A change in thinking about energy needs to happen to truly understand why Wind and Solar and a bit of storage is enough. You have to accept that at times there will be overproduction of power because storing it to hit exact use capacity isn’t cost effective. Some storage makes sense, but its much cheaper to have more capacity.

What I think will happen in the future once we reach the point this is how most energy comes is more people will be on Octopus like smart energy schemes where you might get paid for using electricity and there will be companies that use this to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. We are approaching a world of energy excess but only at certain times and there are opportunities to use that energy for the right reasons to reverse the damage we have done with CO2 emissions.

The only thing is that they take up a hell of a lot more space and are a lot more unsightly than “dirty” power plants. Nuclear power is great, the only quandary is what do we do with the spent fuel rods since they’re radioactive for about another 10,000 years.

Nuclear meltdowns like what happened at Chernobyl and Fukushima wouldn’t happen in the US. The only nuclear accident we’ve had was Three Mile Island which is nothing compared to the above two. Also terrorists attacking nuclear power plants wouldn’t happen either because the walls of pretty much every reactor in the US are like 30 feet thick of reinforced concrete, they can withstand direct hits of a 747 or a missile (my dad worked on the one here in NJ), if an ICBM with a nuclear payload is targeting a nuclear plant, we’re already fucked.

Will solar operate if there’s a nuclear winter?