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I've seen this mentality too many times. The fact is China is actively building many nuclear power plants. The idea that it's "too late" is ridiculous. There is growing demand for nuclear power. You can have solar, wind, AND nuclear.
With unlimited resources, yes it would make sense to keep building nuclear.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
But wind and solar have outpaced nuclear. You can get way more power way quicker with wind and solar than you can nuclear.
And what we need right now is maximum speed. We don't have time. This transition should be happening overnight, but we're dragging our feet.
In reality it makes sense to keep building nuclear, the resources required to build nuclear are mostly different than building solar and wind, so you can definitely do both to increase carbon free energy rapidly. I agree we need to rapidly scale solar and wind, but we also need to be advancing nuclear power technology.
Also solar and wind need batteries because of their variable generation, again which are different materials/knowledge than nuclear mostly.
They may take different materials, but until we escape capitalism the only thing that will matter is the literal monetary cost.
In a perfect world, we would be doing both side by side because of the different materials needed. But in the current world the opportunity cost exists due to monetary limits.
Like you keep saying "we". China is currently doing what you mention "in a perfect world". Why can't we do the same? Why is it that Illinois stopped at around exactly 50%? They ACTIVELY constructing these.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China
We as in humanity. The majority of nations are capitalist nations, and all nations use currency, which means opportunity cost.
Every state and power utility that is considering what to allocate their money on is going to choose the bare minimum it takes to keep the lights on. That means going the cheapest, not doing the most.
China may have a lower opportunity cost due to the tighter control over the economy, but they're still paying it. China is not in the perfect world situation either. They're just sacrificing the opportunity cost.
I'm confused, do the Chinese not count as a part of humanity? The entire world is losing to China when it comes to nuclear power increases.
Yes, China counts as humanity.
What that graph does not show is the reduced production of solar and wind. That means that overall there is less power being generated by green sources. So they are overall producing more greenhouse gasses than if they had just gone full solar and wind.
It seems you've missed the point.