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Comment by vablings | Hacker News Reader

Modular nuclear is a great idea, sadly right now and in the foreseeable future solar is absolutely king in terms of cost/kWH, we should build what makes sense for our needs with regards to power in the USA then worry about other tech later considering the state of our grid.

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But why is it a great idea if solar provides more power, more cheaply without any danger whatsoever?

Solar gives power in the wrong time, making the duck curve a thing, and requiring conflict prone minerals storing dangerous amount of powers to smooth out. On net, this is probably worth it, but solar isn't free as you claim.

There are so many other methods aside from lithium batteries for grid scale energy storage.

One of my favorites is pumped storage hydro.

https://www.energy.gov/cmei/water/pumped-storage-hydropower

Pumped hydro is fantastically expensive, not all that efficient, and only works with extremely specific (and rare, aiui) geography. It also comes with the same ecological disasters as dams, displacing entire ecosystems or towns and producing a ton of methane emissions from the now-submerged and decaying plant life.

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

A lot of the duck curve can be solved by tiny changes on the demand side. Uranium isn't exactly conflict-free either. Grid storage can also be done with sodium ion batteries or iron redox batteries - even better than the current EV-spinoff lithium ones.

Sure, solar isn't free, but most of the problems it faces aren't exactly insurmountable. In fact, we are already seeing those solutions being deployed in the world - mostly for economic reasons.

> and requiring conflict prone minerals storing dangerous amount of powers to smooth out

Sodium batteries are available these days. No rare minerals, non-flammable, almost fully recyclable.

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