I wouldn’t call it defeatist, nuclear should never be more than a stopgap to 100% renewables. if anything, it’s awesome that we’ve gotten far enough with renewables that switching to them entirely is now a viable proposition. It sucks that we spent so much time dependent on fossil fuels when we could’ve been using nuclear, but the past is the past and the future is bright.
I will say, small modular reactors might have a place in the energy mix. They would be fantastic for more isolated grids where stability is difficult to achieve with 100% renewable energy. Think small island nations or remote areas. Also would be good for emergency and disaster recovery scenarios. We (as in the USA) also already have the supply chain to build them somewhat efficiently since we use them on our aircraft carriers. Just needs some tweaking to work well on land and for the regulations to loosen up to make it economically feasible.
It’s like people just memory holed the pandemic and forgot just how fucking bad it was. I won’t forget, it literally killed half my family and it’s Trump’s shitty handling of it that played a big part. The hospitals were so overloaded that my family members couldn’t receive the treatment they needed, in large part because of all the MAGAts refusal to follow basic safety protocols that pumped the numbers way higher than they needed to be.