Investments like this shouldn’t be seen as competing with renewables but rather as competing with fossil fuels and battery systems by providing grid stability to help make up for intermittency in renewable heavy grids. People often say that nuclear plants need to run at full capacity, but that’s really not true anymore, France has done a lot of pioneering work on quickly and efficiently ramping up and slowing down nuclear reactors, and a lot of newer reactor designs are supposed to be even better at this.
Nuclear power is significantly more expensive than wind or solar power (at least before you account for the cost of energy storage in hypothetical grids which are more than 60% renewable), but the longevity, stability, and safety records of nuclear plants IMO make the case that they should play a role in the future of green electrical grids.
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Do it
Great.
Investments like this shouldn’t be seen as competing with renewables but rather as competing with fossil fuels and battery systems by providing grid stability to help make up for intermittency in renewable heavy grids. People often say that nuclear plants need to run at full capacity, but that’s really not true anymore, France has done a lot of pioneering work on quickly and efficiently ramping up and slowing down nuclear reactors, and a lot of newer reactor designs are supposed to be even better at this.
Nuclear power is significantly more expensive than wind or solar power (at least before you account for the cost of energy storage in hypothetical grids which are more than 60% renewable), but the longevity, stability, and safety records of nuclear plants IMO make the case that they should play a role in the future of green electrical grids.