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For context, suppose Vogtle 3 & 4 generates 2200 MW during 16 hours of winter darkness. That's 35.2 GWh. If you had to replace that with Tesla Powerwalls you'd need 2.6 million of them or 22 copies of Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility (the world's largest). And that's back of the envelope numbers assuming a 100% duty cycle for the batteries and no degradation.

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That facility cost "more than $400 million" so let's say 22 of them cost $10 billion.

"The total bill for the reactor expansion project at the Vogtle nuclear plant in Georgia is now expected to exceed $30 billion"

Seems doable.

> And that's back of the envelope numbers assuming a 100% duty cycle for the batteries and no degradation.

Okay, toss on another 50% to make it $15 billion.

If the factories don't exist, the time scale of a nuclear plant should be enough to make more factories.

There is no way we could make that many lithium ion cells.

If the limit is factories, we can make the factories.

If the limit is materials bloating the costs horribly, then keep going until it stops being cheap.

And the batteries don't have to be lithium ion.

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