[gpm]

Yeah, I'm just arguing that "baseload" should be understood to be a bad thing in my comment above.

If you want to argue that nuclear is affordable as non-baseload power, because the (non-economic) cost to the environment of the alternatives is otherwise too high.... well I'd disagree because of how far solar/wind/batteries have come in the last couple of years, but prior to that you would have had a point. And you still would as far as continuing to operate existing plants goes of course.

[phire]

Nuclear power has a massive handicap that most R&D was abandoned back in the 80s because it was uneconomic. And another handicap that the R&D it did get was never that focused on economics, commercial nuclear power were always a side effect of the true goal (Small reactors for nuclear submarines and Breeder reactors for nuclear weapons). And to get the promised low costs, you really need to commit and take advantage of massive economics of scale.

I'm not arguing that when taking environmental damage into account, that nuclear is cheaper than current solar/wind/battery technology for any single power project. They have the advantage of massive R&D over the last 30 years.

What I am arguing is that focusing on solar/wind/battery might not be the best route to 100% carbon free power in the long term. Maybe it is? But we really shouldn't be jumping to that assumption.

And we shouldn't be disregarding Nuclear because of any argument that can be summed up in a hacker news comment.