@kravietz
Even if someone cut down the trees in their yard, PV is still one of the best sources of energy:
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/12/16/mediocrity-is-the-enemy-of-the-solution/
@mithrandir @kravietz
Definitely worth investigating to some extent. Scaling properties on solar are hard to beat, but small self-contained nuclear batteries could be competitive.
@mithrandir @kravietz
Per the link I dropped, problem with NEW nuclear is it takes like 15 years to bring it to completion. So shutting down nuclear prematurely is probably a bad plan, but spinning it up right now is kind of a case of too-little-too-late. New solar deployment is up within a year.
Also scaling properties. Every solar panel built makes building the next one cheaper. True too of reactors but not many of them are (ever) made so scale doesn't happen.
>New solar deployment is up within a year.
Indeed, it is quicker to build the plant, but the plant also takes up more space (with exceptions -- those towers outside Vegas are wonderfully compact, idk how much power they put out though), and you have to build it somewhere where you get sunlight/wind reliably enough that the plant is worth building. For a lot of cities that means the plant has to be far away, which leads to high line loss.
OTOH solar and wind are eminently the best strategy for power in rural and low-density urban areas, where the cost of land is cheaper and also it makes more sense to spread out power production. A small town would probably be better served by nearby solar and wind farms than a faraway nuclear plant.
The article you linked seems to be making an argument that *nothing* besides wind, solar, and waves should be invested in. That just seems shortsighted to me, especially when so many proposed power sources are still in their infancy.
>Every solar panel built makes building the next one cheaper.
Huh? You mean that it's easy to mass produce them, right? There is not an infinite supply of silicon, and the fixed marginal cost of the production process remains the same until you change the production process.
@mithrandir @kravietz
1. "Naive" economies of scale, bigger more efficient factories, better processes.
2. R&D-based economies of scale: more people buy PV, more competition, more R&D investment --> higher efficiency, longer lasting PV made with cheaper materials and processes.
Same story as batteries. It's not govt research that's driving these curves, it's competition.
~
@lain @mithrandir @kravietz
Batteries. Buy a phone, buy a Tesla, push dat curve.
Because PV is actually made mostly of mined resources, as this friendly ad from Australian Mining (!) demonstrates
@kravietz @lain @mithrandir
A PV cell is mined and then runs 10 years. A cm3 of gas is mined and then burned within a couple of hours.
Also I prefer the Australians, they don't try to invade Europe every chance they get.
I don't think anybody supports fossil fuels in this thread, so this argument is irrelevant.
The problem with PV is specifically what you described - it runs 10 years, and then you need a new one.
Per 1 W of energy mining requirements are much higher for PV than other sources.
Then you need a whole lot of them due to low surface power density.
Then you need even more due to low capacity factor.
And then you need storage.
@mithrandir @lain @kravietz
Love how they have this little black sliver "Geological repository". Cost of storing the waste 100,000 years is way higher than that, but I guess that's close to the cost of giving it to the Mafia to dump off the coast of Somalia.
@cjd That’s the problem most people have with nuclear power, after the elephant in the room, dirty bombs all over your country. It’s hard to convince a people who couldn’t hold their country together for 300 years that there’s a good plan for the next 10,000 years. (Did you write 100,000 on purpose?) @mithrandir @lain @kravietz
But it's based on three fundamental misconceptions:
1) that only nuclear reactors produce radioactive waste
2) that it needs storing for 100'000 or 10'000 years
3) that radioactive waste is the *only* one that needs safe storage for a long time
@kravietz I have spoken before with people in the industry whose job was to push nuclear power, which is nothing but a solution of what to do with the existing waste we have now.
1) that only nuclear reactors produce radioactive waste I’ve not heard of anything producing nuclear waste in the massive amounts that nuclear power or weapons do. Do you mean small amounts like for medical purposes?
2) that it needs storing for 100’000 or 10’000 years Those proponents never said that long-term storage wasn’t necessary, never was the thousands of years contested. Their solution was it would be encased in concrete and stored at the reactor sites themselves. I found that silly because those sites won’t last that long either and it would be even harder to get people to accept a reactor near their home. (And check the comma key on your keyboard. I think it’s on upside down)
3) that radioactive waste is the only one that needs safe storage for a long time I’ve heard the big problem with solar power is its disposal too. Not crazy toxic like nuclear waste, but must be disposed of in dumps lined with rubber or similar, like you would batteries or computer parts. What else needs long-term storage in figures like thousands of years (which was not denied by the people selling it).
> crazy toxic like nuclear waste
Nuclear waste is not "crazy toxic". There are plenty of much more toxic things around and we are literally bathing in ionizing radiation every day, we evolved in an irradiated world. Here's a good scientific explainer on that:
@kravietz @epic @lain @mithrandir
Not really worth arguing about. Nuclear power is dead everywhere except China, and when China melts down it'll be dead there too.
Dead?! Are you living on the Moon? Because in Europe there's a whole lot of operational reactors and new in constructions. As of today nuclear power provides 25% of all EU electricity and 50% of low-carbon.
@kravietz @epic @lain @mithrandir
New projects, or just old ones from the 80s ?
Finland 2005, France 2007, UK 2018, Russia 2010, Belarus 2014 - and these are only those under construction (actually Belarus went into production this year)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors
Also worth mentioning ITER that goes first plasma in 2025
@kravietz @epic @lain @mithrandir
Looks like all of Germany's reactors were 60s and 70s era, France's are all 70s and 80s and are still being operated -- though questionable how dangerous these old beasts become.
Also worth noting these timelines. Every year of construction is a year of additional debt you take on, this is probably one reason why solar projects are able to raise money easier than nuclear.
It's not "questionable" at all. They are inspected and their licenses extended for another 20 years. A boiling water reactor can safely operate for 80+ years. That's hell of a return on investment, especially if you count CO2 emissions avoided.
@kravietz @cjd @epic @lain @mithrandir Operating for 80 years isn't sufficient information to determine ROI. You also need to include initial capex, opex, profit, etc.
@kravietz @cjd @epic @lain @mithrandir every generation project would like to assume it operates at a profit for the full lifecycle. Energy market can change, more cost effective generation can come online, demand can be reduced (customers trade their 100w incandenscent for 5w led, their 500w desktop + CRT for a 50w laptop + LED monitor etc). everything about the grid is evolving, the history of energy policy walks a balance between overregulation and underregulation failures