These sources may be of interest for those interested to learn about nuclear power, and especially the cost comparisons with renewables and fossil fuel:

Renewable Limits http://bravenewclimate.com/renewable-limits/

Sustainable Nuclear http://bravenewclimate.com/integral-fast-reactor-ifr-nuclear-power/

Unlimited transport fuels from sea water: http://bravenewclimate.com/2013/01/16/zero-emission-synfuel-from-seawater/

Why renewables are not sustainable:
John Morgan, ‘Catch 22 of Energy Storage’: http://bravenewclimate.com/renewable-limits/

John Morgan’s response to serious critiques: http://bravenewclimate.com/2014/08/22/catch-22-of-energy-storage/#comment-350520

David Mackay, ‘Sustainable Energy without the hot air’: http://www.withouthotair.com/

BREE, AETA reports and models: http://industry.gov.au/industry/Office-of-the-Chief-Economist/Publications/Pages/Australian-energy-technology-assessments.aspx

CSIRO eFuture: http://efuture.csiro.au/#scenarios

CSIRO MyPower: http://www.csiro.au/Outcomes/Energy/MyPower.aspx

‘Zero Carbon Australia – Stationary Energy Plan – critique’: http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/08/12/zca2020-critique/

‘100% renewables for Australia – the cost’ (see summary in Figure 6, and download the spreadsheet to run your own scenarios and sensitivity analyses): http://bravenewclimate.com/2012/02/09/100-renewable-electricity-for-australia-the-cost/

‘Renewables or Nuclear Electricity for Australia – the costs’ (See summary in Figure 6): http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.363.7838&rep=rep1&type=pdf

‘Solar power realities – supply-demand, storage and costs’: http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/08/16/solar-power-realities-supply-demand-storage-and-costs/

‘Solar realities and transmission costs – addendum’: http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/09/10/solar-realities-and-transmission-costs-addendum/

Graham Palmer, 2013, 'Household Solar Photovoltaics: Supplier of Marginal Abatement, or Primary Source of Low-Emission Power?': http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/5/4/1406

System costs for renewables v nuclear:
OECD/NEA ‘System Effects in Low-carbon Electricity Systems’ http://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/reports/2012/system-effects-exec-sum.pdf

Martin Nicholson and Barry Brook, 2013, ‘Counting the hidden costs of energy’ http://www.energyinachangingclimate.info/Counting%20the%20hidden%20costs%20of%20energy.pdf

Myths and realities of renewable energy: http://judithcurry.com/2014/10/22/myths-and-realities-of-renewable-energy/

More renewables? Watch out for the Duck Curve: http://judithcurry.com/2014/11/05/more-renewables-watch-out-for-the-duck-curve/

All megawatts are not equal: http://judithcurry.com/2014/12/11/all-megawatts-are-not-equal/

The case for baseload: http://mydigimag.rrd.com/display_article.php?id=500086

Scientific American: Renewable Energy’s Hidden Costs: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/renewable-energys-hidden-costs/

Nuclear is the safest way to generate electricity (10 times safer than rooftop PV, 4 times safer than wind):

Forbes: ‘Deaths by energy source’: http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/06/deaths-by-energy-source-in-forbes.html

Allowable radiation levels are set too low:
http://home.comcast.net/~robert.hargraves/public_html/RadiationSafety26SixPage.pdf

Video by Wade Allison, Oxford Uni Professor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ6aL3wv4v0

Wade Allison, OLO, ‘Nuclear Radiation is Relatively Harmless’: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=15900&page=0

Regulatory Ratcheting increased the cost of nuclear power by a factor of four by 1990: Bernard Cohen, 1991, ‘Costs of nuclear power plants – what went wrong’: http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter9.html

Slide 10 compares the price of electricity versus the CO2 emissions intensity of electricity for selected countries with high proportions of nuclear or high proportions of renewable energy. The numbers in the circles are the emissions intensity of each country/state. Also notice the irony in Slide 14:
http://canadianenergyissues.com/2014/01/29/how-much-does-it-cost-to-reduce-carbon-emissions-a-primer-on-electricity-infrastructure-planning-in-the-age-of-climate-change/

An interesting piece, thank you.

