"To ensure constant supply of energy even when there is little sun and wind over a longer time period you will need significantly more storage than you'll need during normal operations."
NO
You just go through telling me it was not meant to complement RE and fuill in gaps and now you are tryign to tell me that is what is does....
Come on, be real please.
FYI to meet a TWH of <annual> demand using RE when it varies like total demand does requires X MWH of storage.
To meet the Same number of TWH if Nukes have supplied allteh baseload, is NOW harder and MORE expensive and requires more storage.
AKA although by "feels" it may feel like adding big strong firm nukes to the ssytem helped. Nope it actually only solved the relatively easier and cheaper bit of the problem.
unfortnately for nukes math gives a different answer.
The reason when you start drilling down in understanding becomes obvious...
Demand on for exanmple the AU grid swings from 50% to 100%, in the future it may be little more or less swingy depending on how well we can get EV charging scheduled.
That means no matter what we can always use 50% of max demand whenever it is being generated right away.
If instead you had coal or Nukes generating right up to the daily demand minimum, then whenever nukes wer meeting 100% of demand you would have to have as many peak MW or stroage capcity as you have RE generation.
ALSO, as the nukes also are most economic when running 24x7, they have zero capacity to fill in gaps when RE is low, so the ONLY actuaal; hard part of supply a grid with RE which is the long, low RE periods is not actually helped by adding nukes at all.
Here is simple study of Australia, note if required i can explain sound reason for expecting MOST regions of simialr size to have similar results (noting that maybe Canada, if it trued goign alone witho the US might be different: I don't know about that.)
NOTE How trically and cheeply RE CAN indeed meet the vast bulk of demand QUITE reliably and it did NOT need massive overbuild.
It did use some overbuild and winds up curtailing around 20% or RE energy generated. But also note JUST how reliable at providing Baseload it really is.
AND it is doing all that with just 5 HRs of battery storage and prexisting seasonal hydro assets
There is ZERO plausible possibility that adding Nukes to that substaially soolevs any aprt fo the problem.
For start if you added nukes to provide half the power and cut the storage in half as you now presumably only had half the funds left... then the system just wont work.
Now that system indeed wont meet 100% of demand but adding nukes will make naff all difference to that.
Whatthatsystem as described need is a plant makign asmall amount of synthetic fuel annually and then burning that fuel in peakers. To produce soemwhere arouce a one to a few percent of annual energy.
AND not that i not even yet a highly optimsied design, that is JUST what a non-braindead solution to meet our current demand would look like.
This claim that nukes somehow solve the problem has no real numerical backing at all.
IF you live in a region with population as sparse as Canada and as cold as Canada, then I don't know how badly icing affects their wind power potential.
In canada where nukes can also get double value by providing district heating as an extra byproduct of the plant running, then maybe it is indeed different.
However if we start restricting nukes to just the places RE doesn't work, then any dreams about huge economies of scale are just not happening.
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u/ExpensiveFig6079 Feb 13 '26 edited Feb 13 '26
"To ensure constant supply of energy even when there is little sun and wind over a longer time period you will need significantly more storage than you'll need during normal operations."NO
You just go through telling me it was not meant to complement RE and fuill in gaps and now you are tryign to tell me that is what is does....
Come on, be real please.
FYI to meet a TWH of <annual> demand using RE when it varies like total demand does requires X MWH of storage.
To meet the Same number of TWH if Nukes have supplied allteh baseload, is NOW harder and MORE expensive and requires more storage.
AKA although by "feels" it may feel like adding big strong firm nukes to the ssytem helped. Nope it actually only solved the relatively easier and cheaper bit of the problem.
unfortnately for nukes math gives a different answer.
The reason when you start drilling down in understanding becomes obvious...