Matthew Clapham
1 min readMay 31, 2023

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Well, the scenario varies considerably from country to country. Norway is already almost entirely powered by hydro and wind, for example. And Spain and Portugal could quite easily get to 100% renewables in 15 years with grid stability by increasing pumped hydro and battery storage (already planned and in progress), but crucially hugely expanding solar thermal with molten salt storage (massively underused in Spain, despite having been at the forefront of developing the technology), and offshore wind/tidal.

Hence my reticence about adding nuclear capacity now, when in 15 years it could prove obsolescent for some countries.

France is already willingly wedded to nuclear - I guess it makes sense for them to continue to maintain and even expand, rather than embark on a politically vulnerable volte-face now.

Germany probably wishes it hadn't chosen to switch off the nuclear lights after Fukushima, but 'nuclear? no thanks!' bumper stickers have been a staple feature of German society for longer than I can remember - they've never been keen.

It's... complicated.

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Matthew Clapham
Matthew Clapham

Written by Matthew Clapham

Professional translator by day. Writer of silly and serious stuff by night. Also by day, when I get fed up of tedious translations. Founder of Iberospherical.

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