I don't think there has been any question that storage is the model solution to intermittency for some time. However, reductively framing the problem as storage vs fossil-energy extraction is not especially useful.

The problem we face is to maintain a high-level technologically assisted society. The solution to that problem will include some storage(including vehicle storage systems used for home demand/supply levelling, hydro, thermal, batteries, hydrogen); some large-scale generation (coal, gas, nuclear, hydro,wind, concentrated solar); some local fossil fuel backup power, probably gas turbine or fuel cells; some local generation (rooftop PV, wind, possibly thermoelectric, direct thermal heating, etc).

It will also include efficiencies derived from both changes in usage patterns and by improvements in technology. We've already seen the effedt of LEDs in driving down the power demand due to lighting and computers/TVs. Microsoft has started trials of distributed servers, whereby servers are installed in homes and businesses so the waste heat can be used to reduce heating loads rather than require expensive and energy-hungry cooling within data centres. Distributed data storage and processing is going to have an enormous effect on reducing power demand, both through reducing those direct demands and by reducing the net power consumed by network switching equipment. Prof Rod Tucker of Melbourne Uni has identified power consumption by internet routers as a major problem for future development of the networks.

In addition, geographical distribution and increased ubiquity of generation sources will have its own ameliorating effect on intermittency, both through reducing the effect of local weather and by spreading the time of availability. The sun comes up in Perth two hours after Sydney and goes down two hours later, giving a net 4 hours of insolation overlap across the continent.

It's not all doom and gloom.

So what happens when the -very strictly- non renewables run out? Do we just put our heads between our knees and kiss our butts goodbye?
Batteries are certainly not the only storage solution. As your graph indicates, hydro electric dams are an excellent means of storage. A new 'Bradfield scheme' of high level dams along the Great Divide would not only provide storage for renewable power (wave, wind, solar pumps) but also drought proof most of the nation.
Hall's work demonstrating at what point a cheetah will stop chasing it's prey was fascinating, but in a world where energy has monetary value, and people's lives are not valued according to their energy requirements or surpluses...
Or does the author suggest euthanasing any human who does not create an energy surplus?

Grim - certainly a series of dams in the Great Dividing range or blue mountains would ease the problem of power storage for intermittents but would not solve it, and would be very expensive.. Dams are not cheap. I have seen suggestions for expanding existing dams which would be better but would not provide anything like the capacity required. My recollection from calculations done in Britain is that there was not a shadow of a chance of building all the dams required to cover the times the wind is not blowing.. The system here is different and the weather is generally sunnier but the expense would still be huge.. forget it..

Grim,

Renewables are not renewable. Only their fuel is renewable. They require about 10 times more materials than nuclear and the emissions released to the environment are far more toxic. And they cause more fatalities per TWh energy supplied and higher CO2 emissions: (see links in first comment, e.g. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/renewable-energys-hidden-costs/ )

Importantly, As the post demonstrates, renewables are not sustainable. They cannpt power modern society. That's the point that needs to be grasped.

On the other hand nuclear is sustainable, effectively indefinitely. Estimates of the nuclear fuel available vary from 1000 years to 1 million years supply of uranium (not even including thorium, let alone fusion) to provide ALL the energy needs a world with 10 billion population consuming the same per capita energy as the USA.

The Snowy Mountain scheme was hugely expensive, as was the Sydney Opera House (funded by a raffle).
10% of the population unemployed is enormously expensive, as are the frequent -and becoming more frequent- droughts.
Weaning ourselves off imported fossil fuels not only makes economic -and strategic- sense, it could also save us enormous sums of money.
In a world gone mad, autarky is merely a sensible precaution.
At the end of the day, the machinery used to extract energy from renewable resources is no more elaborate -and considerably less complex- than the machinery used to extract energy from non-renewable resources. Therefore, logically, the only difference in price is the cost of the fuel itself.
One is free.
As for storage, just drought proofing the majority of our country (while creating full employment) would justify the cost in itself; the energy derived would be a bonus.