this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2024
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Nuclear is the best and most sustainable energy production long term. You get left with nuclear waste which we are still figuring out how to deal with, but contemporary reactors are getting safer and more efficient. Not to mention breeder reactors can use the byproducts of their energy production to further produce energy.
I mean renewables are just cheaper...
To a point yes but large scale energy storage needed to make renewables viable to handle all of the load is not economically viable yet
Renewables with large scale storage are currently cheaper than any other source of energy
And don't produce enough energy?
What are you talking about? In 2023, solar power alone generated 1.63 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity. Twice as much as was generated by coal, and more than half as much as was generated by nuclear. Solar plus wind out performed nuclear by hundreds of gigawatts.
The only thing holding back renewable power is grid level energy storage, and that's evolving rapidly.
The problem with renewables is the fluctuation. So you need something you can quickly spin up or down to compensate. Now you can do that with nuclear reactors to some extent - but they barely break even at current energy prices, and they keep having the same high cost while idle.
So a combination of grid storage and power plants with low cost when idle (like water) is the way to go now.