No, it's opposed by people who are numerate enough to understand that nuclear is ludicrously expensive and completely unnecessary.
I live in Scotland. In the past 20 years we've gone from around 12% electricity from renewable to around 90%. The last coal fired station closed in 2016 and we've not added any new nuclear in that time.
This is usually the point that someone handwaves that having more money and more people makes you less capable than Scotland...
>...I live in Scotland. In the past 20 years we've gone from around 12% electricity from renewable to around 90%.
Scotland has done an amazing job of decarbonizing the energy sector. That said, the important thing about electricity is that storage is very expensive so you have to export when the wind is too strong and import when there is no wind. From the "Annual Compendium of Scottish Energy Statistics 2020" Aug 2020 update available here:
>...For almost three quarters (74.4%) of the time in 2019, Scotland met its own demand with its domestic low carbon generation only (renewables and nuclear), down from its peak of 77.8% in 2017. This is likely to be related to outages in Hunterston nuclear power station in 2018 and 2019.
Scotland’s rapid rise in renewable electricity generation means that renewables alone met electricity demand for an estimated 42.3% of the time in 2019, rising from 0.0% as recently as 2012.
>...In recent years, imports have increased as well, rising from approximately 200 GWh in 2014 to more than 1 TWh for every year since 2016. This is possibly a consequence of the closure of the coal-fired power station at Longannet in 2016, which has meant that there has been a potential need for Scotland to have non-intermittent electricity generation available.
Obviously it is the intermittent nature of renewables that is the challenge. As the Royal Society of Edinburgh wrote in "Scotland’s Energy Future":
>...The reality of where we find ourselves, however, is that the planned closures
of both of Scotland’s remaining nuclear power stations by 2030 will see Scotland lose the source of generation for almost 43% of its electricity, going into a period where it is widely expected that demand for electricity will increase. These closures potentially coinciding with the end-of-life of the first wave of offshore wind only adds to this problem.
Not to mention the pile of nuclear warheads parked in fallout radius of our largest city. Which is the real origin of a lot of the opposition to nuclear.
What's the lower proportion renewable sources produced in the last 12 months (in one minute intervals)? If that is much lower than 90% you have to have some other source (or accept frequent randomish power cuts).
Well, we're linked to the English grid, and via connectors to Northern Ireland, continental Europe, etc. In practice the difference is made up by natural gas, and the large pumped hydro storage at Cruachan.
While your point is accurate, I'm not sure it's in any way relevant to this. Perhaps a different discussion on bigotry within tech would be the place for this.
I live in Scotland. In the past 20 years we've gone from around 12% electricity from renewable to around 90%. The last coal fired station closed in 2016 and we've not added any new nuclear in that time.
This is usually the point that someone handwaves that having more money and more people makes you less capable than Scotland...