Solar and wind have a storage problem. Day-to-night storage is a solved problem, but summer-to-winter is very far from being solved. Batteries, pumped hydro, fl

Solar and wind have a storage problem. Day-to-night storage is a solved problem, but summer-to-winter is very far from being solved. Batteries, pumped hydro, flywheels, compressed air are simply off by factors of 100x or more. There are just 2 plausible solutions: chemical storage, or massive overcapacity. Chemical storage means hydrogen, or ammonia, or iron powder, or some other substance that can undergo reversible oxidation. But you have capital costs associated with both the oxidation and the reverse reaction, and you also have roundtrip losses. For example, let's say you use hydrogen (by far the most promising candidate as of now). You need to build a plant to perform the water electrolysis and a power plant to convert the hydrogen into electricity. Both these plants will work at most half of the time, but in reality, much less. So, whatever capital costs you have for an electrolysis plant, you just double, triple, or multiply by 10. The same for the hydrogen power plant. A hydrogen power plant will cost at least as much as a current natural gas power plant. That is not a lot, but if you multiply by 5, then it becomes a lot. But what if you could run these plants 100% of the time. Now we are talking. Let's say you build lots of solar capacity in Morocco, run an electrolysis plant year long, liquefy it, ship it to Germany, where it is burned in a power plant 365/24/7. Or make the hydrogen in Australia and ship it to Japan. Or make it in Nevada and ship it to New York and Toronto. Do you still need nuclear? I'm not 100% sure. But if lots of people who were against nuclear before changed their mind, then maybe they ran the numbers, and it turns out we need nuclear. But it's certain we need nuclear if we ever want to explore the outer solar system. And if we climb again the knowledge ladder of commercial nuclear fission, then maybe one day we'll be able to make efficient nuclear rockets.