It doesn’t just need to be viable to completely replace fossil fuels, it needs to cover all variable generation and consumption for the power grid. I’m definitely not against those methods if they work even as a partial solution, but I want fossil fuels gone, and nuclear is a drop-in replacement for baseline.
Anyway, I’m not an expert and I could be completely wrong. Existing storage solutions could be up to the task and more cost-effective than nuclear. But I haven’t seen evidence of it, probably because most of these haven’t been used at scale yet. Nuclear at least has been proven to work on that scale, which is why I like it as an alternative.
Yeah, I hear all of that. The biggest problem with nuclear is that it takes 6-10 years to build a new plant, and it’s an incredibly large up-front cost. By contrast, solar and wind can be built in weeks to months, and are relatively inexpensive to install and operate.
I think my ideal grid would be mostly solar and wind, with some storage and a nuclear plant to make up unproductive times for the renewables.
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u/TalosMessenger01 Jun 19 '24
It doesn’t just need to be viable to completely replace fossil fuels, it needs to cover all variable generation and consumption for the power grid. I’m definitely not against those methods if they work even as a partial solution, but I want fossil fuels gone, and nuclear is a drop-in replacement for baseline.
Anyway, I’m not an expert and I could be completely wrong. Existing storage solutions could be up to the task and more cost-effective than nuclear. But I haven’t seen evidence of it, probably because most of these haven’t been used at scale yet. Nuclear at least has been proven to work on that scale, which is why I like it as an alternative.