>On top of that battery prices have been plummeting too so that now Solar + battery is cheaper than other options like Nuclear and especially Gas.

I'm a little bit sad that pumped hydro doesn't get more attention in the discussion. It might be too late for it to matter, with improvements in battery prices and ongoing lithium discoveries. But that only underscores the fact that it should have been allowed to matter twenty years ago. Utilities have slow-walked solar all around the world because of concerns about the grid stability, which has been well within the reach of pumped hydropower to fix since many years ago. In fact major pumped hydropower projects were mostly carried out in the United States during the nuclear power optimism era.

It is a little destructive to construct pumped hydro reservoirs. But it generally isn't as damaging as a conventional hydroelectric dam. The reason lies in the source of the water. In a conventional dam, you need a lot of water flowing in from up high, so you dam a major river near its lower cataracts. This disrupts the migration of fish and animals along the river and impacts the whole ecosystem of the rather large drainage basin upstream, and disrupts the migration of fish. But when a closed-loop pumped storage reservoir is created above an existing lake, usually a much less important stream is selected. Its immediate valley is still inundated, but the area of effect is much less. It does tend to prolong the use of the existing dam, but we are already preserving basically all existing dams.

It might still be appropriate in some places where imports are less affordable like Latin America or it might appeal to protectionists in the West. In general, hydro is usually cheap.

Pumped hydro is objectively worse then batteries.

Anyone can install batteries anywhere at a fairly minimal local fire risk.

A dam is a major mechanical structure which if it fails will straight up obliterate downstream towns, and as such requires a numerous specialized engineering designs and on going maintenance to retain basic safety.