Yes, there needs to be more storage or backing by gas plants. But nuclear power needs the same gas plants as you cannot change the output levels quickly enough to drive the grid. In a sense, constant output is almost as bad for the grid as peak energy, which can easily be throttled. In both cases you need additional flexible plants or storage. In the moment, when there is true surplus renewable energy production, storage buildup will increase quickly.

Side note: electric cars will be a large part of the grid balancing in the future.

> Side note: electric cars will be a large part of the grid balancing in the future.

Do you have any good reading for this?

In my naive mind, it’s doomed by the fact that we drive to work in the day, then all come home, together, in the evenings, when the sun is on its way down. Or is the plan to have two way power chargers at businesses too? Otherwise, all these batteries are disconnected when you need them.

Considering how much storage capacity becomes available when connecting cars to the grid - even if the part used for grid storage is only 10kWh/car (typical batteries have 70 or more kWh) - I would assume there will be a huge push by utility companies to get as much cars connected as possible.

Sure, but assuming all of the office buildings of the world don't retrofit their parking structure with grid connections, these cars will only be connected to the grid in the evenings. I suppose this would be great for taming the dinner time spike, but it seems to put the availability, for them to store excess, where it's needed least: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/California-daily-utility...

Why would you assume that no office building would retrofit their parking structure when there are huge incentives to do so? For sure not all of them might, but if enough do, it will be a major benefit. But yes, if a car isn't connected to the grid it cannot participate.

> Why would you assume that no office building

I'm definitely not assuming that none will, I'm just assuming it will be a some smallish fraction for the foreseeable future. Nearly 50% of California's working population works for small business. It's not just the cost of the equipment, but also cost up upgrading the panels and, almost certainly, service lines.

Where I am (a city in California), you have to pay for replacing the service lines/conduits, including digging it up/repairing the street and sidewalk, even if they run 1 city block.

Do the math on this too. How much storage would half of $21 billion buy?

https://insideevs.com/news/458106/battery-cost-110-kwh-price...

Using a pessimistic $150/kWh (it's already under that) I get 70,000,000 kWh or 70 gWh, enough to run the entire state of California for a little over an hour. So you could build over 10GW of wind power capacity and 70 gWh storage for the cost of one nuclear plant.

Nuclear isn't dying because of hippies. It's dying because it's expensive. You're right that the safety concerns are over-inflated, but failure to deliver on its cost promises are the major failure of nuclear (fission) power.

If we make fusion work and can scale it, that's a totally different ballgame... but it won't happen fast enough to impact climate change.

I really don't think this isn't about maths with money. People are constantly working on this as-yet unsolved problem. Those batteries aren't suitable. Perhaps some will be one day, and that will be the fix.

But in the meantime, the best option is nuclear.

this does the sums with storage (for a Georgia nuclear plant)

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2021/08/05/youve-got-30-billion-...

massively over provisioned PV+Storage is still half the price of Nuclear. It even throws in extra money for grid upgrades.

I've compared the build costs of HPC to the build costs of wind turbines. Not total costs.

You're right. Will edit.

But! But. What's the source for the turbine build cost? Now I need to try and attack that :)