But spending $$billions on solar, wind + battery, infrastructure that needs fully replacing every 20 yrs or so
You better tell all the people who have had solar for 30 years that they are running on imaginary power!
The first house I owned had solar installed in 2002. Still working just fine.
Take a lesson from France instead !
They tried. The Vogtle plant in Georgia decided to take a lesson from France and add two new reactors. Cheap reliable solar! 100% availability! They started planning for it in 2003, and applied for their permits in 2006 after the design was complete. They decided to use the AP-1000 design, a Gen IV reactor that promised fast construction, simplified designs, safe operation and low costs. So they'd have more power by 2009! Maybe 2010 by the latest. And it would cost only $14 billion - a huge amount of money, but one that they hoped to pay off with higher power prices and long service life.
By December 2011, they were up to their 19th revision of the design certification. It required them to basically start over. Obama gave them an $8 billion loan guarantee so they could continue construction.
In June 2013, the construction company added another 14 months to the schedule.
In 2015, the construction company was close to bankrutpcy from all the cost and schedule overruns and bailed. Westinghouse took over.
In 2017, Westinghouse's nuclear division went bankrupt due to all the cost and schedule overruns. The power company found another
sucker firm, Bechtel, to take over.
Later that year, the Georgia Public Service Commission realized that many of the plans had not been approved by anyone with an engineering license. So all construction stopped again. They also passed a ruling that the power company could NOT recover the costs of the overruns from the public, meaning that the power company was almost certainly headed for bankruptcy once they could no longer get loans.
2018 - the cost was increased by another $2.3 billion, bringing the total to $25 billion. They got more government loan guarantees so they could continue construction. But good news! It would be finished by 2021.
2022 - the plant started loading fuel for the first time.
Feb 2023 - during the first full-up test of the reactor, unexpected vibrations caused an emergency shutdown. More delays.
July 2023 - Unit 3 generated power for the first time.
So only 14 years late; total time from planning to first power 20 years. Total cost $34 billion - over twice the original estimate. Prospects for the future - grim, since the utility is now losing money operating it and cannot raise rates to cover it. Their only hope is to sneak in rate increases in other areas to pay for the debt service on the reactor.
So no, US companies are not going to take lessons from France. They are going to take lessons from US firms that have been bankrupted - or almost bankrupted - by nuclear power. Georgia Power. CB+I. Westinghouse. Oglethorpe Power Corp. And this is even with huge federal subsidies in the form of loan guarantees.
They are also going to take lessons from Solaredge, Enphase, Sun Power, NextEra, Avangrid and First Solar, all making billions by building out solar and wind.
Nuclear power is great in theory. Not so great in practice.