This is mitigated by use of gas/oil generation that can be throttled more easily/quickly to bridge the gap. If we move to all nuclear, the efficiency of plants will likely drop.
We're currently consuming somewhere around 15 terawatts. To supply 15 TW with nuclear power only, we would need about 15,000 nuclear reactors (
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0096340212459124). This carries with it problems . . . simply finding 15,000 places on Earth close to a large enough body of water for cooling coupled with distance from populated areas is going to be pretty challenging. Then you have the issue of greater numbers leading to greater accidents. Nobody's perfect, and accidents can be caused by things out of human control. Massively scaling up the number of reactors is likely to increase occurrence of nuclear accidents.
Related to the previous point . . . few people want a nuclear plant in their backyard. There's tremendous resistance to placement of nuclear reactors from local populations that will have to be overcome. This might explain why only two plants have been built in the entire US in the past 30 odd year.
At current consumption rates, everything that I've read indicates that we've got a little over 200 years of viable uranium left. We're using nuclear energy for about 10% of the world's electricity right now (
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/nuclear-power-in-the-world-today.aspx). If we scale up to 100% of current needs (which will be insufficient for future demand based upon the last 100 years of energy data we've got), then we're putting off the inevitable for only a bit over 20 years. It's possible that use of thorium could mitigate this issue but it has it's own unknowns and issues (unknown feasibility of reprocessing, plenty of open questions and uncompleted research regarding it's use, higher fuel fabrication costs than uranium, more dangerous than uranium radioactivity in the short term, etc.) Thorium should be much better for long term nuclear waste at least.
Then we have the costs associated with actually building all the reactors. It's not easy to build a nuclear reactor, and it's very expensive. A huge number of rare materials are required from all over the planet. Due to the costs associated, it's very likely that many will push to keep on happily burning our coal, oil, and gas while the costs of actually building nuclear reactors only goes up. I see it as likely that by the time people agree they're necessary enough to build it will be increasingly difficult to build them.
But the single most important reason that nuclear won't work is because it's not addressing the problem. The problem is excessive and increasing energy consumption by people. If we build it, they will build super bitcoin 2.0 to drain that power just as quickly as it comes in. Nuclear is also one of those options where people hazily point to it and say "See? things aren't so bad! Problem solved." and then go back to what they were doing before. The hurdles involved will never be surmounted as long as there's another thing on the distant future that can be pointed to . . . hydrogen vehicles, moar solar/wind, biofuels! It's easier to dream than to build, and we are not a species that likes hard.
