Molten salt towers are being developed for large scale base load electrical generation plants. Essentially, these systems use arrays of mirrors to concentrate solar heat onto tall slender towers containing common salts. The heat melts the salts, some of which immediately power turbines. The remaining molten salts are stored in tanks where they retain their heat up to 15 hours to power the turbines during nightfall and low sunlight hours.
There currently is one in operation in Spain, one being built in Tunisia, and another planned for Morrocco. These are designed to provide power up to the capacity of two nuclear plants, without the concern of radiation, CO2 emissions and other concerns.
One application of these systems is by Desertec which is a private entity that is dedicated to providing clean electrical power using these systems in the desert regions of Africa.
The molten salt idea is interesting, very high temps and energy storage. The plant in Spain is only 20 Megawatts though, most nuke plants are at least 1000 Megawatts. Must need a lot of land area to scale it up I'm guessing. I thought there was a big solar thermal plant in CA somewhere too.
I've also read about Zinc air batteries or something that are promising for cheap big energy storage.
