Yep, and fusion reactors will probably be even more expensive (especially the first ones). Looking at the current prices of renewables, I don't see a market for fusion reactors at all to be honest.
After all we already have a giant fusion reactor just 12 light-minutes away from us! We just have to harvest that energy. The direction were already going (mostly market-driven nowadays actually!) is generation from renewable sources, flexible grids and storage systems to balance everything out.
This minimizes the main problem with really going full renewables, storage. Fusion is 24/7 output at the same level. Solar and wind are not, which means batteries, and all the problems associated with that.
Fusion could obviate the need for grid-wide storage systems which would be a huge advantage.
Making the box of salty radiation medicine an order of magnitude cheaper and shoving a bit of hydrogen in a salt cavern solves the storage problem (which is already far smaller than you're pretending) entirely.
Fissions reactors that don't have incredibly strict and expensive regulation are already pretty unreliable, and they're operating within the bounds of known materials rather than an order of magnitude outside of them.
Even the mythical 100% uptime nuclear reactor still needs just as much storage for abritrage because it is so much more expensive.
Not if fusion would cost orders of magnitude more than storage.
"All the problems associated with" what? Modern batteries don't burst into flame. Anyway the overwhelming bulk of storage is not and will not be chemical batteries.
Economic challenges of quickly building grid-scale battery storage , battery production for the entire globe, NIMBY's etc.
> Modern batteries don't burst into flame
they literally do
> the overwhelming bulk of storage is not batteries
Well overwhelming bulk is a high bar and storage is geography dependent. Germany f.e. can't build as much pumped storage as Australia and Australia built a large amount of battery storage vs PSH.
Lithium-ion batteries burn. But the topic was "modern batteries", which at the instant moment means LiFeP batteries, not "previous-generation batteries".
Lithium is anyway not favored for use in utility-scale storage, where its light weight offers no compelling value. Up-and-coming chemistries include iron-air (no explosions), calcium-antimony (no explosions), and bromine-zinc (no explosions). Hundreds of other chemistries are available.
After all we already have a giant fusion reactor just 12 light-minutes away from us! We just have to harvest that energy. The direction were already going (mostly market-driven nowadays actually!) is generation from renewable sources, flexible grids and storage systems to balance everything out.