Elusive fusion reactors to be commercialised by 2025-2030... Or so they say

That is the trade off why the most realistic chance for viable Fusion, ITER, is around $65billion and still only a research prototype.

Just like fission, they will suffer from the lack of scale economics and the significant build time and thus ROI will make them prohibitive.

Renewables and BESS will continue to become exponentially cheaper.

Research prototypes are generally rather expensive... It will need the built in ability to be updated/upgraded/varied too. And ITER is not the only model/technique pushing forwards.

In sort of related news, the UK government are making a push to build multiple small modular reactors (fission), aimed to power datacentres/AI (and probably in part be funded by the companies paying for them). Great opportunity to get a solid baseline of power, with technology that will produce minimal waste, and these designs can vary their power output, which is brilliant news for helping balance things.

 
It's about time. 4 of the 5 current nuclear sites are expected to be switched off before Sizewell C starts contributing. That's going to leave a shortfall of about 4GW, making energy security even worse in the short term for windless dull days.
 
No it doesn't and no we haven't.

Chernobyl was the worst case scenario in pretty much every way. It didn't destroy the planet. It couldn't destroy the planet. Chernobyl did far less harm than the worst hydroelectric power failures.

The number of deaths directly and definitely caused by the Chernobyl meltdown is 31.
The number of deaths almost certainly caused by the Chernobyl meltdown is 60.
The number of deaths probably partially caused by the Chernobyl meltdown is about 4000.

The number of deaths directly and definitely caused by the Banqiao failure is about 250,000.

We've been extremely unlucky in all the meltdowns. The fact they happened at all required bad luck, bad design and at least some degree of negligence.
While I agree with the general point of your post, it should be noted that you're basically using the "propaganda figures" there. The deaths almost certainly caused figure is as comical today as when the USSR first announced it, and the 4000 figure you're citing was adopted by the IAEA in 1986 essentially by taking Legasov's 40,000 estimate and dividing it by ten because they didn't like the statistical model he used (so it's actually worse than Soviet propaganda).

While the 4000 figure was reaffirmed by the IAEA in a 2006 report and adopted by the UN it has been heavily contested, including by many of the very scientist and physicians it cited, who claim their work was misrepresented and taken out of context.

Most realistic estimates put the true death toll at at least 30,000 and as high as 100,000 (with some outliers going much higher.

To put it in perspective, the "official" 4000 death figure is lower than the amount of Ukrainian and Belorussian liquidators who had died of Chernobyl related deaths as of 2011. In addition the Ukrainian government pays out benefits to over 35,000 families who's patriarch's death was deemed to have probably been caused by the disaster.
 
That is the trade off why the most realistic chance for viable Fusion, ITER, is around $65billion and still only a research prototype.

Just like fission, they will suffer from the lack of scale economics and the significant build time and thus ROI will make them prohibitive.

Renewables and BESS will continue to become exponentially cheaper.

Why? I think they're more likely to become more expensive as they stop being subsidised so much and they become more complex as a result of trying to improve efficiency and because a vast overcapacity is required due to the inefficiencies and the lack of reliability and control. For example, it's common for wind in the UK to generate less than 10% of the nameplate capacity and it averages ~25% and that's despite the fact that the UK is about as good as it gets for wind.

But I think a more important point is that very few areas could function solely on renewables. Norway can manage it because it has a lot of geothermal and it has exceptionally good conditions for hydroelectric and it has an extremely low population density. Few areas have that combination of factors.

Hydroelectric is the key factor...and hydroelectric also has a lack of scale economics and a significant build time and high maintenance costs if a reasonable level of safety is wanted. It's also more dangerous than fission, let alone fusion. Once again, Norway is an extreme outlier because its unusual geography and very low population density means that far fewer people would be killed by a dam breach.

Energy storage could theoretically be combined with a vast overcapacity to make 100% renewables viable in more places, but only if it existed and it doesn't. Energy storage adequate for that task is no closer than fusion, might be more expensive and will definitely be more dangerous. The least bad way of doing it so far is pumped hydro, which is very wasteful and carries the same degree of risk as any form of hydro. Also, it's nowhere near adequate for the task and never will be. There's a superb pumped hydro setup in the UK. Dinorwig. A brilliant feat of engineering. Excellent design, superb implementation, minimal environmental impact, as low risk as hydro can be. Extremely expensive. Holds about 8 minutes worth of energy in theory, although in practice less than that. Nowhere near adequate for storage for a renewables grid, not even if we had hundreds of them (which is impossible - there aren't that many places with suitable conditions). It's excellent for the purpose for which it was built - jump-starting the grid in the event of a complete shutdown - and of some use as energy storage. But the scale isn't there and never could be.

Another theoretically possible solution would be a highly transnational renewables grid with HVDC connections and free flow of electricity and overcapacity everywhere. So excess generated from wind during ideal conditions in the UK could fill in a shortfall in solar at night in Morocco, excess generated from solar in Libya during the day could fill in for a shortfall in wind in Poland, that sort of thing. That could be done with existing technology. But the cost would be immense and it's impossible anyway for political reasons and it would be extremely vulnerable to attack.

I think that we need and will continue to need a reliable, controllable baseline generation. The cost of that will be much less than the collapse of modern civilisation, which is what will happen without reliable energy supply. We need it and we can't afford to gamble it on a single type of system that relies on potential future technology that doesn't exist yet. I consider that degree of gambling quite horrifying.
 
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