This slow buildout will logically limit nuclear power to a minor role in the UK. By the time we could possibly build out large amounts of nuclear it seems likely we will already have built out large amounts of cheap wind power. With some battery storage and solar this can cover us for 90-95% of the year. For the remainder we will need dispatchable backup power. That will be gas and maybe at some point green hydrogen or its derivatives.

I suspect we will always keep around a little nuclear to maintain expertise for strategic national security reasons but it is hard to see nuclear power making sense in an energy market dominated by intermittent renewables like the UK.

> its going to take another decade (conservatively) to even build one of these modular reactors.

So nuclear reactors can be built to supply the energy and power as the offshore wind farms get decommissioned. The rise and fall.

> Another is the vast cost of nuclear compared to wind.

What do you mean by cost? Capital expenditure per kW of nominal capacity, or by total energy generated? Plus should we consider other costs (backup, transmission, curtailment)?

Relatively low cost. The cost of PV has dropped much faster and they’re building much more of it, even compared to their plans from a decade ago. SMRs are supposed to be the design that solves this, essentially moving nuclear into the same “build it at mass scale in a factory” footing that solar PV is on. But solar is deep down the production curve and SMRs are just beginning it.

Why not just build the wind/solar/storage to cover it all.

If that’s too expensive why not just build enough nuclear to cover it all.

Take California. The minimum demand is 15 GW and peak demand 52 GW.

What you’re saying is they they should use extremely expensive nuclear power to cover the easy portion and then have renewables when they are the most strained supply 37 GW.

Why not just cheap renewables for everything?

New built power literally does not make sense when real constraints are added.

> the lack of commercialization due to decades of misinformation from the eco-groups

The lack of commercialization has exactly a single reason: The lack of commercial viability.

> The cost of nuclear is two fold - government bureaucracy, and the lack of commercialization due to decades of misinformation from the eco-groups.

The misinformation hasn’t occurred in a vacuum. The nuclear industry has been far from transparent in how it operates.

They're right, though. Doing both is dumb. The alternative to renewables + storage is nuclear + storage, with the nuclear + storage having the advantage of the storage capacity needed being more predictable and a bit smaller, but with the massive disadvantage of the nuclear being extremely expensive and slow to build. But building enough nuclear plants to do what you're proposing, and then turning them off most of the time to get energy from the renewable plants you're also building, and only drawing from them unpredictably, is objectively the worst option.

Hydrogen or low capex thermal.

The UK has adequate salt formations for large scale storage of hydrogen.

It's so funny every time we build a nuclear plant we say 'ooooh expensive' then by the time it's built it turns out it's ~ at the cost of gas.

The thing Ive never quite understood is that the UK has no domestic supply of uranium.

Almost all of Europe has stopped buying Russian gas? The exception being nuclear powered France. [1]

You also do know that we despite 19 sanctions packages still haven’t been able to sanction the Russian nuclear industry? We’re just too dependent on it.

[1]: https://www.highnorthnews.com/en/eu-talks-tough-russian-lng-...

If SMRs are cheap enough to act as backup to wind and solar, they are cheap enough to displace wind and solar entirely. And the contrapositive as well: if SMRs are not cheap enough to displace solar and wind, they aren't cheap enough to act as backup. The scenario where it's just a backup never arises in cost minimized solutions.

If taking that step, why charge the batteries with extremely expensive nuclear powered electricity rather than cheap renewables?

It is done when moving electricity around when the grid is strained. Buy expensive electricity and sell it at even higher prices. But that is a vanishly tiny portion of the demand.

The average strike price for offshore wind in AR6 came in at £59.90/MWh. That's pretty cheap, and much cheaper than any new nuclear. Hinkley Point C's strike price is £92.50/MWh. (note: strike prices are always quoted based on 2012 currency, and get adjusted for inflation)

You can't really compare strike prices to spot prices on the wholesale market precisely because there's so much supply under CfD contracts, which distorts the wholesale market. When supply is abundant, the wholesale price plummets and even goes negative, yet suppliers still want to generate because they get the CfD price. When supply is constrained (eg: cold snaps in winter with little wind), the spot price can surge to £1000/MWh.

With the big * of solar being fairly predictable, and wind not. You can be bereft of wind for weeks.