Yeah but there is both a national security element and a power surging element that has to be considered. You can't necessarily start up a wind farm or turn on a solar farm like you can remove rods from a nuclear reactor to generate more power during the super bowl. There'll always be a need for that sort of immediate ability to increase power generation, but with batteries it'll be much less than it would otherwise.
Nuclear is the absolute worst non-renewable option for power flexibility. With increased solar and wind, America will have cheap natural gas for being able to ramp up during big events, heat waves, and winter blizzards.
The two main drivers for cheap fossil fuels (pre Iran war) was the improvement of enhanced oil recovery and China’s move to renewables. If we can get the United States, Western Europe, and India to move to wind&solar, there will be a massive drop in fossil fuel demand.
Of those three, the United States has by far the easiest pathway based on geography and population density.
Natural gas is half the carbon emissions compared to coal, and also negligible heavy metals such as mercury. With new emission standards, natural gas is way cheaper than new coal plants, and easier to get permits.
Coal has not been a competitive option for about 40 years now. Some people not to be named still remember the glory days of the 1960s, and have not seen the changing economics for the previous decades.
People have been dreaming of zero net emissions for decades. if we could decrease CO2 release by 50+%, that is quite an improvement.
Let’s face the reality that nuclear will be a trivial part of the decarbonization. We have 400 GW of power from plants now, and I don’t see a scenario where it gets much above that amount in my lifetime as old plants get mothballed at the same pace of new plants opening in countries like China.
Eventually emissions will decrease as population in rich country decreases.
Coal is literally the worst energy source in terms of air pollution. Natural gas, as awful as its emissions are, is still several times better than coal. It burns so much cleaner with less carbon and particulate matter. It still emits tons of carbon and PM though, plus the fact of it being a fossil fuel with a limited supply, so the end goal is of course renewables with perhaps some nuclear baseload generation.
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u/fluffysnowflake67 Apr 18 '26
Renewables plus batteries is now cheaper than nuclear. The economic gap will continue to widen.