These rosy projections of 90+% "renewable energy" are based on delusions and will not happen.  The more "renewables" you add, the greater the cost of dealing with their unreliability and the higher energy prices go.  This will eventually bankrupt any economy run by those foolish enough to try.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianmurray1/2019/06/17/the-paradox-of-declining-renewable-costs-and-rising-electricity-prices/

On top of that, RPSs fail to deliver their promised benefits.

https://epic.uchicago.edu/research/publications/do-renewable-portfolio-standards-deliver

I fully agree with BNEF that REs (mainly solar and wind) will capture an increasing share of the clean energy market and that Hydro (due to saturation of the potential), CPPs and NPPs will continue going relatively down. NGPPs will however maintain a large share of the market for another 50+ years or until NG becomes rare and too costly.

Using solar to produce clean e-energy and storable H2 will become common place.

The problem with renewables is that some days they are not there, so you need an alternative. These days, this means gas - and you'll have to be able to power 100% of the grid from gas for those days when there is no wind and no sun and your batteries are flat.
So it is certainly possible to get to say 70% wind+solar+battery, but you'll still have to keep 100 % gas coverage for the dull, still days, or runs of days.
So, it is possible, but it is NOT cheap as you'll have to keep full dispatchable coverage (read fossil, or fossil+hydro), in terms of plant and people to operate it.
Also, you'll probably want 80% coverage of both wind and Solar.
So you'll end up with 260% generating capacity, which will cost a lot.
I suppose it depends on the interest rate you are paying to fund all that plant.

Independent of the environmental pollution that both, oil and nuclear, have caused, they are both limited resources. Presently, we are experiencing the results of oil with a temperature rise worldwide and all subsequent damages resulting from them.
Oil resources have passed their peak and it will become increasingly expensive to access those remaining and dwindling oil reserves. Nuclear fuels present their biggest problems as experienced in Chernobyl and Fukushima. Where are those thousands of tons of nuclear waste to be safely stored for the next millenniums?
How long will it take before nuclear resources begin to dwindle away like oil.
Humanity has been GREAT in wasting resources and energy. it's high time that we get started to stop wasting both. As long as profits soar for big business and political corruption prevails, there will never be an end to this waste.

As a long time proponent of nuclear power, I would love to see much of the heavy lifting done by small modular reactors.

As for renewables, the problem is storage and intermittency.

I don't know how much of the grid can be supplied assuming a lot of storage as hydrogen or other chemicals, but unless you do that we sure as heck can't do it without to a very high degree of penetration.

I am more optimistic than some on sequestration of CO2.

Here is the UK plan to use 'blue' hydrogen, generated from natural gas but with sequestration in depleted north sea gas fields:

https://hynet.co.uk/

I have to agree with SAEP that a major part of the manmade pollution affecting the climate and the health of most living species comes from fossils fuels and most of their current uses and NOT from dying NPPs nor from fast growing REs.

Cattles create another major source (14.5%) and even more in countries with beef/milk/cheese/ice cream eating habits. Industries and cement factories create another (30+%) etc. Those pollution sources will have to be addressed.

Unfortunately, very few countries can afford the initial building cost of new NPPs. Even China, Japan, EU and USA are seriously looking for other sources of (more affordable) clean e-energy. REs with adequate storage seem to be the most economical avenue and are being built at a very high growing rate.

Over e-energy and fossil energy consumption is one of the major factor leading to the past-current dirty energy production units. Much better homes equipped with solar panels and very high effectiveness heat pumps for HVAC, hot water heating, dryers, inductive heaters etc could reduce residential consumption by over 50% and/or enough to supply e-energy for 2 or 3 family BEVs.

We could and should all do much more.

But at least coal is on the way out.
Nuclear is good in certain regions - needs lots of water.
Palo Verde plant west of Phoenix takes all of the phoenix waste water, treats it, uses it for cooling in the outer loop (inner loop is a closed system) and evaporates 95% of it into thin air. Only plant I know of that does it.
I'm happy that coal is going away.
Solar and wind, mostly wind, can still provide more energy than they are doing so now.
Economics are going to drive the grid cleaner - technology moves a lot faster than politicians.

@yoatmon:

I don't believe in taking unnecessary risks because they may have been minimized to avoid expected natural public reactions.

Who says there is ANY risk?  People have long bathed in certain hot springs because they noted the healthful effects thereof.  Those hot spring waters turned out to be radioactive.

A natural radioactive dose plus in all other foods (fish, oysters, crawfisch, etc. etc.) adds up to an unhealthy dose among all other contaminants that we are bestowed with unknowingly and unwillingly.

A Finn sarcastically asks for relocation for his countrymen because Finland is "dangerously radioactive" according to the standards set by the Japanese government for Fukushima exposures.

More seriously, a study of health outcomes in areas with different natural radiation backgrounds comes up with things like this:

"Tao et al 29] studied cancer mortality between 1979 and 1995 in the HNBR area of Yangjiang. They followed over 100 000 subjects for 19 years and observed 557 cancer deaths. The average annual effective dose (including internal dose) was reported to be 6.4 mSv. The population was subdivided into three cumulative dose groups based on annual dose rate in the area of their residence, and the risk was compared with that for those living in control areas. No increased cancer mortality risk was found to be associated with living in the HNBR areas when all cancer deaths were included (without restriction due to questionable diagnoses)....

