This is not specifically nuclear but anything that affects the grid affects the future of nuclear.
BILL JOY FINDS THE JESUS BATTERYYou are also saying that this can enable a truly smart electric grid?
Yes. If this works out, energy becomes very fungible and we could more easily move energy from renewable sources like wind and hydroelectric. Imagine taking the same ingredients we have in the Duracells and the Energizers, and making very large-format rechargeable batteries—you’re going to make a container full of these things. You make big cells, you make them cheap, and you put them on the grid. Most of the technologies people use now on the grid are things like pumping water up the hill and down—those tend to lose 30 or 40 percent of the energy when you put them in and out of the battery. But these new models are efficient, so you can store and retrieve renewable energy, and it will cost a penny or less to put the energy in and out. We finally can get the smart grid. I call it the energy internet. If I have a wind farm in Texas that’s generating electricity, late at night, I can simply send a kilowatt-hour—a packet of energy—to someone in another place that’s going to use it later, and they can simply store it.
When will we start seeing this in production?
Two to three years for general availability.
https://www.wired.com/story/bill-joy-finds-the-jesus-battery/