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Renewables and nuclear are economically incompatible. Nuclear is capex dominated, you want to run your nuclear plants at 100% capacity to make a profit. So if y

Renewables and nuclear are economically incompatible. Nuclear is capex dominated, you want to run your nuclear plants at 100% capacity to make a profit. So if you want to mix them with non-dispatchable power like renewables you either have enough nuclear plants to cover 100% of demand (for times when there is no wind and no sun) and make a loss on them most of the time, or you don't and get blackouts. Storage is the only compatible solution to renewables (that is not fossil fuels). As far as I know renewables+storage are cheaper than 100% nuclear and much faster to build.

DisjointedHunt 4y ago
No no, this is a little more complicated. The energy demands in the market right now are very different than what they were even 20 years ago (I mean, who would have imagined crypto mining or large model training in the state it’s in?) We’re heavily constrained as a society in our use of energy. For example, you don’t just leave the heat/AC on all day when weather conditions demand it, do you? Similarly, we don’t have massive desalination capacity on the west coast in spite of years of drought with the Pacific right on the coast. Energy is one of those things that society has no choice but to live within its means on. We can build all the nuclear capacity we want to and yet, may still see future demand in intensive areas such as carbon capture, desalination, supercomputing clusters come up that are great candidates for any buffer capacity we may have, should we be so lucky. This all goes without mentioning the huge surge of lower income populations that will slowly be increasing consumption over the next few decades. Hundreds of millions(perhaps billions) of people in India, Africa, Asia and South America (The global south) consume very, very little energy today because of financial constraints and development. A lot of these people may not have access to transmission infrastructure for a long time and solar, wind and the like certainly find their use in many such places today. In short, this is not a zero sum game.

DisjointedHunt 4y ago

No no, this is a little more complicated. The energy demands in the market right now are very different than what they were even 20 years ago (I mean, who would have imagined crypto mining or large model training in the state it’s in?) We’re heavily constrained as a society in our use of energy. For example, you don’t just leave the heat/AC on all day when weather conditions demand it, do you? Similarly, we don’t have massive desalination capacity on the west coast in spite of years of drought with the Pacific right on the coast. Energy is one of those things that society has no choice but to live within its means on. We can build all the nuclear capacity we want to and yet, may still see future demand in intensive areas such as carbon capture, desalination, supercomputing clusters come up that are great candidates for any buffer capacity we may have, should we be so lucky. This all goes without mentioning the huge surge of lower income populations that will slowly be increasing consumption over the next few decades. Hundreds of millions(perhaps billions) of people in India, Africa, Asia and South America (The global south) consume very, very little energy today because of financial constraints and development. A lot of these people may not have access to transmission infrastructure for a long time and solar, wind and the like certainly find their use in many such places today. In short, this is not a zero sum game.