Excellent piece worthy of many further reads. Here is a sidebar. I am a lay person, albeit one who did take a couple of physics classes in college decades ago, and one who worked some years in the electric power industry when nuclear generation still looked like da bomb -- uh, maybe i should rephrase that last remark.
I expect many folks here will not want to get into the physics and engineering of any type of nuclear power reactor, nor potential fusion reactor designs that may be perfected later on. It isn't a taboo subject, but it's too often a wired one, case closed for the moment.
You are correct that a confluence of events and memes have soured many individuals and also institutions -- public and private including the insurance industry and commercial utility sector itself -- on fission-based generation. Clearly, some of this concern is not unfounded -- Chernobyl and more pertinently the Fukushima disasters weigh heavily in the collective mind, and rightfully so. So does terrorism and the idea that fanatics will gain nuclear technology if we have it lying around.
Re-introduction of the pressurized water reactor is virtually a dead prospect, not just due to problems of scale but especially given that design's physical and economic need to be near large bodies of water where rising oceans and wilder weather will be even more problematic. Still, in a world where wildfire holocausts and superstorms are ravaging continents regularly, some citizens might understand the need to draw on that technology again. Not many, in all likelihood. but would they accept programmed brownouts and blackouts over nuclear? No.
So you have identified a key problem for planners, public leaders and the utility industry, namely, how humankind might transit quickly yet safely to alternative power technologies in time to avert the worst (and perhaps irreversible) effects of a runaway greenhouse environment.
Wind, solar, tidal and some other technologies might eventually come on line in sufficient quantity to supplant remaining fossil-fuel power plants (including those using natural gas). Indeed, capital costs, at least for solar, are going down quickly, now below that of coal. However, further ramping up alternate technologies is going to take time and lots of alternative resources. For instance, a new study suggests lithium supplies will not be sufficient to convert to more than a fraction of the production we'd need to bring on line to halt production and transportation-related C02 releases. And then there are those natural greenhouse-gas sources, like methane, which are likely to account for greater releases as the planet thaws further.
Therefore we will need an interim technology. If it's well designed and works safely for a decade or three, nuclear might win back public approval.
As you indicate, there are a number of possible new approaches to nuclear power generation. Thorium-cycle designs looked good but even those aren't without their downsides, from what I am able to discern Smaller nuclear plants would seem to have many advantages but also new drawbacks -- real and imagined.
Besides small-is-beautiful thinking we are going to need to get into space in a big way if we are to contain global warming to a manageable level and in time. Reasons include finding suitable raw materials in new quantity and building orbital solar collectors that can beam power to Earth -- which designs might be just as controversial as nuclear of any kind.
Longer term solutions also must rely on energy conservation and -- probably -- a reduction in the planetary human population. Some humans may leave Earth and settle elsewhere in the Solar system -- not enough to matter physically, but enough to spur more positive and creative thinking. On a generational scale (i.e., slow), if we could get back to the still-crowded but not bursting-at-seams world population of, say, the mid 20th century, we would resolve a chunk of the present problem but that would require rejiggering our economic structures -- which by their nature are both decaying yet resistant to reform. All this may be a genie we can't put back into the bottle, at least not without authoritarian controls most of us would not like. Which is to say the technological obstacles might be more malleable than the sociopolitical ones.
The trick in solving this therefore is to leave nothing on the table. We likely will need many approaches, some in tandem, others triggered along a careful timeline. Task One is to break down not just the flat earthers but also, when they are ready to listen, those who are capable of reason yet badly under-informed. Your well-laid-out discussion and similar treatises certainly will go over the heads of such people, so we'll need a much greater educational emphasis employing sociology, psychology, political science, and the physical sciences.
Anyway, that's off the top of my head and I'm certainly not Mr. Know It All. It'll take tens or hundreds of millions of heads to fix this in time; have to start somewhere. In that regard, thanks again for your well-documented and thoughtful piece.
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