Comment by matthewdgreen

Nuclear doesn’t provide the kind of dispatchable power you need to supplement a renewable grid. Nuke plants of the type China is building can’t be spun up and down fast enough. China is currently planning to build a renewable grid backed by fossil fuels just like the US, except they’re using modern coal plants (and paying them not to generate) and we’re using gas. Ultimately it seems likely that coal will be replaced with pumped hydro and battery storage as prices drop, and the nuclear plants will have fewer and fewer profitable applications.

But there’s nothing wrong with all that. China conducted a natural experiment with multiple technologies and renewables and storage appear to have won big. The important thing is that those of us outside of China can learn the lessons without having to repeat the experiment.