alt Hacker NewsIf we want to have an industrial economy with 24×7 heavy manufacturing then we need nuclear power for the base load. There's no need to change output much. The amount of batteries needed to keep a huge factory running is ridiculous.
Replies
The need for nuclear is simply not clear. Storage has advance so quickly, while nuclear tech has remained stagnant or even gotten more expensive.
Eve China, the best nuclear power builders out there, are shifting away from massive nuclear to storage and wind and solar.
Without a major technological innovation in the nuclear power space, I don't see how it can compete, except at the poles and in niches with very poor renewable resources.
The cost of nuclear power is absurd. It's 5x the cost of solar and wind.
If you use electricity to synthesize gas and then burn that later to generate electricity that is still cheaper than nuclear power.
https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-chea...
Nobody builds nuclear power because it's cost effective or green. They either have nukes like China or have purchased an option on nukes (like Iran or Poland).
The world's biggest industrial economy, China, installed about 300x more renewable energy than nuclear last year. New nuclear sucks, and baseload is a false concept that can (and is) being synthetically replicated with over-building + storage + transmission + peaking.