>nobody actually cares or wants power that is baseload. That doesn't make sense. At all hours of the day there is some demand on the grid: https://www.eia.gov

>nobody actually cares or wants power that is baseload. That doesn't make sense. At all hours of the day there is some demand on the grid: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915 If you only have to store for the fluctuations vs. having to store all night you end up with massively less storage. Electric cars won't do it either. There are less than 300 million registered vehicles in the US and a car battery holds about 100 kWh. That's 30 billion kWh and overnight demand may be as high as 5 billion kWh/night. You'd need an extremely high compliance rate to pull that off. But seasonal productivity fluctuations are the bigger issue with solar and wind. You might get way more power in July than you need and way less in January -- wind is also seasonal, but the peak month varies by region. You're not going to store months and months worth of electricity in cars and even grid storage facilities would become cost-prohibitive, and you can't reset a nuclear reactor on a weekly basis, but one or two starts a year might be achievable if you design for it. Currently that's not legal: http://ansnuclearcafe.org/2013/09/03/why-dont-we-mothball-nuclear-plants/ http://ansnuclearcafe.org/2013/09/03/why-dont-we-mothball-nu...