If you get some time, try doing some napkin math on how many batteries you will need to actually do most of the work with wind and solar.
It is something you can work out a ballpark number for a given % of wind/solar and while not impossible it is really a big number. Way beyond what we will get out of actual chemical batteries by 2050, we need gigantic scale pump back hydro projects on top of that. Trillion dollar range. So Nuclear may be less daunting, expensive as it is.
The problem with that is that nobody who is seriously doing energy modelling would propose to do all storage with batteries. That's more a popular misunderstanding than an actual energy concept.
If you plan for a 100% renewable grid what you do is that you use different types of storage for what they're good at. Batteries can play a role in short-term storage, but for seasonal storage they're clearly not a good choice. Electrolyzers and H2 gas peaker plants (or maybe ammonia instead of H2) look like the most promising option.
I wish more people knew this, because all this "I calculated how many batteries you'd need for your renewables, we need nuclear!" clearly is neither an informed take nor helpful.
Let me try some napkin math with nuclear. France is usually taken as a positive example for nuclear. They have 56 reactors on a population of 67 million. For the whole world to get to that level we are talking about 6k-7k in reactors. There are a couple hundred in the world already so let's make it 6k. The costs depend on a lot of things, but 10 billion a pop is a nice round number and for the majority of the world a low estimate. So roughly 60 trillion in construction costs only. Then we need to run them and eventually decommission and store the waste, which even with much smaller scale nuclear programs today will cost hundreds of billions.
Not a realistic solution. We can do more, faster and cheaper with renewables. If you can't get to 100% with renewables, nuclear should anyway be the last option.
Why calculate when we have lots of empirical data? There are plenty of grids around the world are deriving 40% of their energy from wind and/or solar. Up to 65% is relatively easily accommodated according to grid engineering orthodoxy with current typical infrastructure/tech.
Intermittent energy. Doesn’t work well for manufacturing at all. Your argument, without nuclear, is an argument for natural gas and coal.
Industrials need steady power to function. Without nuclear, the world is going to just use natural gas. Coal for poorer countries. Solar and wind peppered in but not trusted for any base load and regionally limited.
HVDC will handle moving energy on continental scales. China makes power in northwest inner parts and moves it thousands of kms to the coast for consumption.
If you want to see some big numbers, look at fossil fuel capex. Those big numbers have been spent year after year for decades on getting us into this problem. Don't expect to get out of it for much less, even though individual renewables projects look cheap by comparison. It has to add up to the same power output.
Analysis put covering the whole US with solar to cost about $5 trillion and the world about $65 trillion dollars. A lot, but it would pay for itself in about 5 years. The only blockade is all the people making all these trillions from the oil and all the power sources that make them all this money.
Who’s “we”, you and the mouse in your pocket? The solar industry is getting that money, one homeowner, building owner, or lot owner at a time. And then, over time, they earn a profit in the generated energy! Sorry you hate making money doing nothing!
It is something you can work out a ballpark number for a given % of wind/solar and while not impossible it is really a big number. Way beyond what we will get out of actual chemical batteries by 2050, we need gigantic scale pump back hydro projects on top of that. Trillion dollar range. So Nuclear may be less daunting, expensive as it is.