Wind and solar still need storage tech, or other baseline generation
There are still calm nights where wind and solar won't provide enough. We need either industrial-scale short-term storage, or baseline generation that you can spin up. Smaller nukes would do that.
It's likely that if we hadn't demonized nuclear power in the 60s that wind and solar wouldn't be as advanced as they are now. But now that they are maturing, it's time to talk about a reasonable end state. Which I think is wind and solar for primary generation, and increased storage (large scale or distributed, or both), and nuclear that can spin up when needed.
And since we're going to need nuclear, we should standardize on one small, repeatable design so we don't have to re-do all the design and inspection and certification work from scratch every time.
It's likely that if we hadn't demonized nuclear power in the 60s that wind and solar wouldn't be as advanced as they are now. But now that they are maturing, it's time to talk about a reasonable end state. Which I think is wind and solar for primary generation, and increased storage (large scale or distributed, or both), and nuclear that can spin up when needed.
And since we're going to need nuclear, we should standardize on one small, repeatable design so we don't have to re-do all the design and inspection and certification work from scratch every time.
