First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled

Also, moving hydrogen by truck is a nonstarter. Pipelines are much better.

Suppose a normal discharge cycle costs 10c/kWh and a very deep discharge costs 100c/kWh to access that last 10%. That means there are energy reserves unacceptably expensive for normal operations, but it also means simply operating batteries efficiently automatically creates reserve capacity which is the entire point of dedicated seasonal storage.

Put another way if you design a 1TWh battery for daily use it’s going to have a 0.1TWh reserve capacity just sitting there.

This isn’t a lot of power across a full season, but it address seasonal storage in terms of short term abnormal peaks like heatwaves.

PS: Proponents of seasonal storage argue for seasonal deficits in production rather than short term gaps. However, the daily variability of renewable production promotes significant excess generation capacity.

No no no no, we are talking about hard labor. I think OP is merely saying that there are jobs that no one wants to do, but they need to be done. So while everyone wish someone becomes the janitor, no one wants their own kid to become one (or whatever job you deem is less "respected").

This is not to say that I don't respect janitors, it is that I WISH i feel respect for them, but for whatever reason (nurture or nature) I simply don't feel respect for them and I constantly fight against this intuition.

"With the price of renewables dropping precipitously, however, the project's economics have worsened."

No matter if you disregard the problem of storing nuclear waste for a couple thousand years, and disregard that no insurance company in the world will give you insurance for your project, and that from time to time you may cause parts of your country to become uninhabitable, etc etc - it simply longer matters.

You just can't beat renewables when it comes to long-term cost. Because they are... well, ...renewable.

In Germany, even with the conservative parties spreading FUD and sabotaging projects, we are now covering 50% of our power usage with renewables. Even the worst politics simply could not beat capitalism: Wind and sun provided for free by the Universe simply makes a good business case.

Over here, the biggest challenge now is that the NIMBYs are preventing new power transmission lines to get built to be able to distribute from where there is most renewable energy, the north, to where the biggest power consumption is, in the south. If we would quickly build this grid, we could be at 100% renewables in a couple of years.

In Germany, Bavaria is NIMBY heaven. They refuse to invest into the grid, wanted to keep running nuclear, but absolutely refused to have nuclear waste storage in their state. Instead they pushed for the states that have 0% nuclear to take their waste.

Also, in Germany the power market is regulated that the price must be the same in all parts of Germany. This is why the north is now finally starting to raise their voices because they are subsidizing the expensive nuclear from Bavaria. If we'd just cut the grid and disconnect Bavaria, our energy prices would instantly drop by 30%.

Given all that, the tendency in the US of "We want to burn more coal! We want to burn more oil! We want to burn everything we have (with the exception of our forests, they are burning down on their own now)!" from a distance really starts to look silly. Where does that strong desire of having to BURN stuff come from? ;)

Too little power for too much fixed cost.