There is a good solution for long term energy storage: use solar energy to make synthetic hydrocarbons. This is a solution that has been proven for billions of years.
We can already capture solar energy at a much better energy efficiency than living beings. Making hydrocarbons with hydrogen extracted from water by electrolysis and concentrated carbon dioxide has acceptable efficiency and already almost one century ago it was possible to do this at a large scale where fossil oil was not available.
The step that has the least efficiency for now is concentrating the dilute carbon dioxide from air, which plants do much better.
There is no doubt that the global efficiency of such a process could have been greatly improved if only a small fraction of the resources allocated to much more frivolous goals had been allocated to this purpose.
While other alternatives are speculative, it is enough to look outside to see plenty of PoCs that this is feasible.
There is a good solution for long term energy storage: use solar energy to make synthetic hydrocarbons - that'll cost you in the end much more than throwing some nuclear in
Apart from the fact the round-trip efficiency is abysmal, hydrogen is so small and lightweight, it leaks through everywhere unless you have some specialized (read, expensive) equipment.
I'd say why not if we could just repurpose gas infrastructure for it but turns out, no. I know people like to accuse each other's favorite energy sources of being fossil industry shills but hydrogen truly look like an attempt at stalling by big fossil. Hydrogen sounds good to politicians who don't understand energy, only understand fuel and just want a new clean fuel.
We can already capture solar energy at a much better energy efficiency than living beings. Making hydrocarbons with hydrogen extracted from water by electrolysis and concentrated carbon dioxide has acceptable efficiency and already almost one century ago it was possible to do this at a large scale where fossil oil was not available.
The step that has the least efficiency for now is concentrating the dilute carbon dioxide from air, which plants do much better.
There is no doubt that the global efficiency of such a process could have been greatly improved if only a small fraction of the resources allocated to much more frivolous goals had been allocated to this purpose.
While other alternatives are speculative, it is enough to look outside to see plenty of PoCs that this is feasible.