[philipkglass]

Nuclear power presently produces ~11% of world electricity. Wind + solar can scale to that penetration level even without battery storage and in much of the world wind or solar will already deliver LCOE lower than new-build nuclear. Reaching really high penetration levels depends on presently-unknown economics of large scale storage. (Much how the success or failure of molten salt reactors and every other next-generation nuclear dream is dependent far more on delivered costs than physics.)

EDIT: I see that you were responding to someone who is already sure that storage-backed wind and solar will become the only electricity sources. That's certainly a bolder claim than scaling up to match present-day nuclear penetration levels.

[nindalf]

Certainly Wind and Solar can scale to 11%. The question is about the other 89%. A significant chunk of it could be nuclear instead of coal and we would definitely be better off. And make no mistake, you need to choose between coal and nuclear because it'll be a long while before batteries have sufficient capacity to power the grid for days at a time.

[flukus]

> Certainly Wind and Solar can scale to 11%. The question is about the other 89%.

Is it still in question? If you can get to 11% then you can get to 100% with enough geographic distribution and batteries. Wind and solar are now cheaper than coal, even old unsafe nuclear never got to that point.