Comment by jcattle

Hey, just wanted to say thanks for your comment. I'm usually very apprehensive against nuclear (still kind of am) but I think one of my main points against was that "base load" (i.e. inflexible generation) would be bad in countries with high intermittent generation.

But I guess the whole calculation of 100% renewables is overprovision+storage. This wouldn't change with nuclear in the mix, nuclear would just generate all the time at whatever price it can get, just bringing the point of overprovision for renewables closer.

Then in countries in more extreme latitudes the calculation of if nuclear is worth it just becomes how cheap and viable the (long and short-term) storage part will get over the lifetime of a new nuclear reactor.

If storage gets so cheap that a nuclear reactor would be consistently in the red, even in the depths of winter, then it wouldn't make sense to build one today.

But I haven't done any calculations on that yet. For example for the Netherlands or Germany which still have a high reliance on gas but a large portion of solar+wind, how expensive nuclear could be for it to make sense to build a new reactor. And under which scenarios of development of storage prices it would potentially seize to make sense.