Comment by toomuchtodo

Except the politics of texas being pro oil and anti-renewable?

In the sub/tropics, usually there are only two seasons: wet and dry. During wet season, how much is PV production affected?

One could argue concentrated solar power [1] is thermal as opposed to photovoltaics.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power

In following the Ukraine war, I've come to understand that in certain usage, 'thermal' always implies 'nuclear thermal', almost like a euphemism rather than a useful descriptor that includes other forms of thermal.

So I think it's a terrible term in general and it's much more useful to describe the fuel, that's all I was asking for.

> Enough sunlight lands on the Earth every 2 minutes to power humanity for a year [1]. ~500-600GW of solar will be deployed in 2024 globally, and we are accelerating to 1TW deployed annually [2].

Enough sunlights lands on earth every two minutes to power humanity if the whole surface of the planet including ocean was fully covered by 100% efficient solar panels. How is this even remotely relevant when we don't have close to the material needed to achieve that coverage and the efficiency of panels is famously extremely low.

The deployment in 2024 is - as usual - expressed in "theoretical max power". Which is nowhere near the actual throughput, and of course orders of magnitude higher than the "when I need it" actually delivery. Again; big numbers don't mean big results; real life scenario matter here, theoretical best is far less relevant.

Additionally, quoting "pv-magazine-usa.com" on this subject must be some kind of silly joke considering that it could as well be named "lobby-webiste-with-a-clear-political-agenda-to-push-for-photovoltaic-and-prove-it-also-cures-cancer.com" and no-one wold bat an eye. Similarly, other HN comment written by yourself usually don't count as "sources" for statements.

We have enough fissile material to support the planet for 10s of thousands of years, so the nuclear proponents can speak in theoretical maximums and still beat you. You don't have enough raw materials on planet earth to continue making solar panels for the next 10s of 1000s of years, given that you need to replace the panels every 10-20 years (optimistically).

Commercial nuclear fission is completely viable for anyone not allowing it to become unviable with lawsuits. See: China.

Downvote me all you want, but you'll live in poverty when there are no factories in your town because the lights turn off during a snowstorm.

The part I hate about the math used in this argument, is that really we should be working with a goal of much cheaper energy production, to enable other green technology.

Yeah, if you use standard new construction capacity planning in some cases solar + wind wins. If you target a much lower average/maximum cost per GW (and higher consumption) nuclear wins.

Things like EVs, electric furnaces for recycling, greener chemical plants and carbon capture mechanisms all become more viable with consistently cheap electricity.

If just the nuclear power plant companies had to fully handle their waste products from the get go, there wouldnt be the delusion today that nuclear energy is free or cheap.

I'm having a hard time seeing much use for new nuclear power plants at the costs they would realistically have (vs. sales pitch costs you hear from nuclear vendors before they confront reality and fail.)