[hedora]

This is true of gas turbines and coal at this point too, though.

We clearly need something to stabilize power output, and nuclear is extremely competitive with solar+wind+battery for weeklong storms/weather patterns that lead to low power output and high demand.

Those storms happen about once a year. The only sustainable options on the table are massive energy storage projects, or nuclear.

I’m all for putting batteries on the grid, but they typically only smooth out 4-8 hours of load, not the 4-8 days most places need once a year.

[Schroedingersat]

If you nuclear plant is only competitive 1 week a year (as the total cost of solar + wind can outcompete its O&M costs the other 51 weeks), then it needs to amortise the capital over about 30 weeks of operation once you take a small discount rate into account (even assuming an indefinite lifetime).

Then your $5000-$10,000/MWh energy is competing against any other 8 day storage option which costs less. Which is all of them.

On top of that, even using brown coal for that week is only adding 20g of CO2e/kWh to your energy on average. Better to do the 98% renewable grid first and then decide whether you're building the nuclear plant or storage

Delaying the transition by a couple of years while you build the plant is equivalent to running the 98% solution for half a century while you figure out something for the last 2% (which could still be a nuclear plant).

[timdaub]

Diversity is where it's at! Heatwaves can also drain the rivers that cool nuclear plants! We need a more resilient grid and diversity of production is probably the answer here, isn't it?

[LargoLasskhyfv]

NPPs could use so called 'dry cooling towers'. They are just less efficient, so you'd need more of them, which takes more space, is more expensive to build, and so on.