[Kon5ole]

>>We don't have a way to store energy in massive ways, so in order to account for cloudy days, non-windy days and nights, we need something else.

So we can build either energy storage or nuclear plants. Storage must surely be the better choice!

It seems quite obvious to me that it will be cheaper, faster, simpler and more reliable, not least because it will be distributed and we can engage many more people to the task of building storage than we can to the task of building nuclear plants.

Heat storage, pressure storage, gravity storage, hydrogen, methane, batteries, all so easy to make (compared to nuclear plants) that you can have thousands of "small town scale" projects going at the same time.

With few notable mega-projects, solar has still grown in capacity equivalent to several nuclear reactors per year the past few years. I think a similar thing will happen with energy storage.

It's kind of happening already (several storage projects are underway and some are online) but the results are good and it's early days.

[specialist]

Renewables and storage today. Nuclear tomorrow (hopefully).

We need all of it. ASAP.

It's "yes and", not "either-or".

[reshlo]

> It seems quite obvious to me that it will be cheaper

The New Zealand government estimates that a gravity storage scheme with a capacity of 5TWh would cost 14 billion NZ dollars to construct.

https://www.mbie.govt.nz/building-and-energy/energy-and-natu...