Contrary to their name, "rare earth metals" aren't actually rare, and for a lot of the renewables stack they aren't strictly necessary.

Take lithium batteries, for example. They were attractive for early BEVs because the consumer electronics market already developed an industry for them, and they were attractive for early grid storage because the BEVs scaled that industry up. But that doesn't mean you have to use lithium for grid storage, and when push comes to shove we could also use sodium-ion batteries, or iron redox flow batteries.

If your country no longer has access to iron and salt, I reckon you have bigger things to worry about.

Your four year old paper shows wind+solar costs as on par with nuclear in the final (LFSCOE95) model in the ERCOT market before factoring in dropping battery farm costs.

Other papers exist with a different opinion (eg: Australia's more recent CSIRO energy report finds nuclear not providing bang for the buck in the Australian market)

Further, despite claiming Level Full System Costs, there's no factoring in for externalities - eg: climate costs of dragging out fossil fuels while waiting for nuclear to come online, political costs of being steadily reliant on outside countries for fuel and supply (cost of gas to non gas nations, etc).

There are other issues - it's a paper with an opinion - not the foundational rock you want to base strong assertions on, as you did.

Your data is way out of date. Renewables, particularly solar+battery, are incredibly attractive from an economic perspective. That’s why the build-out has accelerated so much. It’s not government hippies (I wish—have you seen the state of world politics lately?), it’s cold hard capitalism.