Comment by hunterpayne
4 hours ago
I don't think killing solar and wind projects is what the greens do. The problems with solar and wind are entirely due to the laws of physics. They get large advantages in the energy markets in most places. They have been very effective in preventing nuclear though which ironically does so much real world damage to their cause that all the rest of what they do is a drop in the bucket.
Our problem isn’t energy production, it’s storage.
Nuclear power plants aren’t flexible enough for sudden changes in energy consumption.
The storage problem is home-made, because our problem is intermittent renewables that can't produce on-demand.
With consistent producers like nuclear there is no storage problem.
And of course the Natrium plant has the buffer so it can ramp grid output up and down while maintaining the reactor at consistent power levels.
Nuclear power plants and the electric networks have a big problem when power consumption has sudden big changes, like this
https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/a-new-threat-to-powe...
Storage would mean just to reroute the energy to storage, otherwise you need to lower the power plant‘s output what doesn’t happen fast in nuclear power plants
> With consistent producers like nuclear there is no storage problem.
This tells me you’ve never looked at a demand curve. In for example California the usage swings from 18 GW to 50 GW over the day and seasons.
The problem has always been economical. And this solution is looking like a bandaid to get taxpayer handouts.
Why store expensive nuclear electricity rather than extremely cheap renewable electricity?
France seems to work. They have plenty of nuclear power that is flexible. And you can have other forms of consumption flexibility; otherwise wind and solar are really in trouble.
France uses their own and their neighbors fossil capacity to manage nuclear inflexibility.
When a cold spell hits France exports turn to imports.
Now EDF is crying about renewables lowering nuclear earning potential and increasing maintenance costs.
The problem is that they are up against economic incentives. Why should a company or person with solar and storage buy grid based nuclear power? They don’t.
Why should they not sell their excess to their neighbors? They do.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-16/edf-warns...