> Nuclear doesn't scale down well- it's most efficient at a specific rate of production. But demand is quite variable- 2am on a not-so-warm-or-cold day, who ne

> Nuclear doesn't scale down well- it's most efficient at a specific rate of production. But demand is quite variable- 2am on a not-so-warm-or-cold day, who needs all that extra energy? Why not use the excess to create hydrogen and store it? Now the energy doesn't go to waste. The problem is not of the energy going to waste or the plant being unable to throttle down. The problem is that fuel cost is immaterial; a plant running at 1% output power still costs 99% as much per day as a plant running at 100%. That means that building 10% oversupply is tremendously expensive. If you're using it 10% of the time, it costs 10x more per MWh than the baseload power. If hydrogen is 11% as profitable as baseload, you are only gathering another 10% revenue, and the power is still 5x as expensive as normal electricity. That would be far more expensive than any other source. You could easily estimate hydrogen economy would be worth >>10% of electricity... but only at the margin. Right now it's reasonable to say hydrogen is worth 50% of the value of electricity used to make it. For all regional grids in the US, daily peak is 30-50% higher than the daily minimum[1]. That's a huge amount of overcapacity to consume, far more than can be utilized by base industry. Having >70% nuclear and/or relying on hydrogen economy to make nuclear economical is pretty highly dependent on hydrogen vehicles. Fermi math: 142 billion gallons annual[2] @25 mpg fleet efficiency[3] translates to .9 trillion kWh @4 mi/kWh, or ~25% of annual electricity. The bottom line is that it takes a relatively minor (~15-20%) overcapacity would tap out basically all possible uses for hydrogen. [1]: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915 [2]: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/gasoline/use-of-gasoline.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/gasoline/use-of-gasoline... [3]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-autos-emissions/u-s-vehicle-fleet-sets-new-record-for-fuel-efficiency-in-2018-epa-idUSKBN20P35M https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-autos-emissions/u-s-v...