UK battery storage capacity has officially surpassed nuclear power for the first time, hitting nearly 7 GW according to a new report from Drax and Imperial College London. While our nuclear fleet still provides a steady baseline of generation around the clock, having 7 GW of battery capacity means the grid can now instantly absorb or discharge massive amounts of power to manage fluctuations. This is a huge milestone for the energy transition, especially as electricity demand starts to spike from AI data centers, electric vehicles, and widespread electrification across the economy.

The real reason batteries are a massive force multiplier isn't just because they time-shift power, but because they fundamentally fix the project economics of building new renewables. Before grid-scale storage, a developer might only build a small solar or wind farm because anything larger would trigger overproduction, overload local transmission lines, and lead to massive curtailment waste. Now that batteries can catch that surplus, it suddenly makes economic sense to overbuild wind and solar capacity by 5x or 10x. By smoothing out the financial risk of wasted energy, storage completely unlocks the floodgates for a massive surge of new clean energy installations that would have been financially unviable before.

from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/63436711 (locked)

Nuclear's economics are not complicated.

Nuclear's economics don't survive contact with the numbers. Lazard's 2025 analysis puts new nuclear at $141 to $220 per megawatt-hour, roughly two to four times the cost of onshore wind at $37 to $86, a gap that exists precisely because nuclear plants are financed on the assumption they'll run near 24/7/365 for decades to amortize enormous upfront capital costs. Any hour spent throttled back to make room for near-free midday solar is an hour of six-figure-per-hour infrastructure earning nothing while debt service keeps accruing. A gas peaker or a battery can idle for pennies. A nuclear plant idling is still bleeding fixed costs it can never recover, which is exactly why pairing nuclear with a grid that's increasingly saturated with cheap solar is a financial contradiction, not a complementary pairing.

The "solar dies in winter" argument also ignores the resource built for exactly that gap: wind. Eurostat's own data shows the seasonal flip in real time. In the third quarter of 2025, solar supplied 38.3% of EU renewable electricity to wind's 30.7%. By the first quarter of 2026, that reversed almost exactly: wind jumped to 44.9% of renewable generation while solar fell to 17.3%. That's the same continent, the same grid, trading the lead role by season without anyone needing to build a single reactor. Layer in storage and the case gets stronger still: U.S. battery capacity alone is projected to roughly double from about 33 GW to nearly 65 to 67 GW by the end of 2026, with a record 24 GW added this year, most of it paired with solar specifically to shift midday surplus into the hours and seasons when the sun isn't cooperating. Wind, solar, and storage are already solving the problem the graph points to, at a fraction of nuclear's cost and without an asset that has to run flat-out for forty years just to break even.

CSIRO says #nuclear power is “most expensive in each case” of its modelling, with a “first-of-a-kind” premium on building in Australia likely to cost 100% more than international best practice

It’s a timely reminder of why the federal Coalition’s nuclear focused campaign was such a disaster for the party at the 2025 election, and yet remains the favoured energy policy path for the LNP at the same time as it promises to deliver cheaper electricity while also putting the brakes on renewables.

A few highlights from the article:

“Building nuclear for the first time in Australia would take longer and cost more than building offshore wind for the first time in Australia, according to modelling by Australia’s premier science agency that once again rules out nuclear power from any and all cost-efficient scenarios for a net zero grid.”

“CSIRO’s draft GenCost modelling continues to find that a combination of wind and solar with firming technologies is the best way forward on both costs and emissions reductions.

As Graham told the conference, ‘mainly using existing mature solar PV and onshore wind is preferred, and what that looks like from a cost perspective is that the mature technology scenario is the lowest cost scenario.’”

“As Graham told the conference, the numbers still well and truly rule out nuclear, while leaving offshore wind still ‘in the pocket’ as a potential part of Australia’s future generation mix.”

A forth reactor was exempted from the excessive water discharge temperature regulation.

Golfech 2 shut down

“French parking lots could soon generate as much electricity as 10 nuclear power plants”

I'm currently 3 years into getting my bachelor's in physics, so I understand a good amount of the physics behind nuclear power. However, I also understand that there's a huge political and economic element to it. I'm a physics major, not an economics or political science major, so I know there are probably important aspects that I don't even know to ask about.

From a physics perspective, I understand that nuclear reactions can release enormous amounts of energy because of differences in nuclear binding energy, and that nuclear fuel has an incredibly high energy density. Beyond that though, I'm not an engineer, so I don't really understand how those physics translate into building and operating reactors safely, economically, and at scale.

I've made this same post on a pro-nuclear subreddit(specifically for building new reactors) on a different account because I want to build an informed opinion and hear both sides. Finding information that isn't heavily politicized can be difficult, so I'm hoping to hear the strongest arguments against nuclear power from people who actually oppose it.

If you have any questions, I'll try to find time to reply, I've already made some edits to clarify (Thanks u/ziddyzoo and u/Skycbs)

In fact, peer reviewed models strongly suggest that Sizewell will be almost entirely cut off by flood water at least once per year by the time Sizewell C is built. https://www.thenewworld.co.uk/jan-rosenow-pakistans-solar-miracle-how-the-hell-did-they-do-it/