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Re:536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018) by pbhjpbhj on Friday June 19, 2020 @11:58AM (#23575737)
Nuclear is still the answer to "what about baseline demand".

Battery storage is possibly going to fit in there, but it doesn't do it yet.

Tidal, ground source, gravity/momentum/compression/latent-heat storage solutions, some of these might do.

I think we need at least one more cycle of Nuclear power plants.

Perhaps then we'll have workable fission.

Re:536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018) by iso1631 on Friday June 19, 2020 @01:36PM (#23576865)
Possibly, but it seems exceptionally expensive and slow for what you get.

Sods law will say if you don't invest in nuclear, you'll be using a lot more CCGT because storage or large-geography interconnects won't be there

But if you do invest, you'll end up being stuck with something costing far more than commodity renewables+storage

We have "workable fission" now, it's just very expensive. Workable fusion is always a generation away.

Re:536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018) by pbhjpbhj on Sunday June 21, 2020 @02:23PM (#23594056)
Sorry, yes, obvious typo fission -> fusion.

It does feel like Tokamak will never arrive. An acquaintance did their doctorate last year on modelling some aspect of the containment; they didn't seem hopeful.

Re:536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018) by pfdietz on Friday June 19, 2020 @07:33PM (#23579982)
Nuclear might have been an answer ten years ago, but one cannot make the case today that it is the answer. The raw economics have pushed nuclear out of the picture now.
Re:536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018) by pbhjpbhj on Saturday June 20, 2020 @11:16AM (#23584393)
Go on, so what do you propose for baseline power - more gas fired power stations?
Re:536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018) by pfdietz on Thursday June 25, 2020 @08:47PM (#23647564)
Renewables + storage. For long term storage and covering rare extended dark windless periods, the key is hydrogen, for which the cost per kWh for underground storage can be far lower than for batteries (efficiency is lower, but that's ok.)

If you go to https://model.energy/ and optimize such systems in various places, using real weather data, you find nuclear (called "Dispatchable 2" in the advanced options) get optimized to 0%. It's just too expensive. That site uses plausible cost numbers, except electrolysers are already cheaper than their target cost for 2030.