While this is true, we don't have a good solution for long term energy storage. Even with plummeting costs and new technologies like sodium ion, batteries still only get you maybe ~12 hours of discharge. Pumped hydro give you longer storage, but there are limited places where you can build it. Unless geothermal becomes competitive, nuclear is still the best solution for carbon-free baseload.

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dalyons 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I agree storage is a problem.

But the concept of “base load” is outdated. As I mentioned in another comment - Because actually “base load” nuclear is terrible in a grid increasingly full of nearly-free variable sources (solar&wind). The nukes need to stay at 100% all the time selling their power at a high fixed price to have any remote chance of being economical. Cheap variables push nuke's expensive power off the grid during the day, and increasingly into the evenings with batteries. This is unavoidable in an open energy market, and is fatal to the economics of nuclear.

The only way you can make it work is state subsidies and/or forcing people to buy the more expensive nuke power. Which will be unpopular. But maybe you can sell it as a “grid backup fee” or something.

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citrin_ru 8 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

May be base-load is not the best term but in case if batteries and other storages will run out during long cloudy stretch with weak winds nuclear will at least allow to power critical infrastructure. It’s bad that some consumers will loose power but less bad than total apocalypses when the storage is empty and you have no unintermittent power source in the grid.

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vince14 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Storage is not just 'a problem', it doesn't exist and won't for many many decades.

The planned solution is hydrogen power plants, but no one wants to build them because the infrastructure, including electrolysers, is way too economically unfeasible.

Therefore, Germany is and will continue to be dependent on coal and gas, as these are the main producers every night. That's your 'grid backup fee' for you.

	▲	dalyons 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Long term storage is a problem. Nightly will be solved soon by batteries. California is well on the way, down to 25% fossil in 2025 from 45% in 2022, due to batteries. And they just keep getting built. Australia is on the same track. If we have to burn some gas to cover the occasional long term weather issue, I’m ok with that , if we’re at 90+% decarbonized at that point it’s still a huge win.

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nicoburns 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

~12 hours storage + overbuilt solar + load shifing seems like it could probably be a complete solution for the vast majority of the world (everywhere that's vaguely close the equator).

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adrian_b 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There is a good solution for long term energy storage: use solar energy to make synthetic hydrocarbons. This is a solution that has been proven for billions of years.

We can already capture solar energy at a much better energy efficiency than living beings. Making hydrocarbons with hydrogen extracted from water by electrolysis and concentrated carbon dioxide has acceptable efficiency and already almost one century ago it was possible to do this at a large scale where fossil oil was not available.

The step that has the least efficiency for now is concentrating the dilute carbon dioxide from air, which plants do much better.

There is no doubt that the global efficiency of such a process could have been greatly improved if only a small fraction of the resources allocated to much more frivolous goals had been allocated to this purpose.

While other alternatives are speculative, it is enough to look outside to see plenty of PoCs that this is feasible.