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New Wind, Solar Power Cheaper Than Nuclear Option, Study Shows

• Jweb_Guru 13y ago
  The problem with wind and solar is not, in the long run, their cost (nor the energy they can provide). It's their inability to provide a reliable baseload during times of low (wind|sun)--hence, while they may work well for some or even the majority of power usage, their ability to completely displace more traditional power sources is mostly limited by available storage technology. While some relatively recent developments (e.g. organic flow batteries) look promising in that region, at the moment the best available low-cost option on a mass scale is pumped storage, and once you take into account the engineering effort required to create and maintain enough infrastructure to actually replace a sizable percentage of our current on-demand power needs (easily serviced by fossil fuel-based power) with pumped storage, you quickly realize that it is excessively cost-prohibitive. While it may be technically possible, it would take significant (and historically, unfeasible) political willpower over a sustained period of time to devote a nontrivial percentage of the GDP and workforce to their construction. As a result, I see nuclear power getting phased in more and more as baseload over the next hundred years (along with coal). Again, it doesn't need to be cheaper than wind and solar, but cheaper than oil and gas--wind and solar can't do what nuclear power does.