[rurounijones]

Or that we do not believe that full renewable grids are viable yet. Every single non-carbon solution (solar, wind, tidal) I have heard hand-waves away baseload and storage as something that will be solved soon(tm) by liberal application of technology(tm).

Either by magical storage solutions or massive continental / intercontinental "smart" grids that are politically unviable (No country will give up energy security by relying on a source hundres / thousands of miles away).

I would rather we start on something we know works now. Perfect is the enemy of good enough and cost is not a critical factor if you believe climate change is an existential crisis to civilisation / great filter.

I would rather have future generations be in a situation where all they have to have to deal with is decommissioning those plants.

[pydry]

There's a variety of non magical storage solutions which are already being used (pumped water storage, molten salt) but demand shifting and overproduction will probably handle the majority of the variability. Thermal storage heaters will make a comeback, industrial users will vary when they consume electricity and car chargers will be programmed to listen to the price and charge when prices are low/free/negative.

A market driven response combined with upgrading grid infrastructure and finer grained pricing will be more than enough and will be cheaper than binge building nuke plants.

Meanwhile we can gradually ramp down usage of natural gas as markets adapt to the new reality.

[rurounijones]

We are just going to have to disagree on the wide-spread viability of the storage mechanisms and political / market reaction-time here.

However I hope I at least demonstrated that it is not always a case of "So they're still trying to make that argument now despite there being better options because they feel wronged."