I don’t know if electricity storage is really scalable, but there are quite a few options including the obvious battery and hydro….and if storage was able to make renewables stand without fossil or nuclear back up that must be considered.Nuclear isn't as expensive as often claimed. Especially compared with renewables.
The issue here is mainly that renewables' cost claims omit the cost of backup, be it storage or a fossil fuel back up. You need that extra capacity to make renewables technically feasible, and this adds to the cost. To rely on renewables entirely, and to build enough backup to supply enough power over every foreseeable issue, would be entirely uneconomic.
However, there is also the fact that fossil fuel companies have pulled back from renewables. Why? Because even though they are cheap (at the point of installation), they are not profitable compared with fossil fuels.
But it goes further than this when comparing the cost of energy sources. Renewables are often quoted as being cheaper but this goes by Levelised Cost of Energy. This is poor metric to compare nuclear with renewables. The reasons are lengthy, and here is a good discussion as to why:
But basically, it doesn't account for the fact that a nuclear plant supplies reliable energy for many more decades over the life of the plant that the equivalent sized wind farm or solar farm would. There are other issues, but this is a key point.
Then there's the cost of carbon that isn't accounted for when comparing with fossil fuels. If you account for the hidden cost of fossil fuels, they suddenly cost far more.
Renewables look cheap ATM, as they don't have to rely on a large proportion of back up to keep them viable, but they are built in enough quantities to keep the costs down. We need more of course, but there is a limit as to what we can achieve by renewables alone.
Currently the cost of electricity is multiple times more expensive than gas, so it’s going to hard to ditch gas boilers in favour of heat pumps anytime soon.
For people without access to the gas network and on oil, heat pumps are probably a realistic option.
The new Rolls Royce mini nuclear power plants are interesting, I’m not how the numbers stack up.
The Kw price of Hinckley C is just nuts. We do not need any more French construction combined with Chinese funding.
