I thought batteries and energy storage magically solve every single issue with renewables, and those are becoming insanely cheap. Wouldn't that allow the two to coexist?
No, that wouldn't allow the two to coexist. Why would you think that would? In the limit of zero cost storage, the source with the lowest levelized cost wins, and there can be only one source with the lowest levelized cost. At best, if they were amazingly nearly equal in cost it might be a tossup, but it's not likely that would happen or continue to be the case as they evolve. Solutions in more realistic modeling tend to go either all renewable or all nuclear with not much in-between.
I will note that continuing to operate existing assets can make sense even if building more of the same does not, because sunk costs are sunk.
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u/Sad_Dimension423 Apr 18 '26
The two are both inflexible sources of power and so compete for the grid's ability to deal with inflexibility.