A more recent analysis for the Yangjiang area was performed based on an extended followup of the cohort over 20 years [30]. Mortality rates from cancer were not observed to differ between HNBR areas and control areas in China over 20 years. There was also no association observed between cancer mortality and external radiation dose...."

And then there's the study of the results of the Co-60 exposures in Taiwan when a medical radiation source was recycled by error and incorporated into the steel structure of an apartment building.  From the paper (emphasis added):

"Abstract – The conventional approach for radiation protection is based on the ICRP’s linear, no threshold (LNT) model of radiation carcinogenesis, which implies that ionizing radiation is always harmful, no matter how small the dose. But a different approach can be derived from the observed health effects of the serendipitous contamination of 1700 apartments in Taiwan with cobalt-60 (T1/2 = 5.3 y). This experience indicates that chronic exposure of the whole body to low-dose-rate radiation, even accumulated to a high annual dose, may be beneficial to human health.
Approximately 10,000 people occupied these buildings and received an average radiation dose of 0.4 Sv, unknowingly, during a 9-20 year period. They did not suffer a higher incidence of cancer mortality, as the LNT theory would predict. On the contrary, the incidence of cancer deaths in this population was greatly reduced – to about 3 per cent of the incidence of spontaneous cancer death in the general Taiwan public. In addition, the incidence of congenital malformations was also reduced – to about 7 per cent of the incidence in the general public. These observations appear to be compatible with the radiation hormesis model.
Information about this Taiwan experience should be communicated to the public worldwide to help allay its fear of radiation and create a positive impression about important radiation applications."

I've considered reconstructing my bed so I could put bags of potassium chloride under the mattress to get the beneficial gamma exposure from decaying K-40.

@EP 20,000 gallons per minute per unit. 3 units = 60,000 gallons per minute
https://tucson.com/business/local/palo-verde-nuclear-plant-s-use-of-wastewater-defies-drought/article_59b758cb-1106-5197-84ee-96e3935bd208.html

I recently took a tour. They like giving tours because at the end, one sees all the safety steps implemented, and you walk away feeling convinced that the nuclear waste is very small - you can see the small number of containers stored since day 1 of operation, and that the chance for an accident that would actually leak radiation is very small.

The article quoted 92% for Europe, while quoting 80% for some countries by 2050. I can believe the 80% for some countries, but Europe seems a stretch.

Fusion reactors could change the game.

While on the topic, a tesla power wall currently stores ~13 KWh. If all transportation is to go electric by then (which I think may happen even sooner), then there will be a lot of batteries sitting in people's garages with 50 to 75 KWh.

If those batteries can be tapped for storage, then most households will have quite a bit of potential storage at their disposal.

We are living in an era of rapid change, it is difficult to see around the curve when the progress isn't linear.

@TM

Dry cooling towers are available, but Palo Verde couldn't use them effectively because LWRs have too low a source temperature to achieve decent thermal efficiency at a high enough heat-sink temperature.  It takes something like a sodium-cooled or gas-cooled reactor to get hot enough.

AlzHarvey, do you ever get tired of spouting the same old greenwash or is every post a "cha-CHING!" in your bank account?  Are you supplementing your pension with a check written by people who get "renewable" subsidy money?

Higher energy efficiency industries, farming, buildings, vehicles, appliances, residences could reduce current energy consumption by 50% and more at a much lower cost than 400 new large NPPs.

Replacing all those industries, buildings, etc. is prohibitively expensive.  Even retrofitting them costs far more than the savings.

On top of this, 50% is a gross failure.  We need a MINIMUM of an 80% reduction in GHG emissions.  Even if you cut energy consumption by 50% and made half the remainder "renewable", you would still fall short.  Promoting "renewables" is measuring the wrong thing completely; you have to get rid of the GHGs.

Some are lucky to live somewhere that you can run on 80% or more hydro.  These areas are few and have only a few millions or tens of millions of people between them.  For everyone else, nuclear is the only solution that scales.

@ HarveyD:
I can only endorse your disagreement. We're not doing only very little to reduce energy consumption we're doing next to nothing to cut energy waste.
E. g. new fridge combos use ca. 115 kWh per annum; old ones use double that amount (230 KWh). I've replaced ours. Not everyone is in a financial state to afford such replacements but there are plenty of people around who could and don't.
These "scrooges" cling to their old junk relentlessly. The power utilities don't care about efficiency and common sense; all they care about is to sell power to profit at a maximum.
The really intelligent portion of the population is interested in building NPPs and keep up the inefficiency and waste of all electric burdens on the grid.

Per annum is per annum and not per month. A fridge has a life expectancy of ca. 25 - 30 years. Do the math for that time period for cutting needless power; it's less the money more so power efficiency and as stated that is an example of countless more in the household and otherwise.
Droughts are increasing worldwide, crops are diminishing, and water is being rationed. I'd like to see you starting to nourish yourself on those saved green-backs. I'll spend you the pepper and salt when the time has arrived.
You must have spent a lot of time indulging in scientific and engineering subjects but spent to little time on philosophic matters.