An interesting question. I guess it comes down to a 2 fold rationale. Increasing energy needs, and aging infrastructure. We already see in states such as Utah an increasing demand for power, as IT and other energy hungry industries come on line. Places such as Oregon have already thrown out ideas for increased energy production after data storage servers were gonna be placed in the Dalles. As a result of this, we need to bring stuff on line quickly. Since we're bringing new power plants online, I guess the rationale is to try new technology, as well as things that can be scaled easily. In addition, we need diversity in the power grid to help mitigate costs. If coal becomes expensive or cut off, we can use other fuels. The biggest issues with existing power generation (minus hydro, too niche) is that they all have glaring issues. Coal, while reliable and sourced nationwide, has major environmental issues that come with it. Beyond the air pollution, which can actually be taken down to a VERY safe level, the bigger issue is the coal ash itself. If you hate nuclear waste, then I assume you have issues with coal ash storage, and for all the same reasons. It's toxic, top to bottom, as well as radioactive. So, while we can go the coal route, your gonna have to figure out the storage issues involved. Natural gas is great as a stop gap, but not fantastic as a primary. Gas itself is too expensive (political reasons for this, perhaps if we can get normalcy again, we can produce our own again and prices will drop), and the plants themselves are not very efficient, when compared to other sources. CA uses these types of plants heavily, much to their determent. Think of them as the honda generators of power plants. Geothermal, too niche, won't discuss the technical issues. Solar, CAN be amazing in some places, but the battery tech needs to catch up. Also only really feasible in like 5 states max. It also suffers from the biggest environmental issue when the panels are retired, because they are toxic beyond toxic. Wind is trash, not worth the effort. Biomass burning/Methane plants can be good, but are low powered, and reliant on landfills/massive farms for raw material. Again, niche. My town in LA used it, and it's reliable, but again, very location dependent. So this leaves us with Nuclear. Why nuclear? A. the fuel can be sourced from "friendly" sources like Canada. If you use Thorium, or low enrichment/fast breeder, we can use local fuel. B. Scalable like no other source (minus gas). You can build an SMR on sites of old plants, or guild massive GW sized plants. C. Modern designs are actually safer than coal. Minus the byproducts, which we discussed before, the plants themselves are built in such a way that a meltdown is borderline impossible barring an actual military attack. D. Reliable. Their uptime is near 90% on modern plants, and close to 99% on the gen 4 designs. this means that you never need to worry about power spikes or draws, because most plants run at only 25-40% capacity at normal times. Nuclear, more than any other, can be turned up faster for demand. Finally, E: they can be dropped almost anywhere. Modern designs that use gas and liquid fluoride cooling require 0 water for energy generation, and can be dropped literally anywhere we need power. No other power plant can boast that level of location flexibility. Not sure if that answers the question. But I hope it helps somewhat. I'm sure you'll disagree with me though. It's what I love about you :)