Technology

I brush it off because nuclear has exactly the same problem. Worse, actually. We know what happens when you build solar, wind, and storage: on average, things get built on time and in budget. We also know what happens when we build nuclear: it doubles its schedule and budget and makes companies go bankrupt. One is way easier to scale up than the other.

No, just no.

We know what happens when we build nuclear:

• We invest 140 billion.
• We build more than two reactors a year for 25 years.
• By building up skills and an industry with projects, you can even put 1 plant and 4 reactors in the same place in less than 7 years from a vacant lot (Blayais power plant) .
• We decarbonize almost all of its electricity in two decades.
• It runs smoothly for more than 50 years.
• You don’t rely on fossils and the dictatorships that sit on it anymore.
• We become the biggest electricity exporter of Europe for decades, and the biggest of the world most of those years too

It's called France.

We also know what happens when we want to do without nuclear when we don't have hydro-electricity:

• We invest two trillion of euros.
• 25 years later we have 60% renewables, but we're still burning coal and gas.
• so we are still one of the most polluting electricity in Europe
• We're always at least six years away to get out of coal.
• We don't have a date to get out of the gas because we have no idea how we're going to build enough electricity storage to make renewable to work

It's called Germany.

Take this [map] (https://app.electricitymaps.com/map)

• On the top right corner, click on "Country"
• On the bottom left corner, click on "Yearly"

Can you tell me how much green countries do you see which does not rely on hydro and/or nuclear?

The answer is: >!not. A. Single. One. Even after trillions of euros invested in it worldwide, not one country managed to reduce their electricity carbon print without nuclear or hydro.!<

If all the paperwork was done and signed off today, there wouldn't be a single GW of new nuclear produced in the US before 2030. Even optimistic schedules are running up against that limit.

Why this arbitrary date? In five and a half years, there would be no power plant, but if you launch 15 1GW projects in parallel, maybe it will take 15 years to build because of legal recourse as well as a shortage of engineers/technicians because people have been told for 30 years that nuclear is Satan and we want to stop. But after 15 years you have 15GW of nuclear.

But how long before we find a solution for storage? How much will it cost? Is it even possible to store so much energy with our space constraints and physical resources?

The debates and even this thread are filled with "we could totally go 100% renewables with political will and investments". No you could not, that’s called wishful thinking. In reality you can’t force your way through technological innovation by throwing money and gathering political will, or else we would skip renewables and go straight to nuclear fusion.

On thing that money and political will can help with, on the other hand, is to speed up and reducing costs to build nuclear. But somehow, you act like nuclear is inherently too slow to build, before an arbitrary date that you forget conveniently when we're talking about renewable storage. It's called hypocrisy and double standards.

React to demand in minutes? Cute. Because most energy storage works by being pulled by demand directly rather than reacting to it, things change almost instantly.

I just proved that your theory is wrong by bringing up empirical data gathered over a whole country, why do you keep insisting?