It's hard to see how nuclear, especially large nuclear, can compete with wind, solar and batteries into the future. All three of these technologies benefit from continuing cost reduction combined with incremental deployment. The "solar at night" problem is elegantly solved by recruiting electric vehicle batteries to pitch in at night and the dominance of EV's is pretty much assured at this point. So in a sense the batteries will come for free.
Further more, the wider the geographical spread of the wind/solar network the more the "lumps and bumps" of generation are averaged out. And making such large networks is also becoming cheaper and cheaper due to improvements in DC high voltage networks. Again these can be deployed incrementally.
Nuclear on the other hand is deployed in large and hugely expensive lumps of one nuclear plant at a time. Also the technology tends to be "frozen in time" at the point the design is made and there is a strong tendency of then keeping that design for decades at a time.
I'm not against nuclear per se. If wind/solar was not such a viable option nuclear would be good enough. Wind/solar from both a technological and financial perspective is just a much better choice. It's not a coincidence that we see Berkshire Hathaway up to their armpits in wind/solar these days, they know which side their bread is buttered on.
Further more, the wider the geographical spread of the wind/solar network the more the "lumps and bumps" of generation are averaged out. And making such large networks is also becoming cheaper and cheaper due to improvements in DC high voltage networks. Again these can be deployed incrementally.
Nuclear on the other hand is deployed in large and hugely expensive lumps of one nuclear plant at a time. Also the technology tends to be "frozen in time" at the point the design is made and there is a strong tendency of then keeping that design for decades at a time.
I'm not against nuclear per se. If wind/solar was not such a viable option nuclear would be good enough. Wind/solar from both a technological and financial perspective is just a much better choice. It's not a coincidence that we see Berkshire Hathaway up to their armpits in wind/solar these days, they know which side their bread is buttered on.