The Future Of Nuclear Power And The Electrical Grid

Maggie Koerth-Baker looks at Frontline's documentary on Fukushima, and what effects trying to get away from nuclear power will have on the electric grid (h/t Ritholtz):

There's only so much space in a documentary (or in a review of a documentary) but I do wish that Nuclear Aftershocks had had a little more time to give a better explanation of why a shift to coal is inevitable*. The short version: Our electric grid is not as stable as it seems. At any given moment, we must be producing almost exactly as much electricity as we are using—and vice versa. For all practical purposes, there is no such thing as storage on the grid. Options exist, but they are all very expensive. Wether you deal with this problem with batteries, smarter transmission systems, or both, changing the grid is going to take a lot of money, and a lot more time than we currently give it credit for.
Wind and solar, unfortunately, do not work well with this fragile grid. We can add them in, to a point. In the United States, engineers estimate a maximum of between 20-30% of total generating capacity. To do more than that, we'll need a better grid that can store electricity for later or transport it far more efficiently than is currently possible. Until we get that, we'll need to rely on some source of power that is completely controllable, that can produce exactly as much electricity as we need. No more. No less. There are four options for that: Coal, natural gas, hydro, and nuclear power. Hydroelectric power can't operate everywhere. And the other three all come with serious risks, to local health and to the planet**.
Yet we will still need them for decades to come. So how do we decide which risks we're willing to live with? The only way to do that is to set aside reactionary fear and anger and start having conversations that account for all the risks in an honest way. We have to talk about mitigating risks as best we can—because, as Nuclear Aftershocks points out, we aren't currently doing that in relation to nuclear power, at least not consistently. We have to prioritize our fears. And we have to recognize that, for right now, there is no such thing as a right decision. No such thing as eliminating risk. No matter what we choose, someone will get hurt.

This points to the toughest issue with renewable power, how to balance generation and consumption.  It would seem like some of the strategies used to store power generated by nuclear power would work, like pumping water to reservoirs to store until the power is needed, then running it through a turbine when demand is up.  You might be able to store the energy chemically, such as electrolysis of water for hydrogen.  Another more reliable renewable resource would be capturing wave energy or extremely strong tidal power.  Anyway, there are some strategies which might be able to work.  As is usually the case, the folks in Europe will probably develop the technology first, since German renewable energy generation is already sometimes surpassing demand.