[dmitriid]

> The answer—off course—is the same in either case. We build the infrastructure.

No. The answer isn't the same. Renewables have one inescapable design flaw: they can't provide baseline power, and we can't store energy effectively.

You got no wind, no sun? Your power grid is dead with renewables. Nuclear (and cola, and gas) will keep going.

[runarberg]

That flaw is by no means inescapable. Renewable energy is cheap, so it doesn’t matter if you can’t store it efficiently. If you loose 75% of the energy by storage you can just make 4 times the amount to compensate. So the answer here is still the same: Infrastructure. Note we also have unexplored battery technology which might make storing more efficient in the future so really the answer here is primarily infrastructure (but also research and technology).

And the same goes for the lack of baseline. A flaw yes, but not so inescapable. You can diversify the grid with distributed, stored, and centralized power, each can compensate for the flaws in the other. You can capture wind off shore, dam for hydro in the mountains, and build whole bunch of solar in the desert. You can connect different climates with high voltage power lines such that if one area experiences low solar and low wind at the same time for weeks at a time, excess power generated from adjacent regions could compensate.

The answer is still the same: infrastructure.

[dmitriid]

> Renewable energy is cheap, so it doesn’t matter if you can’t store it efficiently.

What does being cheap have to do with availability?

If there's no wind, you won't have that cheap energy from wind turbines. If there's no sun, you won't have that cheap energy from solar. When you have neither, there goes your energy grid.

> You can connect different climates with high voltage power lines such that if one area experiences low solar and low wind at the same time for weeks at a time, excess power generated from adjacent regions could compensate

Ah, yes. Because "neighboring regions" are immediately adjacent, and have immediate power availability and enough of it to cover any levels of power consumption for weeks on end.

[runarberg]

Sorry, you are conflating my arguments. Being cheap doesn’t solve the availability problem, I never claimed that. Being cheap means that you can solve the issue with poor storage efficiency with more infrastructure. I.e. compensating for the inefficiency of storage is not an inescapable flaw of renewables.

Your other point still stands though, renewables are not as robust as nuclear. But the answer is still infrastructure. It just needs to be more diverse then nuclear. With nuclear you still have a problem of demand above baseline, so you need infrastructure to deal with that. Renewables have the same problem except sometimes the baseline it self drops. The answer is the same you build infrastructure that can handle such drops. And that infrastructure is the same as for the problem of demand over baseline in nuclear, storage and more power production elsewhere with a robust grid.

[dmitriid]

> Sorry, you are conflating my arguments. Being cheap doesn’t solve the availability problem, I never claimed that.

I mean, you kinda did. Quote: "Renewable energy is cheap, so it doesn’t matter if you can’t store it efficiently."

Yes, it does. It does matter that you can't store it efficiently.

> With nuclear you still have a problem of demand above baseline, so you need infrastructure to deal with that.

With renewables you already have the problem with the baseline. I love how you just dismiss this as not being a problem.

> Renewables have the same problem except sometimes the baseline it self drops.

Exactly. In addition to having the problem of demand above baseline, they also have a problem that their baseline is zero.

> The answer is the same you build infrastructure that can handle such drops.

You can't solve a baseline of zero with more infrastructure. What you're basically saying is "every country has to have enough renewables to always be able to cover any amount of demand for any of their neighbours for any length of time." This simply doesn't work, and is not scalable in any shape or form.

Additionally, renewable energy is unbelievably inefficient in comparison, and it's extremely hard to "just" build more infrastructure for it.

The largest offshore windfarm that provides 1.2TW of energy covers an area of 630 square kilometers in the North Sea. That's less than Frances smallest operational nuclear reactor (1.8 TW).

And all of those 630 kilometers? Their baseline is exactly zero (if there's no wind). That nuclear reactor? Its baseline is effectively 1.8 TW 24/7.