3 ms·

How do you know that the storage investment will produce something viable? Investments still have risk and nuclear can fill that hole.

• nicoburns 6y ago
  It's true that there's always risk involved. As we know, that is true for nuclear as much as any other energy technology. My view on this is that we are not particularly far away from this being viable even with 2020 technology. And that this is especially true if we are creative in how we apply technology, for example by decentralising the grid and installing storage capacity in people's homes, and by being aggressive with load shifting to reduce the storage capacity required. And there are dozens of promising new energy storage technologies. It seems unlikely that none of them pan out. I thus consider the risk of going all-in on renewables fairly low.
  • monadic2 6y ago
    Sure, but the stakes are human existence on the planet. I don't know why you would turn away from solutions we already have with boundable risk.
    • nicoburns 6y ago
      Because I consider the renewables solution to have comparably bounded risk.
      • monadic2 6y ago
        It's still not clear what basis you're bounding that risk on—it seems like optimism that one of the investments would pay off. I would strongly prefer pessimism in this case!