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this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2024
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I think for me, the best argument is having an energy backbone. I, admittedly, have little evidence on this front, but I'm skeptical about the long term cost effectiveness of grid scale batteries. Batteries don't last forever, and these are fuck off big batteries, and we're going to need a lot of them by yesterday, and they have to work, and they have to not burn down the entire grid capacity if one of the batteries cooks off (something lithium is terrible at, but I don't think they use lithium at grid scale, usually). And on top of that, from what I recall, grid scale batteries are really, really, really expensive, though I'm not 100% sure if I'm remembering that rught. It just seems like it would make more sense, both in terms of logistics and economics, to have an energy backbone comprised of safer, modern fission reactors.
Yeah, I mostly agree on that. Nuclear may be more expensive and risky, but it's also very predictable. That kind of enables it to act as a sort of safety net to smooth over the variable nature of renewables, though changing the output of a nuclear power plant is a very slow process, AFAIK.
I'm not against nuclear power per se, I'm viewing it as more of a band-aid until more mature and universal grid buffers can fill the gap smoothing out the renewable input. Nuclear may very well be a necessary step for some nations to reach their climate targets, I'm not informed enough to judge that. But I fear that the money invested, lobbying and public opinion influenced by that seemingly easy alternative directly hinder the development and deployment of technologies that lead to a renewable, cheap and reliable grid.