Solar and wind are already far cheaper than gas or nuclear plants, and they’re still getting cheaper while gas and nuclear are getting more expensive (although to be fair, gas has only recently gotten more expensive). In so far that the economics in favor of renewables+storage don’t work out yet factoring in conversion losses, it is all but inevitable that they will.

See the LCOE graphs in this article for the trends: https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth

Nuclear is a lot cheaper than solar, it simply depends on the nuclear plant model. Russians are the world leaders regarding nuclear plants time to market and costs (4 years).

Which would be great if we could invite russia to build nuclear plants in the U.S. and EU. Right now that might not be the best plan.

We need a model that is cheap and safe everywhere, in every country, not just in china and russia.

Also, I wouldn’t put too much faith into Russian numbers for their nuclear projects. They’ve pretty much got the patent on propaganda.

> Also, I wouldn’t put too much faith into Russian numbers for their nuclear projects. It's not propaganda because we are talking about a free market here. Countries around the world buy nuclear reactors from Russia. They are by far the biggest exporter.

Russia is not needed though, China is very cost effective and their popular model is in fact American based. Their other popular model is a french derivative. Their secret sauce is to build refined second generation models with added safety instead of building 4th generation economic ineptia because of absurdly high safety bloat. The answer to how to make nuclear reactors costs effective is simple: 1) Do not fire all competent and trained nuclear engineers 2) Make nuclear reactors maximally secure, not absurdly secure.

It's of course not particularly great. You can make hydrogen at like 80% efficiency and use it at like 60% efficiency in a combined cycle plant. So 50% is probably in the right ballpark. Batteries are much more efficient, but efficiency is only weakly correlated with cost. I don't know the actual numbers, but from what I've heard hydrogen (or even methane) are the most economically promising storage options when you need weeks or months worth of backup.