I’m not against nuclear power, not by a long shot, but it isn’t a magical panacea. Actual nuclear reactors, as opposed to the gleaming symbols of modernity from a power company PR department, require a massive infrastructure to make and refine the fuel, requires large quantities of flowing water to provide cooling, and more infrastructure to deal with waste. Nuclear plants are also a massive investment, making them less than ideal for the developing world.
Proposed fusion power plants are not going to be any better. Once you go beyond corporate image ad levels of analysis, you find they’re, well, nuclear reactors that don’t produce fissionable material waste. They will be buggeringly expensive, and you still end up with reactor vessels rendered radioactive and weakened and in need of replacement and disposal every few decades. Because, gosh, just because uranium isn’t involved, fusion reactions still produce neutrons, and lots of waste heat that needs to be dealt with.
Energy sources that don’t require rivers for cooling, giant support infrastructures to keep them going, or titanic investments just to get off the ground?
Solar and wind, which you don’t even mention, because I suspect they’re off of your ideological radar as even a possibility. But which, while the ideological blowhards and astroturfers are still dispensing bullet points from a decade ago, are getting cheaper and ramping up capacity quite nicely.
Of course, you’ll need an energy-intensive industrial base, likely powered by nuclear power and gas, to make the hardware, and in developed nations for load-leveling on the grid . . . but if you’re actually interested in the actual needs and conditions and economic and realities of the developing world and not in sanctimonious point-scoring, it’s safe to conclude that solar and wind are a more scalable and affordable option.
has an agenda which is different from being concerned about GHG emissions
No, that agenda is in your head, making an assumption that anyone who doesn’t think your solutions are the One True Way, not considering that maybe there are lots of things they’re taking into account that you haven’t, or that you even think of as problems. (Like nuclear plants adding more waste heat to rivers already stressed by rising temperatures.)
