This is a failure of planning (or possibly of international diplomacy in the case of e.g. Japan). In terms of the engineering constraints, nuclear plants are a lot easier to build far away from people than any of the alternatives: they don't have to be built on particular parts of rivers, or in a sunny or windy area, or a gas pipeline or an endless supply of mile-long coal trains. (They probably do have to be on some kind of rail line just because fuel transport is excessively regulated).
> Why would I 'consider solar on its own' as baseline power? These arguments were brought up twenty years ago and were boring then.
It may be boring, but the issues are still real. Baseline power is a requirement, and the only proven ways to provide it are carbon-based, hydro, or nuclear.
> Even though there are solar power plants which store heat.
There was only ever one in full-scale production, and it's now closed, AIUI. There are various experimental efforts.
[1] http://torresolenergy.com/TORRESOL/valles.html?swlang=en
[2] http://torresolenergy.com/TORRESOL/gemasolar.html?swlang=en
What about the 1 million residential solar installations done in 2016? Is that "experimental"? When you add 20 100MW plants, you reach the scale of a nuclear plant. That is precisely the beauty of solar. That it can grow incrementally without high capital costs (unlike borrowing $4bn and a huge insurance at once with nuclear).
It has to do with costs, lack of space, various engineering and environmental constraints, business decisions, ...
> nuclear plants are a lot easier to build far away from people than any of the alternatives
There is no far away from people in Europe.
Even in Russia they have built their new dangerous breeder next to a large town. Keeps the engineers committed to the thing...
> Baseline power is a requirement
For what?
> carbon-based, hydro, or nuclear.
Biomass.
>There was only ever one in full-scale production, and it's now closed, AIUI. There are various experimental efforts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_thermal_power_st...
> For what?
Modern civilization.
> Biomass.
Still carbon-based. Burning x tonnes of hydrocarbons is still burning x tonnes of hydrocarbons even if the carbon was only recently captured from the atmosphere - it's basically no different from burning coal and running a sequestration process in parallel. Carbon is fungible.
Nobody builds one where I live. But there are several nuclear power plants. But most of them are now history. They are not in some remote areas, but near populated areas with millions of people.
> If you're considering solar on its own then you're never going to be able to provide reliable baseline power.
Why would I 'consider solar on its own' as baseline power? These arguments were brought up twenty years ago and were boring then. Even though there are solar power plants which store heat.
The biggest achievement of the Energiewende is that it has broken up the big electricity monopolies of the nuclear- and fossil-based electricity companies. It has enabled two decades of exciting research into new technologies and enabled distributed energy production by much smaller players. It's a paradigm shift like it was from few Mainframe computers to the distributed nature of the modern Internet.