I have been pro-nuclear for more than a decade, but it is clear that it has lost politically at this point. I used to say that we needed a 40 years nuclear transition so that the solar tech could catch up. We are almost there. We sadly relied on oil and coal instead to develop these tech but we finally are here and it will soon start to make sense to advocate for a direct transition from fossil fuels to renewables.
The wind and solar plants we built between 2012 and 2022 produce more electricity then all the nuclear power plants in the world combined in 2022. The speed we built them is accelerating like crazy. Price for solar panels dropped by 72% in the same period and there is little sign of it slowing down. Similar story for wind especially offshore, but not as fast.
Take India for example. A poor country so financing is difficult, but they add 26GW of solar in the last year up from 12GW in the year before that. If this continues all new electricity demand of India will be meet by new solar in 2025. After that India will propably start to shut down coal power plants. The Chinese add them even faster. Wind is competitive without subsidies in all developed countries. In Europe countries get paid for permitting offshore windparks in their exclusive maritime zone.
There is a reason every pro nuclear argument uses numbers from about 2017. That was basicly the last time lobbying for nuclear made some sense. At this point nuclear is too slow to built and too expensive. If it is available it is smart to keep, but to built new ones they need government backing and a decade to built and well 72% price reduction in solar panels within a deade, with lower prices the nuclear today, make it a hard sell.
We’re all going to make it, as long as we keep pushing for the future we want
I can’t wait for the golden age that negative price energy during the peak will cause.
God I can only imagine that once that day comes a lot of us will rejoice
I think we still need nuclear, including new nuclear, as a backup. It’s easy to imagine a scenario, e.g., a still winter night, where any amount of renewables would fail to provide enough energy, and in that scenario we’d want something we could switch on. Nuclear is the obvious answer!
It’s easy to imagine a scenario, e.g., regions of france for weeks at a time during four of the last ten years, where any amount of nuclear would fail to provide enough energy, and in that scenario we’d want something we could switch on.
The transmission, backup and storage requirements are no different for nuclear vs. renewables. Even a solution as bad as burning the gas and coal we’d use while waiting for nuclear to be built as backup over the next four centuries is much more sane.
Does wind have the maintenance and waste issues that solar has? I know these panels only last 30 years, and I worry about what’s going to be done with these giga solar fields when they’ve become unproductive.
The same we do with 40 years old nuclear power plant: either prolong them with some ajustement (so far efficency losses over time have been overestimated) or renew them with new panels. With the added bonus that the wastes are much more manageable once you have removed the precious metal on it.
Solar panels degrade and technology advances. Industry standard is 1% less ouput every year, but many are better then that. Combined with much better panels and having mounting systems and so forth in place already, it was often economically smart to replace old panels with new ones prodcuing much more power. However after 100years and 1% degredation, they still produce 36% of the old power. We have panels with 0.3% degredation annually. So after 100 years that 75% of the original power generation.
In the EU manufacturers have to gurantee a 95% recycling rate by weight for solar panels.
I’m not too worried about solar. After 30 years solar panels are still productive, they are just slightly less efficient.
I think the standard is that they are still at least at 80% of their capacity new. So unless they are damaged by storm they can still produce pretty much indefinitely.
Even after that it’s quite straight forward to remove solar panels. Any Joe with some basics told should be able to revive the panels. He might need few extra friend to remove the concrete foundation i but that’s it
Wind turbines on the other hand have a lot of moving parts. It’s more like a car, it need regular maintenance and can last for a while but at one point the maintenance might become too expensive. The turbine can also become dangerous. After that removing the turbine will require more advanced equipments but most of it is steel so easy to recycle. The blade on the other hand are not recyclable. So a wind turbine will last between 15-30 years but not much longer.
Solar has no waste issues other generation does not. This is a pro-fossil fuel talking point.
The average lifetime of a nuclear plant at shutdown is 25 years and there is more material consumed per capacity-adjusted watt than with solar. Then there is as much material consumed again as low level and conventional waste, but unlike PV, none of it is recyclable.
Wind consumes more material in the foundations, but used blades (the part people claim is a problem) are insignificant and inert compared to waste from fossil fuels or nuclear.
Comparing nuclear with solar only is not a fait comparison. We need to compare nuclear with solar+storage. Or else it would be the same than saying “We need to stop installing lightbulb in houses, because it’s much cheaper and ecological to light up your house with the sun.”
I’m not saying that against solar, large scale every storage is expensive now but there is a lot of margin for improvement.
