Since PV needs batteries to be grid-useful (duck curve and all that), it's perfectly reasonable to have both.

And no, hydrogen as the storage system doesn't make batteries redundant. Law of conservation of energy. You are talking about using electricity to split water molecules, presumably more electricity to compress and store the collected hydrogen, and then you have the losses associated with converting back to electricity in a fuel cell or conversion to mechanical energy through combustion.

A square meter of PV provides a theoretical maximum of ~1KW at 100%. Even the experimental perovskite cells only get 45% of that. 450W/m^2. Whereas nuclear is measured in gigawatts per reactor with multiple reactors per plant.

Then a storm hits. Far less sunlight. Then something like hail hits. Damage to panels. Then there's the issue of security if someone wanted to cripple the grid.

Nuclear is 24/7, rain or shine, wind or no, impervious to even hurricanes, and already has a robust security and logistics apparatus around it.

I have PV panels on my home. I love the idea of decentralized power. But the hydrogen economy is pretty theoretical at this point. Hard to store for any length of time, comparatively low combustion energy, low energy density overall, etc. It may happen, but "may" is a bad bet for long term national policy. I'd rather push more toward electrified high speed trains than hydrogen.

Not only was a design ready to be built, it was built. Went online 39 years ago. Produced 1.2GWe at peak. Not only produced power on its own but reprocessed spent fuel from other nuclear reactors.

Decommissioned 28 years ago. Because it didn't work? No. Because it wasn't safe? No. Because it wasn't reliable? No, it had a 95% availability rate.

It was taken out of service due to political pressure and legal maneuvering, not technical reasons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix

The main hang ups for fast reactors in the US are: (1) our regulators are less sanguine about occupational safety for plutonium workers then the French and Russians (carcinogenic Pu nanoparticles —- the high energy ball mill can make sand deadly, just think what it can do for Pu) and (2) fear of nuclear proliferation if the “plutonium economy” expands. There is also (3) the economics will never be attractive with a steam turbine and all the heat exchangers that entails, but a power set like

https://www.swri.org/markets/energy-environment/power-genera...

could fit in the employee break room of the turbine house of an LWR and could make it competitive. It’s a big if though.

"Functionally an atomic bomb"?

Why do you speak on topics you obviously know so little about? Where did you get this nonsense?

Fast neutron designs aren't without their challenges, but causing an atomic explosion is not on that list. Hydrogen explosions? Possible. Steam explosions? Possible.

Atomic explosions? Not even theoretically can you get enough U-235 to clump together to do that without cancelling known basic laws of physics.

To build a bomb, you need a purity of 90%+ U-235. Nuclear power plants have what? 2%? 3%? Might even go as high as 5%? Might as well expect a pack of bubble gum to spontaneously explode.