Clark, how could Nuclear become base load?
Germany, Italy, Switzerland and Austria have sworn off it after Chernobyl and Fukushima, surely you can’t make people or countries pay for the most expensive way to make electricity if they are frightened of it and have voted to rid themselves of it? Poland is still mainlining on coal as are Germany, Australia are still opening vast new open cast coal fields to fuel India and China. This is for base load electricity. To me it is stupid to move to the complexity of Nuclear Power, many countries could not be trusted with it.
Imagine if the Russians or Americans had constructed Nuclear Power stations in Afghanistan, now controlled by terrorists?
Methane is the present option for base load electricity.
However I feel that with HDVC Interconnectors and a wonderful mix of renewable options, we may not always need base load.
When all new housing is constructed to produce their own electricity.
When new engineering plants are to be constructed a new requirement could be they will be mostly self contained in energy.
I think this is the aim of Elon with his factories.
That does however use a lot of water in the Atacama where the dust blows for hundreds of miles as they extract Lithium.