[q1w2]

Renewables cannot store sufficient capacity to make up for their variable output.

A cloudy/windless 2 week period in December, would require far more battery capacity than is possible - even with future tech.

Nuclear is the only solution that is carbon free.

Solar and wind are great for non-critical/non-time-sensitive power consumption.

Remember that they are only cheaper than Nuclear if you exclude storage and include the insane Russia-inspired regulatory blocks we impose on Nuclear.

[audunw]

These claims get thrown around all the time yet I’ve seen more studies that point toward balancing renewable being possible than not, and all-in-all cheaper than our existing energy infrastructure even with today’s technology. Once the transition is complete that is. Any transition we do whether it’s nuclear or not will be quite expensive to start with.

Hell, most of the world already have what we need for those super rare long dunkelflaute: gas power plants. They’re already there, no investments needed. They can spin up fast, they’re great for load balancing. If they only run a couple of times a year then the fuel costs become negligible. Just co-locate it with all the new hydrogen-hungry green industry we need to make steel and fertilisers carbon neutral. Set aside some of the hydrogen produced for those dunkelflaute. It’s probably a good idea to have a decent amount of buffer anyway.

Nucleus is absolutely not carbon free. It’s low carbon for sure. But at the very least it needs a huge amount of concrete which is far from zero carbon. Concrete is also problematic these days for other reasons.

Nuclear is not good or economic for load balancing. They’re thermal power plants. They’re not naturally suited for ramping up and down quickly. And they need to run at near 24/7 to be economical. One of the first pumped hydro plants was actually built to help balance nuclear.

The world will run on mostly renewables. It’s incredibly naive to think anything else is remotely realistic at this point. Nuclear is a bad pairing for renewables, and there are actually plenty of good alternatives for load balancing if you care to look. So nuclear will most likely get squeezed out.

Not to mention that the transition always from fossil fuels will come with a lot of load balancing capabilities. Hydrogen, as mentioned, and huge fleets of BEVs as well.

Then there’s the looming threat of advanced geothermal. I honestly think that field will go ballistic at some point in the near future: when the oil/gas sectors sees the writing on the wall a significant portion of the talent in that field will take a hard look at geothermal. If Quaise works out it’s truly game over (well, technically it’s still nuclear: supposedly a big portion of the cores heat is from nuclear reactions.. so it’s a reactor we don’t have to fuel, maintain or decommission)

I like nuclear fission actually. It’s a super cool technology. I don’t fear it, or its waste. But I just can’t see how it makes sense in the coming decades.