You'd have to compare the fire risk of a high density battery vs a substation. But the beauty of battery and solar/wind is that it can be far more distributed.

You'd have to compare the fire risk of a high density battery vs a substation. But the beauty of battery and solar/wind is that it can be far more distributed. This of course means far harder to take out -- a wildfire near a nuclear power plant could knock out 3GW of capacity, a wildfire near one of 50x 60MW solar plants would knock out 60MW of capacity. Solar might not be the only solution in a country at a high latitude, but for the contiguous 48 states even in winter solar produces more than enough power per hectare that when coupled with an appropriately sized battery can generate the entire needs. 1 hectare in sourthern california generates about 3.5MWh a day in December. In North Dakota about 1.5MWh a day, battery size for that is a tiny amount of land. To generate enough solar energy to power the entire US electric needs, on a bad winter day, the US would have to have 60,000 square km of solar+battery. The US currently uses 150,000 sqkm just to grow corn ethanol You'd need a decent HVDC connectors from the southern states to the more demanding northern ones. But even factoring in current prices of wind, solar, battery, and grid, it would only cost somewhere in the $6T range. Over 30 years that's $200b a year, or about $80 per MWh New nuclear is about $150 per MWh before decommissioning costs