2 ms·

5 x 600mw x 52 is over 150 gigawatts added per year, of baseline power ( which is what nuclear power produces).

• audunw 2y ago
  Baseload power is becoming an outdated concept. We have all the technologies to shift power to when it’s needed at a reasonable cost. Several regions is already shifting a huge amount of power by hours, and the capacity has been added in a very short time. The amount of grid storage battery capacity in the world has grown from zero to almost matching pumped hydro in just a few years, and the growth js showing no signs of slowing down. We also know that many of the technologies we need to decarbonise the world will require energy storage solutions. If you buy an EV you will be buying energy storage capacity that can power your house for 1-10 days or so. So you can clearly see that a world with zero carbon transportation infrastructure is by necessity one where we have the manufacturing capacity to balance intermittent power for households. That’s not even considering that grid energy batteries will become increasingly optimised for cost for their specific use case. They don’t need high energy density. Chemistries like sodium-ion unlocks several orders of magnitude higher growth potential. You can get similar conclusions for industry if you consider how we need to make huge amounts of hydrogen for green steel and fertiliser production. This implies a gigantic amount of flexible load. An interesting fact is that one of the first pumped hydro power plants was built to balance nuclear energy. What we actually need isn’t really baseload. We need energy production that matches energy demand.