It is worth recalling how much fossil fuel we have and how much we are using.

If there were no concerns with acid rain, mercury emissions, CO2 &c. then there would be enough (of the dirty sort of) coal to keep the world turning all- electric for perhaps a century, reserves  between 1 and 2 thousand billion (1 or 2 *10^12) tonnes.

Right now we burn a bit slower than that - about 9 billion tons a year (or if you prefer a million cubic feet for every person on the planet, per year )-  mostly in Asian power plants, rest of world consumption is lower and falling. However, absent another planet to pump the smoke into, reverting to all coal is not very practical. Oil is cleaner, which is why as a species we burn about 5 billion tonnes (a cubic mile of it, roughly) every year - which does not sound so much does it? There is still enough oil (well so long as you include the harder to refine tarry stuff with lots of heavy metals and sulphur compounds) to keep us rolling at that rate for several decades.  But it is in places harder to reach, and in some cases politically unstable (not just the US and Russia....) Here we had to rely on British coal or oil, we would soon be (politely) snookered, we used to pump 3 bl/yr in the 1980s and late 1990s from the north sea, now down to about a third and falling while  the amount we pump on land in Hants and Dorset is negligible.

Gas (methane), as a planet there is quite a lot left, but we are not so sure how much, and  a lot of the stuff under the ice in Russia is being released as the ice melts and cannot be captured. From the UK only perspective we are a net importer, and have been since the early 2000s - we are on a plateau at the moment of about half of what we consume, and the rest is piped from Russia, or comes by tanker from Qatar or perhaps places like Turkmenistan (though even they have stopped giving their citizens free gas a few years ago).  Iran has plenty, but for political reasons we do not buy it.

Even if you do not buy the climate change argument, you must realise that there are resource limits that will bite  in the lifetime of current school children, and by the time their children are fully grown, will be very serious.

Given that we are still using Victorian sewers, and in some places pre-war electrical distribution, and half UK housing was built in the 1950s or earlier, we do need to be longer sighted than just looking at profit over a couple of decades.

And personally, I'd add that if there is any chance at all of us stuffing up the planet, we should err on the side of cautious, or all that money will be worth nothing.

Nuclear has a role to play - and if we were less worried about the present and more about the future maybe we could make better use of spent fuel by using as hot rocks to heat water for swimming pools and so on.

It is worth recalling how much fossil fuel we have and how much we are using.

If there were no concerns with acid rain, mercury emissions, CO2 &c. then there would be enough (of the dirty sort of) coal to keep the world turning all- electric for perhaps a century, reserves  between 1 and 2 thousand billion (1 or 2 *10^12) tonnes.

Right now we burn a bit slower than that - about 9 billion tons a year (or if you prefer a million cubic feet for every person on the planet, per year )-  mostly in Asian power plants, rest of world consumption is lower and falling. However, absent another planet to pump the smoke into, reverting to all coal is not very practical. Oil is cleaner, which is why as a species we burn about 5 billion tonnes (a cubic mile of it, roughly) every year - which does not sound so much does it? There is still enough oil (well so long as you include the harder to refine tarry stuff with lots of heavy metals and sulphur compounds) to keep us rolling at that rate for several decades.  But it is in places harder to reach, and in some cases politically unstable (not just the US and Russia....) Here we had to rely on British coal or oil, we would soon be (politely) snookered, we used to pump 3 bl/yr in the 1980s and late 1990s from the north sea, now down to about a third and falling while  the amount we pump on land in Hants and Dorset is negligible.

Gas (methane), as a planet there is quite a lot left, but we are not so sure how much, and  a lot of the stuff under the ice in Russia is being released as the ice melts and cannot be captured. From the UK only perspective we are a net importer, and have been since the early 2000s - we are on a plateau at the moment of about half of what we consume, and the rest is piped from Russia, or comes by tanker from Qatar or perhaps places like Turkmenistan (though even they have stopped giving their citizens free gas a few years ago).  Iran has plenty, but for political reasons we do not buy it.

Even if you do not buy the climate change argument, you must realise that there are resource limits that will bite  in the lifetime of current school children, and by the time their children are fully grown, will be very serious.

Given that we are still using Victorian sewers, and in some places pre-war electrical distribution, and half UK housing was built in the 1950s or earlier, we do need to be longer sighted than just looking at profit over a couple of decades.

And personally, I'd add that if there is any chance at all of us stuffing up the planet, we should err on the side of cautious, or all that money will be worth nothing.

Nuclear has a role to play - and if we were less worried about the present and more about the future maybe we could make better use of spent fuel by using as hot rocks to heat water for swimming pools and so on.