Gina Grad

Now, you might think, well, dealing with climate change is just going to require that we all pay more for energy.

That's what I used to think.

But consider the case of France.

France actually gets twice as much of its electricity from clean, zero-emission sources than does Germany.

And yet, France pays half as much, almost half as much for its electricity.

How can that be?

Well, you might have already anticipated the answer.

France gets most of its electricity from nuclear power, about 75% in total.

And nuclear just ends up being a lot more reliable, generating power 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for about 90% of the year.

We see this phenomenon show up at a global level.

So, for example, there's been a natural experiment over the last 40 years, even more than that, in terms of the deployment of nuclear and the deployment of solar.

You can see that at a little bit higher cost, we got about half as much electricity from solar and wind than we did from nuclear.

Well, what does all this mean for going forward?

I think one of the most significant findings to date is this one.

Had Germany spent $580 billion on nuclear instead of renewables, it would already be getting 100% of its electricity from clean energy sources and all of its transportation energy.

Now, I think you might be wondering, and it's quite reasonable to ask, is nuclear power safe?

And what do you do with the waste?

Well, those are very reasonable questions.

Turns out that there's been scientific studies on this going over 40 years.

This is just the most recent study that was done by the prestigious British medical journal Lancet, finds that nuclear power is the safest.