Secondary minor note: carbon neutral power sources (e.g. wind or solar) also have a carbon cost. It comes from building the damn thing and continuing to maintain it (e.g. new parts, setting up crane access...)
And building massive, complex nuclear reactors somehow doesn't incur tons of fossil fuel usage? How much carbon is associated with the years' worth of human activity and material supply chain to build a reactor? How about the ongoing maintenance and the carbon footprint of all of the specialized staff to maintain the safety of the reactor? How many scarce nuclear trained specialists must be flown around in fossil fueled planes to inspect reactors? How long does it take to break even, carbon debt wise? How does the carbon usage of the real world dependencies of nuclear measure up to the building and maintenance of solar panels and wind turbines? If you're going to make a minor note about renewables, it's only fair to make the same about nuclear.
Wind and solar have peaks and valleys of production, requiring some storage to meet demand. Meanwhile, nuclear can be used for carbon sequestration at geoengineering scales when it's not being used by the grid.
Could you explain a little more? I think you’re saying that if we have carbon sequestration machines but their constraint is that they take a lot of power to run, we can use nuclear to run those machine. Is that right? Or is there some other carbon sequestration potential of nuclear power that I’m missing?
Believe parent is comparing and contrasting the problems inherent in intermittent renewables vs nuclear.
Intermittent renewables (in scenarios shy of wanton overbuilding) result in deficits, which requires energy storage to address. Energy storage (aside from pumped hydro) is pretty carbon-messy.
Surplus, on the other hand, can be bled off into energy-negative carbon sequestration.
There's obviously lots of other points, but it's mostly fair under economically realistic scenarios.
