BURGUM: When the sun goes down, solar produces zero electricity HUFFMAN: I want to enter into the record this amazing

[hunter]

89. Magic in the sense that they would allow us to quit both fossil fuels and nuclear power.

Qualitatively the batteries you name are not any different than batteries we already have. This universe puts absolute limits on what batteries are capable of. Renewable energy utopia lies beyond that limit.

Even if these new batteries cost half as much as today's batteries and they are made entirely from materials that are abundant, they still won't get us through winters of little wind and sunlight.

We now have real world operating experience with gigawatt scale solar/wind/battery power generating systems. It's clear to me that this energy resource cannot support a human population of 8 billion people. Nor can it significantly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions -- significant in the sense of "saving the world."

Our current civilization is not sustainable and it will crash, but nuclear power could make that crash more survivable.

Something I think many solar enthusiasts are aware of, either consciously or not, is that nuclear power makes all these solar, wind, and battery systems redundant. This makes nuclear power an existential threat to both the fossil fuel industry and the "renewable energy" industry.