- Germany's has failed to make renewables work, despite throwing more money at it than most places can afford. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/05/06/the-reason-renewables-cant-power-modern-civilization-is-because-they-were-never-meant-to/#7e7f8256ea2b).
- There might be technical problems (https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/renewable-energy-meets-power-grid-operations/).
- It won't work well when we have a "year without a summer".
But we come back to the fact that the voters hate nuclear power.
We are currently addressing this by exporting high energy activities (manufacturing) to non-democratic places, i.e. China. But despots have their own fears, and also don't like to annoy their citizens too much. So this may not continue to work. And the rise of robots means that manufacturing may become more uniformly distributed.
The solution has to be:
- We tell the electorate that we have to do nuclear to address the climate emergency.
- We are going to do it in a safely remote location and use it to make liquid fuels for transport (hydrogen would be good, ammonia is ok) and/or pump the electricity a long way.
- We are going to be very open about the planning. No secret stupidity like Fukishima.
And then let's throw a lot of money and expertise at it. Not in the Chinese way where all the eggs are in one basket. Multiple large competing projects. Plus let's start building reactors that are known to work just in case none of the advanced plans work out.
We've been asleep at the wheel. Time to get moving.
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