The motion, adopted at conference, removes a “blanket opposition to nuclear fission” and instead commits the Green party of England and Wales to assessing nuclear projects alongside other low-carbon technologies.
Its electricity generation policy still prioritises offshore wind, onshore wind and rooftop solar as the primary sources of electricity, but allows elected representatives to support new nuclear reactors on a case-by-case basis.
This was one or the few areas I didn’t align with the Green Party before, as I believe that a bit of nuclear is kind of necessary to help round out less consistent energy sources as things stand. I think this is a reasonable stance.
You’re not exactly wrong, nuclear is a terrible pairing with renewables for the reasons you listed, but it’s still probably cheaper than batteries under extreme conditions, which is something we do have to deal with.
90% renewables is cheap, 99% is more expensive, 100% is really really expensive. Batteries are great for 24 hour storage, but storing energy for longer starts to become uneconomical and to hit 100% you have to buy enough capacity for the absolute worst case scenario. Anything that baseline nuclear cuts off from renewable demand is potentially cheaper than the theoretical worst case 1% of renewables (eg if there’s no wind and it’s cloudy mid-winter, how much solar/wind do you need to power the country, or how much battery do you need to maintain power for weeks under these conditions?).
Batteries are cheap and getting cheaper every day.
Solar + battery are already cheaper than every other option. Sodium batteries are getting close to lithium in energy density while using much cheaper materials that are easily attainable worldwide and they have almost zero chance of combustion.
That is exactly why I said that under current economic forces, building hydrogen-capable gas plants is the most cost-effective way of dealing with longer, but much rarer periods of low renewable energy production. They combine “low” standby costs and can be throttled within minutes.
The funny thing is, every form of electricity production is better when coupled with batteries, even Nuclear. Because you can keep your power plants in the optimal production range.