[Arodex]

>The problem with solar is that you need power 24/7 and solar will not make power in the night.

Ok, question: for the cost of one nuclear power plant, how many batteries can you have?

For the cost of the R&D of one next generation nuclear reactor design, how many next generation battery and solar panels technologies can you develop?

[vablings]

> Ok, question: for the cost of one nuclear power plant, how many batteries can you have?

Not that many. Sizewell C the latest nuclear project in the UK is projected to cost around 50 billion and expected to last for 60 years. We can cut that estimate short to say oh well, About a billion a year for the next 50 years.

Assuming that you can purchase storage at $70/kwh with 50 billion you could purchase around 715GWh of battery storage, at the same output of Sizewell C that means you could output 3.2GW for 200+ hours! wow.

One problem. The batteries will realistically only last somewhere between 10-20 years. A moderate 15-year estimate would be more realistic. Now obviously it's very hard to calculate and account for a reduction in pricing increase in capacity etc... But with today's technology you would have to buy the pack 3.33 times over

So now you go into 0.300 * 715GWh gives you 214.5 GWh and now with that 3.2GWh load it could run for just shy of 3 days. This is like the entire capacity storage of China right now.

So yeah, to answer your question 214.5 GWh of storage

[slibhb]

This is such a silly argument. Battery and solar technologies are progressing regardless of people building nuclear. It's simply not the case that we can stop investing in nuclear and use that money to accelerate battery/solar.

The best energy strategies are all-of-the-above.

[Arodex]

This isn't a silly argument, this is a problem of allocation of resources.

We could have had mass solar deployment since the 70s. We chose not to, and allocate the money elsewhere. Nuclear will take away billions in public money, put it into the hands of nuclear industries, to get electricity at twice the going rate, maybe, in twenty years. A white elephant and a waste of effort.

[vablings]

That's exactly the point of SMRs. Do away with the huge capital allocation of public funds to overspend and overrun on infrastructure projects.

[hollerith]

Can you explain how that would have worked with the much less efficient and much more expensive solar panels available in the 70s?

[Arodex]

All the R&D and industrial capacity building we have done since the 70s could have been accelerated if we had invested in it as much as we invested in nuclear, or oil, or gas, or coal. With public money.

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/5-hidden-ways-the-g...

[p2detar]

> For the cost of the R&D of one next generation nuclear reactor design, how many next generation battery and solar panels technologies can you develop

This is a horrible argument. Yeah, let’s not spend money improving technology. We wouldn’t have increased Solar panel efficiency if we followed such ill advice.

[Arodex]

>We wouldn’t have increased Solar panel efficiency if we followed such ill advice.

We didn't for decades. The photoelectric effect is known since the XIXth century. Solar panel research could have had far more money behind it since the 70s and the first oil crisis. It was a choice not to. And the current US and Swiss governments are choosing to prop up some industries -coal, nuclear- at the expense of others, with public money that don't grow on trees.