I'm sure there are examples of places where neither Wind, Solar nor Hydro is viable. But looking at the EU, it doesn't seem to be the case here and (without looking very deep into it) I'd expect that to transfer to the vast majority of the world. Especially with HVDC for continental-scale electricity transport and the introduction of grid-based storage in the form of P2G (or something else), it's possible to even things out. There are almost no countries which are deploying as much renewable energy as possible, even with current grid-tech. And then it does quickly become a "nuclear vs renewables" issue.

Looking around in the EU, many (often more to the right, as opposed to the greens that often occupy more the left side of the spectrum and tend to be anti-nuclear) don't particularly want renewables and see great potential in nuclear instead, using it to dismiss the "green crap". Countries that push more heavily for nuclear seem to neglect renewables and countries investing in renewables often care little for expanding nuclear.

The grid deployment & economic characteristics of nuclear & renewables (solar, wind, not hydro) also clash, with them not playing very nice with each other resulting in the need to throttle one or the other without any reduced costs. Both also need some sort of storage if they're the major electricity provider. France heavily depends on pumped hydro for this purpose.

Maintaining existing nuclear capacity is very reasonable, but looking at how old the reactors (in the EU and America) are means that it's likely we'll have to replace the majority in the next 10-20 years. France is already having major issues (partially due to age) [1] and isn't expanding renewables enough. It's investing billions in new nuclear plants instead, which (at least based on the last decades) are going to take much longer than planned, be much more expensive and will some of them will not be finished.

Thus I expect nuclear energy to play a very small role in 2050.

I think this take generalizes for most of Europe, North America and richer non-asian[2] countries. Poor countries are unlikely to build a lot of major nuclear capacity due to price issues and concerns from the major global players about security (combined with lower expectations for grid reliability and an expected slower phaseout of fossil-fuel power plants).

To your last paragraph: While it's true that this can be used to divide, inefficient solutions that are unlikely to work are also used as distractions from doing something (and giving the illusion of solving the problem). Looking at E-Fuels, which are getting pushed as a reason to continue selling conventional gas vehicles to the masses or "Clean Coal" (carbon capture at the coal plant) to continue operating coal plants unchanged. Focusing on banning single-use plastic bags as a green action (which does have benefits but does not reduce emissions in most cases) and buying ineffective carbon offsets to quickly "greenify" your company without investing much in reducing emissions. There are many "solutions" offered that won't help (serving as reason to not do more) and at least in part I see some advocacy of construction of new power plants "in the future"™ (when it's not my financial/political/hot topic issue anymore) as doing the same. Not all, many are genuine, but some.

[1]: https://jeromeaparis.substack.com/p/edfs-woes-are-a-bigger-l..., https://www.ft.com/content/0df04c06-83c0-4080-a68b-c00fd4bc4...

[2]: South Korea & China have seen less difficulties with building nuclear, but haven't been without. I don't know enough to say if these difficulties will lead to a major decline nuclear construction in combination with renewables are continually getting cheaper.