Comment by cplusplusfellow
1 year ago
If only the "systems" we were considering were meant to provide limitless and virtually free electricity (nuclear), which is congruence with the "systems" of reducing poverty.
1 year ago
If only the "systems" we were considering were meant to provide limitless and virtually free electricity (nuclear), which is congruence with the "systems" of reducing poverty.
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].
Commerical nuclear fission is unviable at this point [3], even at nimble startups [4] [5], but proponents are free to argue in support of it to anyone who will still listen. Renewables and batteries have reached an escape velocity trajectory [6].
This global energy system will eliminate energy poverty in our lifetime, and like bankruptcy, it'll happen slowly, and then all of a sudden.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37502924
> 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.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38856518) (solar panels produce roughly 200 times more energy per acre than corn). The thought exercise is to demonstrate how cheap renewables are, their growth trajectory, and to guess how soon this impairs all other non renewable generation sources economically speaking. Clearly, the impairment is coming, as this post demonstrates. We’re simply arguing the time horizon.
The links to my other comments are comments that contain citations supporting the thesis, versus an unnecessary wall of text. No facts I put forth are uncited.
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.
Electricity from nuclear is neither limitless nor free. While we would have been much better off (in terms of global warming) if we had not hobbled nuclear power generation decades ago, at this point it's cheaper and faster to build out solar and wind than nuclear.
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.
> 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.
I'd love to see your sources for this. To the best of my knowledge it isn't even close and solar is several times cheaper that nuclear. They used to be more comparable a decade or two ago, but solar costs have dropped dramatically since then.
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>If you target a much lower average/maximum cost per GW (and higher consumption) nuclear wins.
It loses every way. Its LCOE is 5x higher. The PR campaign to save it was about neither its cost nor the environment but economically buttressing the nuclear military industrial complex.
It's SO much more expensive in fact that it's actually cheaper to use wind/solar to electrolyze hydrogen, store it underground in a salt cavern and burn that to generate electricity.
>Things like EVs
Things like EVs are even less suited to nuclear power because they dont need constant power and can charge while electricity is cheap. Ditto electric heating.
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The fifties want their nuclear advertising back…
Nuclear is rather expensive and, with current technology, not „limitless“ in any sense of the word
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.
If said companies were allowed to operate and dispose of waste in a way that had sane risk numbers (say, less than a hundred million dollars per life) then it could be cheap.
Heck, can literally glass the waste and dump it on the abyssal plane, job done. (You can do the maths on this easily enough, essentially zero life is effected and the radioactivity of the ocean increases negligibly)
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Nuclear is definitely part of the mix we need, but we can easily do multiple things.
For one thing, it's neither limitless nor free - the limit is the amount of radioactive ore we mine, and the cost is the cost of setting up a plant, running it, mining the ore, purifying it, transporting it,... The cost of nuclear is actually pretty high. I'm not talking about safety except that the cost factors in both passive and active safety mechanisms. And, they take _forever_ to build and bring to operation.
On the other hand, the price of solar (even without subsidy) is already cost competitive with _coal_ leave alone nuclear.[1] But it's intermittent, and batteries like the article are expensive.
So, the question is not either this or that, but what's the right mix...
[1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Electric...
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.)