It's very tiresome how these threads seem to pop up on this site that basically boil down to how "Nuclear is the savior of all" and people are too scared/stupid to see it. The problem is that "people" aren't making these decisions, utility companies are. And they have good economic reasons on top of the complicated politics.
For safety reasons, nuclear plants are very complex, take a long time to build and require a ton of capital. The physics make these work out long term, but only if you're willing to build a large enough facility that you can take the place of 2-3 comparable coal facilities.
Part of this is because they produce power more efficiently, but also because the largest startup costs for these are from finding a site and going through all the safety and other regulatory requirements. Once you have approval for single reactor, you're better off adding a few more at the same site than trying to find another site for a new reactor.
The bottom line is the utility company is on the hook for a huge investment for 30 years or more before it breaks even. That's what stalled the development in the 70s and 80s and it's even more unlikely to get started today, what with the extreme uncertainty surrounding fossil fuel sources, the rapidly decreasing cost of renewables, etc.
The most common response to this fact is that we can replace huge facilities these with lots of much smaller/safer Thorium or other alternative fuels. From a physics standpoint, this may be true, but utility companies don't want to have to manage the fuel chain for (potentially) dozens of facilities, governments don't like having to guard that many small sites, and there are a limited number of communities that are comfortable living near a reactor of any kind, even a "tiny" one. I don't know if this is smart or not, but it's not going to change anytime soon. The bottom line is that unless we have a huge leap in the amount of technology required to manage a nuclear reactor, or in the potential safety factor around the fuel and other risks, nuclear is not going to ever become a majority power source in most countries.
For safety reasons, nuclear plants are very complex, take a long time to build and require a ton of capital. The physics make these work out long term, but only if you're willing to build a large enough facility that you can take the place of 2-3 comparable coal facilities.
Part of this is because they produce power more efficiently, but also because the largest startup costs for these are from finding a site and going through all the safety and other regulatory requirements. Once you have approval for single reactor, you're better off adding a few more at the same site than trying to find another site for a new reactor.
The bottom line is the utility company is on the hook for a huge investment for 30 years or more before it breaks even. That's what stalled the development in the 70s and 80s and it's even more unlikely to get started today, what with the extreme uncertainty surrounding fossil fuel sources, the rapidly decreasing cost of renewables, etc.
The most common response to this fact is that we can replace huge facilities these with lots of much smaller/safer Thorium or other alternative fuels. From a physics standpoint, this may be true, but utility companies don't want to have to manage the fuel chain for (potentially) dozens of facilities, governments don't like having to guard that many small sites, and there are a limited number of communities that are comfortable living near a reactor of any kind, even a "tiny" one. I don't know if this is smart or not, but it's not going to change anytime soon. The bottom line is that unless we have a huge leap in the amount of technology required to manage a nuclear reactor, or in the potential safety factor around the fuel and other risks, nuclear is not going to ever become a majority power source in most countries.