| Considering that full economies of scale and technology has not yet been matured in solar certainly, and possibly wind, and certainly in battery storage... Look, you're treating the current LCOE numbers and making the (mistaken or disingenuous) implication that solar/wind won't fall EVEN FURTHER, but they almost certainly will. With solar, there is perovskites and many other avenues of improvement in the core technology. Both wind and solar will still drop in price from increased economies of scale. And battery storage is going to plummet with sodium ion in the near term, and hopefuly sodium-sulfur techs in the future in addition to whatever grid-specific use cases are developed. So it's true! Nobody know how much renewables will cost... or HOW LITTLE they will cost... in the long run. Existing already-built nuclear is woefully noncompetitive, but I'll take it for grid levelling over gas turbine and (ugh) coal, so keep the lights on. But NEW nuclear? What price are you targeting? I would guess in the timespan of a new nuke plant construction (10 years), solar will drop by 50%-60% in costs (inflation adjusted), and I think wind still has 33% drops coming. I mean, how does a sensible person approve a nuclear project with this degree of uncertainty/evolution/revolution in power costs? And if you want to talk uncertainty in cost of electricity, the unreliable final construction and operation costs of nuclear are much more unreliable from that standpoint. |
Believable models of achieving that goal call for setting up capacity markets where traditional suppliers are paid to not emit, and stand by to intervene when required by weather conditions, achieving close to net zero year round emissions (¹. Nobody really knows how this will end up costing because no such grid exists today.
Grid scale battery storage is still very far from competing with traditional baseload production, even when supplied with free renewables. Sodium has been the next big thing for the last decade, but its only deployments are in the experimental, MWh range. It's still far from a mature, proven technology, let alone one that can disrupt lithium in the gridscale storage space.
Perhaps you are handwaving substantial technical and economic details away and making too bold claims insufficiently supported by data. Not unlike the nuclear fanboys who are seeing thorium fast breeders just around every corner.
(¹ Btw, this is just another nail in the nuclear coffin - coal too - because they can't play nice with a fast moving grid.