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I think they do while in port in Hawaii. Hawaiian electricity is largely diesel (other than nuclear coming from Navy ships).

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Isn't Hawaii also transitioning a significant fraction of its generation to solar? Diesel can be ramped up and down easily to account for varying production from solar.

Yes, but I'm not sure what the current percentage is or how fast that change is happening.

Solar and Wind have really been exploding in the past few years. I fully expect this hand wringing over nuclear will end up being overtaken by events in the next 30 years or so. The real limitation at the moment is battery technology, there is a lot riding on finding cheap and efficient energy storage.

There is no need to "find" cheap energy storage. Many different methods are already known to store energy.

But building storage before you have enough renewables to charge it from would be stupid. So, the money goes to generating capacity, in the meantime. When storage is needed, it will be much cheaper than today, as cost is falling even faster than generating capacity.

The Hawaii government page [0] list a goal of getting to 100% renewables by 2045. If I am reading the report correctly, the 2020 number was already at 36% renewables.

[0]: https://energy.hawaii.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/HSEO_20... ( pdf warning )

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