The biggest problem with nuclear power generation is external to the technology, it depends on the legal and regulatory regime, and how good a safety culture the country can develop for it.
On the latter factor, Japan has amply demonstrated over 3+ decades they have absolutely no business doing anything in this area (a judgement I reached long before Fukushima). To compare to a vaguely comparable culture, the PRC seems to be doing well, but wonder if that's due to a much greater lack of transparency.
While I haven't looked at it closely, France sure seems to be doing well (76% of their electricity production, at good points and with lots of exports), but the usual political suspects propose to fix that. Canada as well??
The US finished going bat-shit crazy on the subject under Carter (perhaps because he was on the cleanup crew of this first generation (1947) reactor after it suffered a meltdown: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRX, and, yeah, it's another reactor with a positive void coefficient). You're not going to see economic nuclear power in the US for the foreseeable future unless you foresee a counter-revolution that removes power from the NIMBYs and BANANAs.
I'm not sure I'd recommend Japan give up nuclear. Their horrible track record just means that their nuclear plants are single order of magnitude safer than their coal plans, rather than the normal 2 or 3.
Oil is also up there in the low single digit deaths per gigawatt-year and oil and coal are what Japan replaced all their nuclear power generation with after Fukushima.
On the latter factor, Japan has amply demonstrated over 3+ decades they have absolutely no business doing anything in this area (a judgement I reached long before Fukushima). To compare to a vaguely comparable culture, the PRC seems to be doing well, but wonder if that's due to a much greater lack of transparency.
While I haven't looked at it closely, France sure seems to be doing well (76% of their electricity production, at good points and with lots of exports), but the usual political suspects propose to fix that. Canada as well??
The US finished going bat-shit crazy on the subject under Carter (perhaps because he was on the cleanup crew of this first generation (1947) reactor after it suffered a meltdown: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRX, and, yeah, it's another reactor with a positive void coefficient). You're not going to see economic nuclear power in the US for the foreseeable future unless you foresee a counter-revolution that removes power from the NIMBYs and BANANAs.