I think there are two separate dynamics here, and its worth keeping them separate.
Firstly, there is the traditional concern of the green movement with nuclear waste and nuclear weapons proliferation. Nuclear advocates say these concerns are misplaced because of nuclear technology innovations (although its not clear how close the new technology is to wide deployment).
Secondly, there is an economic and free-market concern. Nuclear power plants generally only get built in highly regulated, centrally planned electricity markets with a great deal of Government financial support.
The projects to build them, at least in modern Western states, tend to be complex, expensive and prone to overruns. These projects generally need the plants to run all the time with guaranteed rates for the business case to stack up.
This is entirely at odds with solar and wind, which are highly democratised -- your Aunty can put solar on her roof -- and even when deployed at 'grid scale' tend to suck the profits out of wholesale electricity markets, because they have the lowest short-run costs and always out bid other energy sources.
In deregulated electricity markets renewables plus gas beat nuclear on price. We need storage to push gas out of the market.
The only reason Aunty can put solar on her roof is because she has the centralized electrical grid to back her up. Put another way, if Aunty had to choose between roof solar and centralized grid (exclusive of one another), most Aunties will choose the grid because it is much more reliable.
That's how we ended up with centralized generation and a grid in the first place--the initial roll out of electricity was highly localized, with factories, buildings, and blocks each having their own generators. Centralized + grid beat that architecture on reliability and cost.
So, the grid needs to be available with or without solar. Thus the "free market" concern is less of a differentiator than it seems on the surface.
This isn't about grid or no grid. We will have a grid for the foreseeable future.
This is a question about how distributed energy generation with battery storage shifts more and more loads to the edges of the grid, and onto private networks.
And then, relating to back to the question of whether nuclear is compatible with renewable energy, the question becomes how does this trend affect what technologies make the most sense?
Big expensive nuclear makes a lot of sense in an environment where all the loads are on are centrally managed and planned grid with either guaranteed rates of return, or steady wholesale electricity prices, but this is not what the future looks like.
My point is that all electricity markets, at least in the U.S., will be highly regulated and centrally planned for the foreseeable future, because customers absolutely expect the grid to meet 100% of their needs no matter what happens.
More generation might move to the edges, but that is simply a factor that will be taken into account by the regulation and central planning.
There has to be central generating to meet demand that local generating fails to meet; but the choice of fuel source doesn't have any implications for "free market" concerns. Electricity is not a free market. For example, net metering is only an option for home solar because a federal law says it must be. In a free market, the central electricity utility could simply decline to purchase from edge generators. Or decline to connect home solar people to the grid at all.
Firstly, there is the traditional concern of the green movement with nuclear waste and nuclear weapons proliferation. Nuclear advocates say these concerns are misplaced because of nuclear technology innovations (although its not clear how close the new technology is to wide deployment).
Secondly, there is an economic and free-market concern. Nuclear power plants generally only get built in highly regulated, centrally planned electricity markets with a great deal of Government financial support.
The projects to build them, at least in modern Western states, tend to be complex, expensive and prone to overruns. These projects generally need the plants to run all the time with guaranteed rates for the business case to stack up.
This is entirely at odds with solar and wind, which are highly democratised -- your Aunty can put solar on her roof -- and even when deployed at 'grid scale' tend to suck the profits out of wholesale electricity markets, because they have the lowest short-run costs and always out bid other energy sources.
In deregulated electricity markets renewables plus gas beat nuclear on price. We need storage to push gas out of the market.