You’d be wrong then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_Station
This is a Nuclear power plant in the middle of a desert so no large bodies of water near by, though obviously the design could be adapted to places where water was more plentiful.
It takes up 4000 acres (16,000,000 sq meters)
Produces (not stores) 4GW (~32,000 GWHrs annually) For comparison, the US Produces 42400000 GWhrs annually.
And it cost $14Billion in 2023 dollars
If I were to replace all of the US’s generating capacity with nuclear, fully shunning renewables. it would cost ~$19Trillion and take up 5.3million acres (which is the minimum amount of land that could be taken up by any currently existing power generation system https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-per-energy-source ). But no one wants to do that (although it would be amazing for the atmosphere). Instead we merely need to supplement renewables with base-load power, and we don’t actually need power storage at all.
So even if we assume renewables don’t work at night, base-load only needs to account for ~33% of total electric production at the worst case. Much more manageable then the ~6.5hrs/6TWhrs of energy storage required for a 100% renewable grid to function.
The tl;dr, is that while renewable powered storage is possible, the magnitude of storage required to eliminate base-load generation is VASTLY larger then anti-nuclear advocates realize, and not feasible today (or possibly ever). This belief stems from is fossil fuel propaganda, especially in Germany where the fossil fuel interests understand they have nothing to fear from renewables because a renewable heavye grid is only possible with fossil fuel plants and every year every nation burns more fossil fuels then they did the year before*, Germany included. It will stay that way until mass famine hits and the human population of the earth collapses, unless we stop burning fossil fuels. The only viable non-fossil fuel replacement for our large and growing baseload capacity is nuclear power.
*note that fossil fuels aren’t only used for energy production, transportation and shipping are huge areas as well.
You’d be wrong then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_Station This is a Nuclear power plant in the middle of a desert so no large bodies of water near by, though obviously the design could be adapted to places where water was more plentiful.
It takes up 4000 acres (16,000,000 sq meters) Produces (not stores) 4GW (~32,000 GWHrs annually) For comparison, the US Produces 42400000 GWhrs annually. And it cost $14Billion in 2023 dollars
If I were to replace all of the US’s generating capacity with nuclear, fully shunning renewables. it would cost ~$19Trillion and take up 5.3million acres (which is the minimum amount of land that could be taken up by any currently existing power generation system https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-per-energy-source ). But no one wants to do that (although it would be amazing for the atmosphere). Instead we merely need to supplement renewables with base-load power, and we don’t actually need power storage at all.
The ideal ratio between renewable power and base-load power I do not know. But during the day in Texas in July it’s about 50% higher then at night. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915
So even if we assume renewables don’t work at night, base-load only needs to account for ~33% of total electric production at the worst case. Much more manageable then the ~6.5hrs/6TWhrs of energy storage required for a 100% renewable grid to function.
The tl;dr, is that while renewable powered storage is possible, the magnitude of storage required to eliminate base-load generation is VASTLY larger then anti-nuclear advocates realize, and not feasible today (or possibly ever). This belief stems from is fossil fuel propaganda, especially in Germany where the fossil fuel interests understand they have nothing to fear from renewables because a renewable heavye grid is only possible with fossil fuel plants and every year every nation burns more fossil fuels then they did the year before*, Germany included. It will stay that way until mass famine hits and the human population of the earth collapses, unless we stop burning fossil fuels. The only viable non-fossil fuel replacement for our large and growing baseload capacity is nuclear power.
*note that fossil fuels aren’t only used for energy production, transportation and shipping are huge areas as well.