Thanks for taking the time to reply.

> Kindly show me where I was making a cost comparison between nuclear and solar in my original comment

Ok. "There simply isn't a comparison between nuclear and solar. Nuclear is a far better solution on all fronts... The comparison is brutally tilted in favor of nuclear." Two of the most important factors in choosing a grid-scale energy solution are cost and time to deployment, so they're included in your statement. Perhaps you intended to convey a different assertion, but based on any reasonable interpretation of what you actually wrote, @ncmncm didn't divert the conversation, he focused it on a subset of your claim.

> The simplest calculations clearly show this...

> That led to creating a series of mid-sophistication models to try to arrive at parameters, from technical to financial.

Ah, so we've gone from the "simplest calculations" to "a series of mid-sophistication models" :)

> [I] predicted we would need between 900 GW and 1400 GW of new, additional power generation. I[n] other words, we would have to double what we have now.

I haven't done any research to verify this, but based on your reasonable assumption of transport fleet electrification, these numbers seem reasonable. So we agree we'll need more electricity generation in the future. I don't see how that's evidence that nuclear is a better source for it than solar.

> ...done about five years ago...

You may want to update your models, the cost of utility-scale solar has roughly halved in the last five years worth of data points: https://www.nrel.gov/news/program/2021/documenting-a-decade-...

> Solar isn't going to do it.

Why not? None of the evidence you've provided supports this assertion.

> [Solar] can be a part of it...

Your original assertion was that, "The comparison is brutally tilted in favor of nuclear." An obvious corollary is that we should invest all our resources into nuclear deployment instead of solar. By saying solar can be a part of it, you're implicitly changing your original position.

> So, my claim was simple: In order to build a solar system that delivers power equivalent to that of a nuclear power plant you need a system with at least 7 times the peak generation rating.

The sources I cited above say a factor of 4 - 6, but it obviously varies a lot depending on climate and latitude. So sure, let's say 7 conservatively. So what? Even taking that into account, solar is still a fraction the cost of nuclear. It has myriad other advantages such as being faster to deploy, safer, has unlimited fuel, doesn't have any significant waste products, has much more predictable costs, etc. So why should we bother investing in new nuclear deployments?

I realize you're saying you're not making an economic argument, but you haven't made any other kind of argument either. The biggest thing nuclear wins on is steady output - as everyone knows, we can't rely on solar generation 24/7. So perhaps that's what you're trying to get at? As sister threads have discussed, however, a) we have a lot of solar to install before we have to worry about excess peak capacity, and b) there's been great progress in utility-scale energy storage systems which mitigate this problem.