[rdevsrex]

I don't know why, from the start, we haven't used nuclear power more for baseload.

China is already building between 6 to 8 nuclear power plants a year and plans to expand that number to 10 a year.

It's nothing compared to all the other sources of power they are creating, but it seems to me that rather than investing in mass battery storage, a few dozen modern nuclear power plants would be a good idea.

Assuming, of course, you can actually get costs down and cut through red tape like China can.

[ViewTrick1002]

China finished 1 reactor in 2023 and are in track for a massive 3 finished reactors in 2024.

On the other hand they are building enough renewables to cover their entire electricity growth.

Even China has figured out that nuclear power is not economically viable.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/chinas-quiet-energy-revolution-t...

[threeseed]

You're basically just talking to yourself.

Because no one cares about nuclear whilst the costs are so high, return on investment questionable and there aren't simple solutions for dealing with the waste. Plus for better or worse the politics of it are terrible.

Meanwhile every year solar and batteries are getting cheaper. And we may see a future with lots of EVs capable of being used as grid batteries.

[Panzer04]

Agreed. Nuclear is cool but beaten in so many ways by the current renewable revolution. Distributed, low risk, cheap energy generation backed by batteries seems strictly superior to nuclear generation.

[jabpattern7]

Backed by batteries is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Batteries required to make them viable are never included in the LCOEs for renewable, because it'd make them ridiculously more expensive than nuclear. The problem is we need power now, all the time. It's much easier to develop new technologies when the lights are still on.

[Panzer04]

Even backed by batteries renewables are still winning. How good things look depends on how much battery you decide to include, but fortunately we don't need that much battery, especially while we still have some legacy dispatchable generation.

It "helps" that nuclear is just so slow and expensive to get going that everything else just ends up looking pretty good. If it were cheap, fast and safe that would have been great, though.

[adrianN]

Lazard had figures that include a couple of hours of storage for years. https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost...

[threeseed]

It's not true that batteries are required to make renewables work.

In Australia solar is popular because it produces power at the same time it is needed for A/C, computers, manufacturing etc.

There really isn't the need for huge amounts of baseload power. Hence why batteries are used.

[pfdietz]

> I don't know why, from the start, we haven't used nuclear power more for baseload.

Because it was too expensive and took a long time to build. At least one utility in the US was forced into bankruptcy due to nuclear builds when power demand growth suddenly slowed during the long construction time.

[adrianN]

Nuclear plants are not a replacement for batteries. You either have enough nuclear plants to cover peak demand, in which case you don't need any renewables at all, or you need batteries (or rather, storage, batteries are not the only option). Economics seem to favor storage and renewables over 100% nuclear.

[jabpattern7]

The difference being nuclear only needs something to cover the peak, whilst renewable needs capacity to cover 100% of production because of wild variability.

[ViewTrick1002]

Which when simulating a carbon neutral Danish grid leads to nuclear power needing a cost reduction of 85% to even enter the picture.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626192...

[adrianN]

The difference between minimum and maximum demand is not that far from 100%.

[pyrale]

Well, if you believe that 25-33% isn't that far from 100%, then you would be right.

- CAISO forecast for today [1]: peak 28.8GW, low 21.5GW

- France forecast for today [2]: peak 52.7GW, low 35.5GW

[1]: https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook [2]: https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/la-consommation-delectric...

[adrianN]

You shouldn’t consider just one day, you should at least look at a time frame comparable to the construction time of your power source of choice.

[pyrale]

How about you give me one day where low point is close to 0% as you claimed.

[stevage]

Lots of reasons, but in Australia it's pretty simple: because nuclear power is prohibited by law.