1. Offshore nuclear power may be a wonderful solution to public fears. It also allows us to build in shipyard conditions, which are basically a giant Henry Ford assembly line of gigawatt-class 24/7 power plants. We built such a thing in Florida back in the 1970s but it didn't quite work out. [1]
2. Coal is absolutely getting crushed by fracked natural gas, especially in the USA. All the news about coal shutting down and also about carbon emissions getting (everso slightly) better are because of this swapping of coal for gas. Check out the EIA charts of energy sources vs. time. Coal is in free-fall, gas is covering almost all of it. In Japan, where gas is more expensive, they just announced that they're building 22 more coal plants to replace their unpopular nuclear plants. [2]
I have two stupid questions.
Why is offshore nuclear not a solution to many of the public fears about nuclear power?
If fracked natural gas is very cheap, why are coal and resid (both comparatively dirtier fuels) in widespread use for energy generation?