Electric Comet wrote in
:

i heard that nuclear power plants are so expensive to build and
maintain and dispose of and decommission that we could create at least
as much and possibly more energy by burning all the urban tree
trimmings to boil water

i see in a quick search there is a plant in florida

Unfortunately not. Here in Broward (Florida) we incinerate a
significant proportion of the trash (including trees and yard
waste); that produces about 66MW of power. By comparision a
small steam (coal/gas) plant would be around 300MW, and a
typical nuclear plant would be around 2000MW. A big steam
plant can be over 5000MW (altho there aren't any that large
in the US).

While recovering energy from trash certainly helps (and is
carbon neutral), there's not enough of it to replace other
energy sources.

John