Batteries plus solar is still cheaper than all other power systems.
Several of my friends live in states with energy provider choice. Buying from the 100% green power providers is more expensive. Natural gas is extremely cheap after all.
Yep, the unreliability is exactly why buying from 100% green energy providers is more expensive than buying from natural gas providers. Batteries are extremely expensive, natural gas is cheap.
Source: Several of my friends live in states with energy provider choice; the green providers cost more.
Which is why you add storage and wind to the mix. Overproduce energy when it’s available and store the leftovers for when you under-produce.
At this point, saying Solar doesn’t work at night is kind of like saying cars don’t work without wheels. No one is getting solar without storage, just like no one is driving a car without wheels.
There was a time when investing deeper into nuclear would have made a lot more sense. That moment has passed, though. The economics are not on the side of nuclear and the numbers are getting worse by the day - nuclear is getting more expensive over time while renewables and batteries are trending in the complete opposite direction.
It’s basically impossible to get any nuclear built without heavy subsidization because of how poorly they function economically, not to mention how impossible it is to buy insurance for such a venture. This is not inherently bad, but it does definitely displace other areas we could be subsidizing instead. I would be in favour of this if nuclear didn’t have a completely natural replacement in renewables and batteries.
The amount of high level nuclear is overstated and over-exaggerated it’s common for people to refuse the actual figures.
This is what 20 years’ worth of spent nuclear fuel looks like safely stored at the former Maine Yankee nuclear plant.
The plant generated 119 billion kilowatt hours of reliable power from 1972-1996, which is enough to power half a million homes each year.
20 years for half a million homes. And that’s an old generation reactor which is less efficient with fuel usage and not even considering that something like 98% of it can be reprocessed into useable fuel if the incentive was there. The reason its not is the same reason old solar panels aren’t reprocessed into new panels: It’s cheaper and easier right now to just produce new ones.
This pic doesn’t include the less active waste and the hulidng materials of the reactor, thus it’s misleadig to claim this is everything that needs to be stored.
Nuclear waste is a problem for the most like any other. Given enough investment it can be solved, and no I’m not talking about finding better ways to store it.
China has made major advances in this regard, their newest reactors generate waste that is much less long-lived (hundreds rather than tens of thousands of years), and they can reduce the volume of that waste through recycling.
I’m not saying nuclear waste is not a hard problem to solve, it is and we must be careful as a society to make sure it is managed well.
In the meantime, we have a climate catastrophe which is much more pressing. Coal plants, which provide base-load electricity, are a prime target for conversion to nuclear, because their steam turbines can be reused. This could decarbonize a large part of the electricity mix of many countries.
The nuclear waste that lasts for thousands of years isn’t going to be a problem.
It can be used to make betavoltaics.
We might actually run into the problem where we don’t have enough nuclear waste and we might need to spin up a reactor or two to keep making RTGs (for space) and betavoltaics.
Why not nuclear?
You can double check it but I think solar is cheaper now. I was shocked as well, I thought nuclear was the cheapest still.
But solar is unreliable. Night day, snow cover, dust cover. It also has to be local and supplemented by other sources
Batteries.
Batteries plus solar is still cheaper than all other power systems. It’s remarkable but true.
Several of my friends live in states with energy provider choice. Buying from the 100% green power providers is more expensive. Natural gas is extremely cheap after all.
Why do you think solar has to be local?
Yep, the unreliability is exactly why buying from 100% green energy providers is more expensive than buying from natural gas providers. Batteries are extremely expensive, natural gas is cheap.
Source: Several of my friends live in states with energy provider choice; the green providers cost more.
Which is why you add storage and wind to the mix. Overproduce energy when it’s available and store the leftovers for when you under-produce.
At this point, saying Solar doesn’t work at night is kind of like saying cars don’t work without wheels. No one is getting solar without storage, just like no one is driving a car without wheels.
Because of decades of fear-mongering and under-investment (that gets redirected to fossil).
There was a time when investing deeper into nuclear would have made a lot more sense. That moment has passed, though. The economics are not on the side of nuclear and the numbers are getting worse by the day - nuclear is getting more expensive over time while renewables and batteries are trending in the complete opposite direction.
It’s basically impossible to get any nuclear built without heavy subsidization because of how poorly they function economically, not to mention how impossible it is to buy insurance for such a venture. This is not inherently bad, but it does definitely displace other areas we could be subsidizing instead. I would be in favour of this if nuclear didn’t have a completely natural replacement in renewables and batteries.
Only in us I think.
Radioactive waste storage.
I do think that goal power plants need to be turned off before nuclear ones, but neither is sustainable.
The amount of high level nuclear is overstated and over-exaggerated it’s common for people to refuse the actual figures.
20 years for half a million homes. And that’s an old generation reactor which is less efficient with fuel usage and not even considering that something like 98% of it can be reprocessed into useable fuel if the incentive was there. The reason its not is the same reason old solar panels aren’t reprocessed into new panels: It’s cheaper and easier right now to just produce new ones.
This pic doesn’t include the less active waste and the hulidng materials of the reactor, thus it’s misleadig to claim this is everything that needs to be stored.
Nuclear waste is a problem for the most like any other. Given enough investment it can be solved, and no I’m not talking about finding better ways to store it. China has made major advances in this regard, their newest reactors generate waste that is much less long-lived (hundreds rather than tens of thousands of years), and they can reduce the volume of that waste through recycling.
I’m not saying nuclear waste is not a hard problem to solve, it is and we must be careful as a society to make sure it is managed well. In the meantime, we have a climate catastrophe which is much more pressing. Coal plants, which provide base-load electricity, are a prime target for conversion to nuclear, because their steam turbines can be reused. This could decarbonize a large part of the electricity mix of many countries.
The nuclear waste that lasts for thousands of years isn’t going to be a problem.
It can be used to make betavoltaics.
We might actually run into the problem where we don’t have enough nuclear waste and we might need to spin up a reactor or two to keep making RTGs (for space) and betavoltaics.