> By comparison wind has to be built out in windy areas, which are often far away. That's not what people mean when they say "decentralised power generation".

> By comparison wind has to be built out in windy areas, which are often far away. That's not what people mean when they say "decentralised power generation". They are thinking of power generated where it is used. That doesn't mean the nuclear power plant or coal at a safe 50km away you are alluding to. Only one thing can do it - solar, producing power 10 metres from where it is used. Right now solar doesn't work either because you need storage. The only storage that works for domestic solar is batteries and they are too expensive right now. It's likely batteries will always be too expensive for bulk grid storage. But retail customers pay about 3 times the grid price. If batteries half in price solar + storage become price competitive with grid generation. We don't have decentralised generation now, but if that happens it will pop up like weeds everywhere. As it happens, I have a house battery. And as it happens, it flooded here last week, cutting mains power. We were the only house in the street for a while with the lights on. Our 5kWh battery and 7kW solar system surprised me. Normal activities were curtailed, obviously. But even when it was pissing down rain in the middle of a downpour causing a once in 50 year flood, with the solar working at 15% capacity it was still enough to drive everything bar heating and aircon. Turns out the bulk of our electricity consumption can but turned off with only minor inconvenience. We are paying $100/mo for electricity now. If I installed another 10kWh of battery, that would drop close to $0, and I could sell power too. Which made me look up current battery prices. To my surprise, a 10kWh battery only costs $5,000. You do the math - the age or truly decentralised generation isn't too far away. Mind you, having nuclear as a backup would be nice. Up till now it's been far, far too expensive. No one in their right mind would fund a new conventional nuclear plant, which is why no one has been building them. This is the first proposal I've seen in a while that came in at what might be a workable price. I wish it luck, but they haven't built the first one yet, and history generally isn't kind to the producers of cost estimates for the first off the block large engineering efforts.