> it is stilly to pretend it is not a big deal

Let's see what is silly here. I wrote "way less a criteria for production units not consuming any fuel (wind, solar...) (and doesn't produce) waste", let's check the details:

> overbuild
> that obviously increases the cost, land use, etc by that factor.

The capacity factor, by itself, means nothing because its impact isn't direct: it is applied to some costs, emissions and land use. The costs of renewables is very low and declining (nuclear is high and raising), therefore the fact that a given production unit isn't always active doesn't cost. See the total cost of the energy produced (integrating capacity/load factors): https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2020

Same for their emissions, which are calculated by unit of energy produced and therefore also taking into account their capacity/load factor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_intensity#Electric_ge...

As for land use the main renewable reserve in nearly all nations are offshore wind which doesn't use land, or hydraulics. Moreover in most nations there are unused/unusable zones, even on buildings/parking lots/arable zones (photovoltaics)/...

> If you need to spend billions of dollars to add new transmission lines or some hypothetical new grid storage, that also increases the costs

Indeed, and that's the reason why the very fact that the total cost of the energy produced by renewable energy sources is low (and declining) is of paramount importance because it offers financial provisions to compensate this.

The rest (no risk of major accident (nor risk of any terrorist/military attack triggering it), no dangerous waste, no dependency towards sources of uranium, no daunting decommissions, no hypercentralisation nor heavy bureaucracy necessary...) comes as a bonus.

> Everyone making any power source will try to get as high as possible capacity factor.

Absolutely, my thesis is not that such a strategy isn't always sound, it is that a low capacity/load factor isn't, by itself, a show-stopper.

> Even when the power sources weren't intermittent, there were still many reasons to try and develop grid storage

Yes, and it lowers the costs of the huge grid beneficial to renewable sources, because a quite large grid is good whatever the type of source (renewable or not).

In Europe the case is particularly clear:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continenta...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_super_grid

> In the 100 years since pumped hydro was developed, we haven't really deployed much of any other kind of grid storage.

Because fossil fuels are so convenient for storage... and we then neglected carbon emissions. Now that peak oil/gas and climate are threatening, our attitude towards fossil fuel has to change.

> If making more grid storage was cheap and easy, we would have been using it for a long time.

This is not sound as the objectives (avoiding emitting carbon...) and technical constraints (wind turbine and solar panels now available are much more efficient and industrial than those available even only 25 years ago) were different than ours: fossil fuels were considered vastly superior. They aren't anymore.

Same for storage: as the need for it raises, gorillas appear in the room (see batteries https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline , green hydrogen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_hydrogen , V2G https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid ...)

>>> (renewables) ((...)) what if that doesn't pan out?

>> It better does, as our current (worldwide) ability to build nuclear reactors is very weak, and weakening, and as there isn't any third approach in sight.

> You didn't actually answer

IMHO I did, bar any other option than nuclear or renewable sources. Can you name one?

> If countries actually decide they need them and commit to building them, they obviously can build them.

In which wonderland 'wanting to' is equivalent to 'being able to'?

> France was able to build enough plants in a 15 year period to make it the majority of their power

This is not exactly comparable. France built a nuclear fleet in 25 years (1974-1999)
See https://web.archive.org/web/20211225120958/https://upload.wi...

France was then equipped with heavy industry (it isn't anymore ), financially at ease (after the 30 Glorieuses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trente_Glorieuses ) while it now deeply indebted, facing a way smoother challenge (the amount of electricity consumed was then a third of what it now it, moreover there was no 'electrification' (replacing all fossil fuels uses by electricity) real plan) and pushed by a major strategic risk (Arabs/Israel - triggered risk of oil embargo) while climate wasn't really a thing for long (and facts show that it really isn't yet).

This nuclear fleet then produced up to 90% of their gridpower. Note: this electricity is 25% of the total amount of final energy consumed in France.

As for present times France tries, since 2005, to build a reactor in Finland and it is a major failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant?...
another one in France and this is another major failure
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
2 reactors were built in China (60% overbudget, 5 year late, 1 reactor stopped since mid-2017 after and incident and the other one in low-power mode for the same reason). The more recently launched project, in the U.K. is already drifting away and serious doubts about its economic performance are building up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C

> We will see how many nuclear plants China builds over the next 20 years.

The recent information about this is a Bloomberg article ( https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-cli... ) which states that the boss of Chine General Power corp. announced his plans 200GW for 2035, nothing more.

Admitting that it is an official governmental announcement (it doesn't seem so(?)) and given that China already has 50GW, that's maybe 100GW new (way less than 150 standard reactors).

Those last years China built between 1 and 5 reactors per year and nuclear produces about 6% of their electricity.

Compare with renewables: 790GW already running (26% of the gridpower), and 1200GW planned for 2030. In 2020 China added 71,6GW windturbine power.