> I was responding to the thread, which is comparing nuclear to natural gas.
It's comparing nuclear to alternatives, one of which is natural gas. Others are renewables. One cannot make or justify a decision on nuclear without considering all the alternatives.
Weather dependent renewables (wind, solar) are not an alternative to nuclear, even when they are perceived in this way by the public.
From point of view of an electrical grid operator only wind/solar+fossil are alternative to nuclear, if you want to maintain stable electric grid without blackout or rolling blackouts.
> Weather dependent renewables (wind, solar) are not an alternative to nuclear, even when they are perceived in this way by the public.
This is a common misconception. The reality is that coupled with storage in a cost-optimized way renewables are no more expensive than nuclear for providing 365/24/7 power and likely considerably cheaper.
Weather dependent renewables (wind, solar) without storage are not an alternative to nuclear.
Now we can discuss more precisely the kinds of storage: pumped hydro, battery storage, H2 storage, thermal energy storage, the costs and space and material needs of each kind of storage.
There are basically two kinds of storage needed: a sort term, high efficiency storage, and a longer term low-capex storage. For example, batteries for the former, and either e-fuels like hydrogen or low capex thermal for the latter.
This optimizes cost because different properties of the storage drive cost in the two cases. For the first, there are thousands of charge-discharge cycles, so high round trip efficiency pays off. For the second, there are many fewer such cycles, so efficiency has a much lower payoff; instead the name of the game is minimizing capex.
In practice the second will not be installed until later in decarbonization, especially if the storage is being used to counter rare dark-calm periods when neither wind nor solar are available for a prolonged period. But it can be done, and so little of the total energy flow would go through in that case that high per-kWh costs for that small fraction can be tolerated.
Anyway, your clarification destroys the argument that was being made that nuclear is needed.
The original argument was that renewables are alternative to nuclear:
> It's comparing nuclear to alternatives, one of which is natural gas. Others are renewables. One cannot make or justify a decision on nuclear without considering all the alternatives.
Renewables (solar, wind) alone are not alternative to nuclear, without energy storage. This additional energy storage can be: short term energy storage, long term energy storage, or fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are solar energy stored in ancient times.
China is currently building many new coal plants as an backup for solar and wind power plants.
Germany is building new gas power plants, in future possible running on H2.
> Renewables (solar, wind) alone are not alternative to nuclear, without energy storage.
So... ok? Why exactly would this be an issue? Is there some reason to consider just renewables without storage? That would be like trying to argue nuclear is useless because it also needs transmission.
It's comparing nuclear to alternatives, one of which is natural gas. Others are renewables. One cannot make or justify a decision on nuclear without considering all the alternatives.