There are several technologies that are out of the lab and are being spun up for mass production. Flow batteries are particularly promising, but a big advantage here is that it’s much easier to pursue multiple paths at once. A single tech can be a dead end, but multiple possibilities means it’s likely at least one will work out.

Nuclear has a problem doing that. It’s expensive to fund just one possibility, so you tend to see the industry try one new thing at once. If it fails, the cycle repeats and takes years to try something else. 10 years ago, it was the AP1000 design. Now it’s SMRs, where the recent cancelation of NuScale’s project looks like more of the same.