| > But you can’t just turn a nuclear reactor on and off No, but I can regulate its output up and down. You don't have to turn a reactor off entirely, its output can be regulated up and down without shutting down completely. > and makes it more commercially viable for batteries. The problem with batteries isn't commercial viability. The problem is physical availability. There simply isn't enough Li in the world to make Solar as powerful as it would need to be to stem a majority of our energy requirements, and as of now, we don't have another battery technology that would be suitable. At a macro view, the whole thing isn't an economic question. Here are the three facts: 1. We cannot continue with fossil fuel power as we did before (because climate change) 2. Solar isn't up to the task of taking (among other reasons because we don't have the storage required) 3. The worlds energy demands are increasing. Maybe it could be made to grow slower, but reversing it is unlikely So, what options does that leave us with? Wind suffers from similar problems as Solar. Hydro is geographically limited, as is Tidal. Geothermal is likely too weak. Fusion power doesn't exist yet. And as cool as a Dyson-Swarm would be, that's even further away than Fusion. So, what technology remains? |
2) there are competing materials for new battery tech besides lithium
3) battery capacity deployed per year is growing exponentially
4) when you have large over supplies of energy you can pursue hydrogen. Green hydrogen should be at parity with grey hydrogen in less than a decade. Not cost competitive with just using fuels or batteries for utility scale, but slowly getting there.
5) commercial viability absolutely matters. Subsidizing an expensive source of energy rather than building more and more capacity for cheap energy is a bad strategy while using fossil fuels as a crutch in the interim is a bad strategy. Running a nuclear plant at low capacity craters its financial viability.