Phasing out coal for cleaner nuclear energy is a major goal of mine, among other pro-nuclear activists...especially those of us on the left, politically, who see nuclear energy as the central energy source for a vast national public power entity once we remove energy production from the merchant (read "pirate") and investor owned utitlities. Well, that's 2 issues isn't it? Public vs private power and nuclear. We can stick with nuclear then.
Nuclear and gas are the only two baseload power sources that can replace nuclear. Renewables, while increasing its share of the load, still hasn't actually mitigated that much fossil burning, even in places like Europe where at best it's holding it's own. Nuclear can replace fossil fuel, like coal, almost on a MW per MW basis (renewables cannot do this) and, has the advantage of being able to use existing coal facilities to build from.
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