| > If you think 90% is pretty easy but 10% isn't then that's not in conflict with what I said. It is though, because the 80th percent isn't any harder than the 5th percent, and may even be easier because when you're just starting out you don't have economies of scale. You don't get to the hard part until you're almost entirely done and only left with the few outliers that are unusual and expensive to address. > I wouldn't say that all of that 90% is equally easy. That's true, but it could just as well be because they get easier. Getting a new nuclear reactor design through the NRC is a massive ordeal, but once you have you can build an unlimited number of them without having to do it again. > There are challenges that increase as more power is made from solar/wind, and there are different challenges to making enough nuclear. As an absolute baseline we could replace the entire grid with nuclear. This is a known technology. If we wanted to we could build a thousand more reactors using known designs that are already in use and it would work. France has basically done this; they have a 70% nuclear grid and most of the rest is hydro and renewables. Their energy costs are below the EU average. The only reason to do something else is if the other thing costs less. Newer reactor designs or regulatory reform could lower the cost relative to existing nuclear reactors. Using new renewable infrastructure to charge electric vehicles is an obvious fit because they have built-in storage. Solar aligns well with air conditioning load. If economies of scale lower the cost of storage technologies it could allow for more renewables and less nuclear. But these are all things that could make the price lower rather than higher. |