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So when humanity eventually runs out of fossil fuels and uranium ores, we're just going to go back to the pre-industrial era?

You can build an entirely solar/wind-powered storage and distribution center capable of putting out 1 GW of power 24/7 with modern PV panels, wind turbines, battery storage, hydrogen storage, etc. It's entirely feasible, and although costs for such a system are high (comparable to that of a 1 GW nuclear power plant), those costs are steadily falling and the long-terms costs are much lower as you don't need to acquire uranium fuel or store the hot waste.



I think the point being made is that without grid scale storage, wind and solar are not full solutions and not comparable to nuclear energy. Grid scale storage capacity will come, but it's not here yet.


But we (well, some of us) have that. Norway has 87TWh of pumped hydro storage that discharges at a rate of 32GW - it would take 3,5 months to empty it completely.


Seems to be happening right now, at least a 150 MW storage grid is up in South Australia:

https://hornsdalepowerreserve.com.au/


> So when humanity eventually runs out of fossil fuels and uranium ores

Worrying about running out of uranium (and the subsequent plutonium) is on the same level of worrying about what to do when the sun goes supernova. Both are problems on century long timescales.


Nope. If humanity were to create the large amount of energy from nuclear, uranium would run out within a century.




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