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this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2026
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Except that nuclear cannot be throttled and is no base line option.
Wind, solar, batteries and gas play well together in central Europe. Other countries have other resources, like water.
In addition hydrogen is complementary for heavy industries and can be produced when all batteries are filled up.
Nuclear can be throttled, we do it all the time.
In electricity generation, it typically can't be throttled reasonably in a way that allows quick reaction to changing demand. Most reactors' power output is regulated by changing the chemistry of the coolant, which can only be done gradually, Using quicker control rods for everyday power adjustment rather than only for shutdown and startup, is avoided to avoid uneven, and therefore inefficient fuel burn. While it could be done, it would make nuclear power even more uneconomical than it already is by forcing more frequent shutdowns for fuel changes.
Nuclear load following is routinely done in France. You can see more details here: https://www.nice-future.org/docs/nicefuturelibraries/default-document-library/france.pdf
Like solar, batteries can compensate for the difference between supply and demand.
Batteries don't scale well at all.
But only if connected to a nuclear power plant?
Doesn't matter what you connect them to, they don't scale well.
They take a lot of exotic materials and energy in a complicated process to produce, have a very limited life span, don't work without highly complex controllers, and a have comparatively low energy density.
No?
There are many batteries with basic materials that can do tens of thousands of cycles.
They are heavy and big, which makes them unfit for cars, but great for this use case.
The low energy density of batteries does matter for applications at scale. Because you need buildings to put the batteries into, which will need space, and have to support the weight. You will need an awful lot of space for battery storage in the megawatt, let alone the gigawatt range.
For uninterrupted power supply in many applications, you can even live with the low energy density of lead acid batteries, because they typically only have to bridge the short time time until the emergency generators (usually diesels, in some applications, gas turbines) have started and spun up to their operating speed. This is, depending on the size of the generators, a matter of seconds (small generators with truck size engines) to minutes (large generators powered by ship engines). In energy intensive industrial processes with backup power, usually only the control systems are on battery based UPS, while the actual processes will lose power for a short moment until the generators kick in.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you that the other options are better. I'm just saying that nuclear can be a good temporary step in between to buy us time to perform the complete transition. And I get what you're saying about hydrogen but with the issues surrounding drinking water I don't know if we should really lean on that too much.
The core difference here is: if we speed things up we can increase wind and solar and battery storage in the blink of an eye. Take a look at Chinaβs new capacity.
Nuclear not so much. Combined with the follow up questions of end storage or even getting the cheap uranium (Russia) there is no real reason to debate.
It's hardly viable as a temporary step when the time to bring a new one online is 20 years. The economics are already bad today and have been trending to be worse every year, while renewables and batteries are trending in the complete opposite direction.
The time for transitionary measures has passed. Renewables and batteries are here today. All we need to do is build it.
New reactors take decades to build. We need to have energy autonomy and move towards net 0 now. We can't wait for shiny new reactors, which will be ready in 2050, if we start planning now.