Renewables are about an order of magnitude cheaper than nuclear. $15/MWh vs $112/MWh. So what you do is overprovision your renewables. In other words, build more than you need. The major reason to do this is so that when the wind is barely blowing and/or it's a cloudy day you still get enough power to supply your needs without peakers. Then on the days when you're producing excess power (ie, most of them), you use that excess energy to produce methane from CO2. Use that methane to run your natural gas peakers, making them carbon neutral. This is likely much cheaper than batteries, certainly if you already have the gas peakers.
You'll have to overprovision to cover the very unlikely time that both the wind and sun disappear for a long stretch, so you'll be overprovisioned all other times. Methane production takes Hydrogen as an input, so you can use some of that excess energy to create extra Hydrogen. Or you can turn methane into plastic for use or storage. Or just sell the extra electricity, there are several industries that can soak up cheap electricity (please not to bitcoin miners though).
> Nuclear energy is more cost effective than alternatives. The main issue is that antinuclear activists, funded by the fossil fuel industry, have lobbied to make it cost prohibitive to build nuclear power plants by way of onerous regulation and prolonged legal battles.
Even in China, nuclear is incredibly expensive and takes a long time. So I don't think regulation is the main problem.
> Why? Producing hydrogen is inefficient and unnecessary
Clean steel & cement.