I mean minus South Korea, the graphs still show young men leaning left at pretty steady rates. More young women have moved left though, which is perhaps unsurprising given how hostile right wing politics is towards them. (And how open that’s become recently)

Not really? The highest turnout for under 25s over the last 58 years was… in 2020 (~50%), when it was literally the same matchup . And that’s still significantly lower than other age groups (62% 25-44, 71% 45+).

There was a small bump in 2008 (assuming you mean Obama), up to 49%. But in 2004 when John Kerry was the candidate the turnout was about 47% so not like. A huge change. And nobody remembers John Kerry.

Looking across the pond, in 2019 when Corbyn was head of the labor party and ran on a lot of lovely progressive issues, the turnout under 24s (they use slightly different brackets) was… Just over 50%

It kinda seems like young people just don’t vote at very high rates, period. So it doesn’t make a ton of sense to focus on them over other groups if you actually want to get elected and hold power.

So the fun thing is that you get older every year. So does everyone around you. What seems to actually happen is that as younger voters age they realize that they should actually vote* – in 2000 32% of the 18-24 bracket voted. By 2020 those people are at the upper end of the 25-44 bracket [the census has wonky ranges], and 55% of them voted.

This trend has been going on back as far as there is data. There is no ‘until’.

And if those numbers seem really low to you - yeah they are. For comparison about 70% of people 64+ have voted every presidential election year, back to like the 80s. And it’s even worse for midterm years! In 2022 people 64+ voted at about a 2.5:1 rate to people under 25.

*in fairness there’s also the factor that as people age they tend to have more stable lives, more ability to take time off, etc. And there are states that DO make voting hard on purpose (notably all governed by the same party). Reasons why supporting early voting, mail in, mandatory time off, etc. Are all also very important. But in much of the US it’s not particularly difficult and people still don’t do it.

I definitely share your frustration… That said, there is some progress - see e.g. The price caps on insulin put in place this year, or the ACA reaching a bit further back – and I think it’s worth recognizing (and recognizing how we got it). Still a very long way to go and it’s an uphill battle unfortunately.

Or you could… Actually read the entire source you linked? It’s a pretty good article and goes into a lot of detail on why LCOE estimates vary significantly between countries and depending on discount rate assumptions, so quoting one specific number is useful context but not the full story.

The problem isn’t whether the LCOE numbers you quote consider the capital costs - they do, and that’s correct - so do the ones in the table below it. It’s that those are average values taken from the USA, which has among the highest capital costs for installing new reactors in the world. At best that tells us that fusion isn’t cost competitive in the USA right now.

If you scroll down literally like. A paragraph past that you will see a very nice table showing the spread of nuclear costs. Some (including in the US, which is used for the EIA figures) are quite expensive, but others (notably South Korea) are very much cost-competitive or better than renewables. Also worth noting, the renewable estimates have spread themselves, and do not include overinstallation/storage required to behave as firm power.

Which is to say:

A - there certainly are quite a few places that nuclear doesn’t make sense, at least currently. Including the US

B - equally, there are a lot of places around the world where nuclear is competitive

C - we should perhaps look at why the US is so expensive relative to other countries; it’s not some law of nature, we can change it. And it’s probably not just because other countries under-regulate them (I’d buy that for some of the countries listed)