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Comment by imgabe | Hacker News Reader

Wind and solar, no matter how cheap, are never going to be reliable sources of baseline power. They fluctuate, and something needs to keep producing power when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing.

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The assumption that baseline power is necessary seem like an unwarranted assumption to me, an idea that is unquestioned because that's the way things are done now. Maybe adequate provisioning of sufficiently uncorrelated, variable power sources combined with some storage is enough to replace all baseline and peak power sources. Maybe this can be done with less expense than nuclear + peaker plants. I haven't seen any nuclear proponents defend the necessity of the baseline power concept with an actual analysis showing that alternatives can't work though.

We know that having a fairly constant source of baseline power works because that is what we are currently doing. The onus to prove that some combination of wind solar and batteries costs less and will deliver sufficient power across all use cases should be on the wind / solar advocates. We know nuclear plants work because they're currently in use all over the world.

Why demand numbers from others when you can't provide any yourself?

"Baseline power" isn't all that useful. What we need to complement renewables is a reliable source of dispatchable power that can be turned on and off, preferably quickly. Nuclear ain't it. While it's possible to somewhat increase or decrease the output of a nuclear power plant, it's slow, operationally complex, and increases the already formidable costs of nuclear power. It's also not terribly common in the US due to licensing restrictions.

Can't you build batteries to account for fluctuations?

Adding nuclear to wind/solar doesn't eliminate the need for peaker plants or batteries because nuclear can only provide baseline power.

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