First of all, I don't suffer under a nirvana fallacy. Of course recycling uses energy. Second, I'm a huge fan of nuclear power so you don't have to convince me

First of all, I don't suffer under a nirvana fallacy. Of course recycling uses energy. Second, I'm a huge fan of nuclear power so you don't have to convince me of that. Even if you have nuclear power, you still need EV and lots of batteries, so that is not a solution. Hydro is limited in location and not a scalable solution. Gravity highly depends on what you are talking about, and most of the proposed solution are not capital efficient. These however also solve partly a different problem then these batteries solve, in terms of respond speed, frequency regulation and efficiency. Recycling is of course not perfectly efficient, but current generation batteries have 20 year lifetime and with reuse maybe even 30 years. Some of the next generation can push that even further, wont be recycled for 40 years. Maybe they are recycled more often, but maybe simply because the materials inside are more valuable then the battery of that technology level. So yes, of course it uses some resources and something has to be mined, but that is true for almost anything. In terms of grid storage, batteries are some of the better solution. Current Nickel based LiIon will be replaced by LFP and pure LiIon will never solve the complete grid battery challenge. Maybe with Sodium batteries. There are also Liquid Metal batteries, or things like Iron-Air batteries. These solutions are scalable in combination. All that said, I would much prefer to have a bunch of thorium thermal breeders. > That sludge must be locked away in vaults waiting for containment to fail. Can you please show exactly what you mean here? Like what exactly this sludge is=