That is not a good comparison though. You are asking solar and batteries to replicate what nuclear is good at. So nuclear will look good.

A better comparison would be to ask solar and SMR to produce power to meet demand over a 24hr period, where demand is highly variable. Both need significant storage to achieve this.

That is what this train does. It's just that the dynamic charging section is very short.

Well, we won't know for sure unless we try. That they are getting to passenger trials suggest that, yes, it will be cheaper.

Third rails come with hazard, require electrification along the full length which strains local grids, and for long distance can be very expensive. A system with overhead or third rail every 50 miles at or around a station might be very much cheaper.

The dialect is called British English because it is spoken all over Britain and has been for centuries. The existence of Welsh, Cornish and two Gaelics does not negate this, as the spread of those languages has never really coincided with the national boundaries, particularly in Scotland.

The bigger question is why English is called English.

Storage and wind auctions are not linked, but there is 100GWh in the planning pipeline. Not all of that will get built, but it is a 10x increase.

The UK arrests imprisons people for incitement to riot, not mean tweets.

I believe that a good thermal store can increase the efficiency of this sort of plant 30-40 percent, so in that sense quite a lot is in the thermal store.

Yes, of course there is a heat exchanger. It's all very well known and widely available technology. Their claimed efficiency is 70% over 12 hours, so that is enough to make solar function all day, at half the unit price of lithium.

Of course, these figures might not pan out, they might not be able to scale up, or battery prices might drop fast enough that their lower cost might disappear. Or their dome might be too weather sensitive or, or, or. For now, though, they appear to have an early stage product that has a reasonable chance of success.

They have a big tank of water. That keeps the gas below 30C for compression and warm during expansion. They have been doing this for three years. How that works in summer in Sardegna, I don't know. I guess a bit of insulation and some evaporative cooling.

They buy the CO2 commercially. Very little should be lost. CO2 isn't hard to source in industrial quantities.

It isn't hard to find their given efficiency claims, as you can also find compressed air stats, but of which are in commercial prototype phase. CO2 is better than air but you need to keep the CO2 around.

That is what the big dome is for. It is inflated with gaseous CO2, which is reused during charging. The CO2 is closed cycle

The problem is, when you discharge you get a lot of cold. So your turbine efficiency drops unless you can get heat from somewhere. Thermal stores keep cold from discharge and heat from charge to offset against the next cycle.

It doesn't. Most code doesn't use nor need unsafe. Most uses of unsafe are well encapsulated.