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gpmtoday at 6:39 PM0 repliesview on HN

Nuclear has the same issue as (unpredictable) renewables, it is incapable of cost efficiently following the demand curve. As a result, just like renewables, it requires a form of dispatch-able power to complement it (gas, batteries, etc). Solar and nuclear fill the exact same role in a balanced grid - cheap non-dispatchable power.

Or at least nuclear would if it was cheap, but since its costs haven't fallen the same way that the costs of other energy did... well new nuclear buildout really doesn't have a good role at all right now, it's just throwing away money.

Solar and nuclear complement eachother fine - because their shortfalls (darkness for solar, high demand for nuclear) are mostly uncorrelated... a mix of non-dispatcahble power with uncorrelated shortfalls helps minimize the amount of dispatchable power you need... but batteries have made it cheap enough to transform non-dispatchable power to dispatchable power that nuclears high costs really aren't justifiable.