No battery farm can protect a solar/wind grid from an arbitrarily extended period of bad weather. If you have N days of battery storage and the sun doesn't shine for N+1 days, you're in trouble. Nuclear fission is the answer. Today there are 440 nuclear reactors operating in 32 countries. Nuclear fission power plants are expensive to build but once built the plant can last 50 years (maybe 80 years, maybe more) and th…
What you didn’t mention is the effect that renewables have on the cost of nuclear power. When you get plentiful and nearly free solar energy at certain times of the year, the utilization of your nuclear power plant will drop. Because nuclear power has high up front costs, its economics are increasingly eroded as more renewables and batteries are added to the grid. You’re totally correct that renewables and batteries…
In the short run, sure. In the long run, cheap power builds its own demand. A country that commits to a certain amount of nuclear baseload, even if run at a loss in the short term, is injecting a very real industrial subsidy into its system. (The way to ensure you don’t get a dog is to subsidise long-term loans for private borrowers. They still need to make a profit someday. But you reduce the time value of money for them.)
The investment doesn’t make sense for a non-nuclear power. But if you’re already producing nuclear waste at scale for your military, it’s a little silly to pretend you’re safer without a civilian reactor in the middle of a desert while all manner of subs and ships patrol your coast.