Which is why I also added that the costs for storage are absolutely plummeting? What problem are you solving? The final bit of emergency reserves?
> Solar and wind both have significant sovereignty issues. The entire solar supply chain is in China where they're heavily subsidizes so the PRC can corner the market -- and substantially all the rare earths in wind turbines come from China.
This seems like hand wringing over a nothing burger? Compare the dynamics with fossil fuels:
If the fossil fuel supply chain is disrupted we get an energy crisis within weeks.
What happens if the renewable supply chain is disrupted?
Well.... all existing installations keeps working for decades and in the meantime we need to figure out an alternative. After a couple of years our emergency reserves would start to work harder due to old installations aging out but the impact would be near zero.
> Nuclear is only expensive because of the way it's built in the US, relying on the few locations made available (if any) to build basically fully customized installations. If we copy-pasted reactors onto sites that suit them it would be very competitive, don't take my word for it, Jigar Shah who headed the DOE loans program said the exact same thing during his term.
Which is of course why all western reactors are struggling with cost. You do know that modular reactors has been a talking point for the nuclear industry since the 1950s? That is what the industry generally bounces to when large scale projects balloon in cost. They just never deliver.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-forgotten-history-of-small-nuc...
But somehow if we magically handout another trillion in tax money to the nuclear industry they will fix it this time!!
> If we're being pedantic, nuclear is renewable too thanks to seawater extraction
With the minor caveat that you can't even drive the pump from the electricity final electricity you get out due to the volumes involved.
I love how the solution to horrifically expensive new built nuclear power is an even more economically infeasible technical solution.
Or you know, just diversify renewable supply chains?