In a word, reliability. Nuclear is /by far/ the most reliable energy source.
Nuclear power plants produce maximum power 92.5% of the time. Compare that to other energy sources:
- Geothermal: 74.3%
- Nat gas: 56.6%
- Hydropower: 41.5%
- Coal: 40.2%
- Wind: 35.4%
- Solar: 24.9%
Batteries are a joke. Consider the 409MW / 900MWh battery at Florida Power & Light: this is only enough to power 329,000 homes just over two hours. What happens after the juice runs out? In a day the RE Ginna Nuclear Plant in New York operates at 582 MW--in 24 hours thats 13,968MWh guaranteed! [3] That's powering over 329,000 or more homes without fear of outages. Battery systems in conjunction with renewables brings the capital cost per kwh of nuclear vs renewable to closer to 2:1 (6k $/kW vs 3k $/kW) too. So you're essentially getting 3x the reliability for 2x the cost when using nuclear and outages that exceed a few hours are a non issue. [4]
Nuclear power plants produce maximum power 92.5% of the time. Compare that to other energy sources:
- Geothermal: 74.3%
- Nat gas: 56.6%
- Hydropower: 41.5%
- Coal: 40.2%
- Wind: 35.4%
- Solar: 24.9%
Batteries are a joke. Consider the 409MW / 900MWh battery at Florida Power & Light: this is only enough to power 329,000 homes just over two hours. What happens after the juice runs out? In a day the RE Ginna Nuclear Plant in New York operates at 582 MW--in 24 hours thats 13,968MWh guaranteed! [3] That's powering over 329,000 or more homes without fear of outages. Battery systems in conjunction with renewables brings the capital cost per kwh of nuclear vs renewable to closer to 2:1 (6k $/kW vs 3k $/kW) too. So you're essentially getting 3x the reliability for 2x the cost when using nuclear and outages that exceed a few hours are a non issue. [4]
[1]: https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nuclear-power-most-reliab...
[2]: https://www.energy-storage.news/worlds-biggest-solar-charged...
[3]: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=104&t=3
[4]: https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost... page 28