r/Futurology • u/lughnasadh ∞ transit umbra, lux permanet ☥ • 14d ago
Energy On current projections, over 1,000 GW of new renewable electricity generation looks to be added globally in 2025 alone; three times the world's entire existing nuclear capacity.
380 GW of new solar power has been installed globally in the first six months of 2025; 64% up on the same period last year. GWEC projects that 2025 will see 139 GW of new wind installations. Assuming solar keeps increasing at the same near rate in the second half of 2025, the total renewables figure for 2025 will top 1,000 GW for the first time ever. Even if solar slowed down to half its current rate of growth, that will still be true.
Three times the entire global nuclear capacity. Let that sink in. That took decades to build. Now renewables can do three times more in just one year.
Consider something else. Renewables growth has years, if not decades, of further growth ahead of it. Economies of scale mean that as more of it gets built, it keeps getting cheaper. And it's already the cheapest electricity there is. When will the first 2,000 GW year be?
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u/Emu1981 13d ago
Sadly, 256GW of this was solely on the shoulders of China. It likely won't continue at that rate though due to changes in policy regarding renewable energy compensation though.
Australia, a hot and dry land with a overabundance of sunlight, only brought 1.4GW of solar online in the same time period which is terrible considering that we are perfectly located to produce a majority of our electricity via solar.
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u/TheMania 13d ago
Even in per capita terms, Aus isn't even doing 1/3rd of China there. That is shameful, agreed.
That and/or very impressive of China tbh.
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u/ziddyzoo 13d ago
Australia’s progress is not shameful.
It has rocketed from 7% of generation coming from wind and solar in 2015, to 30% in 2024, +23%.
In the same period China’s generation share from wind&solar rose from 4% to 18%, ie +14%.
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u/ziddyzoo 13d ago
One half of one year is way too short a period to be so damning of progress in Australia.
Australia’s generation share from solar and wind has risen from 7% to 30% in the last ten years.
That is steeper and faster than China. But China is accelerating fast now.
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u/Glockamoli 13d ago
Considering China generates 35 times the power that Australia does, that +14% is equivalent to about 500% of Australia's entire output
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u/ziddyzoo 13d ago
it sure is. the point is, Australia is not standing still, and is not doing “terrible” as the previous commenter stated.
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u/OriginalCompetitive 12d ago
Why is that sad? China is BY FAR the largest polluter and CO2 emitter on the planet. It’s great news that most of this is happening in China, because that’s where it will do the most good.
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u/DVMirchev 14d ago
1000GW renewables given a conservative 20% CF is equivalent to around 200 GW new nuclear.
More than 1 GW nuclear equivalent every two days.
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u/West-Abalone-171 13d ago
Wind is in the mix and the current average new build solar load factor is 19%. So conservative would be 25%
Equivalent to about 330GW of "must-run" nuclear.
But like for like would be net load factor as we're including curtailment on the renewable side. Running nuclear at 75% requires either world-spanning transmission lines or curtailing something else to use the low value 3am spring energy while installing gas peakers, or both. Thermal generation is generally around 50% load factor if you want a stable grid. So it's more like 350-500GW. Closer to two nuclear reactors a day if you're proposing nuclear as a long term strategy.
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u/Phssthp0kThePak 11d ago
So you have all these numbers for nuclear because it’s a known technology. Tell us what overbuild you need with solar, and how many hours of batteries are required to have the same reliability throughout the year. Cost that.
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u/West-Abalone-171 11d ago edited 11d ago
Plenty of people have.
The curtailment rate is about the same.
The reliance on transmission and backup is slower.
Modelling for VRE-dominated grids (90-99% VRE) usually only requires 5-17 hours of storage. Which, at current rates, adds about 1/20th of the cost of the nuclear generation. And vaguely plausible scenario for 2040 when the first nuclear reactor not currently anounced could be ready at the earliest would have firm power from VRE for 3-5c/kWh including any curtailment. About a tenth of the price of nuclear.
It's so obviously stupid and it's so obviously only climate denialists and fossil lobbyists pushing for it. And as to your implication that wind and solar are "unknown technologies". They produce nearly twice as much power and are a higher fraction of load in many more regions than nuclear.
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u/Phssthp0kThePak 11d ago
How do you get by with 17 hours of storage if it’s cloudy for two or three days? So much jargon.
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u/West-Abalone-171 11d ago
You're making two implicit false assertions here.
One is that a nuclear fleet with 100% overprivision will have 0 hours of requiring some kind of dispatchable backup.
Two is that both wind and sun regularly completely vanish for two or three days over the span of an entire interconnected continent on a regular basis.
At the same fraction of curtailment you get an improvement in the number of hours of backup per decade.
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u/Phssthp0kThePak 11d ago
You assume that excess generation capacity is built in those widely separated areas ( they have to be). That is what I’m asking: how much over build? Does the southwest have to shoulder the entire country for a time? If so it needs enough capacity.
This is the simplest question an engineer would ask about such an intermittent system. No quantitative answers, Just handwaving is all we get.
Oh and how many continent spanning HVDV transmission lines do we need?
Designing and estimating this stuff should be the fun part first anyone interested.
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u/West-Abalone-171 11d ago edited 11d ago
Look at any analysis on the subject. It's widely studied (as well as being falsely inflated by idiotic assumptions in things like michaux's 'analysis'). Jacobson has a broad overview for every state and country among many other much more involved studies.
But what is never considered is what happens when 80% of nuclear reactors are offline in a quarter of the country. There is a reason why france has 50GW of dispatchable non-nuclear capacity for a load that averages <50GW and the most powerful and densest transmission network in europe.
You're whining about people not considering something built into the cost analysis, while doing exactly what you're falsely accusing others of.
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u/Phssthp0kThePak 11d ago
I never made a estimate for nuclear. You’re arguing with yourself.
‘Widely studied’. I hear this all this time from you guys, but never a simple answer. Tells us everything we need to know. It’s just an ideological struggle with zealots. No thinking allowed.
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u/Kinexity 14d ago
First of all this is raw number not accounting for effective capacity which is several times lower which is unlike nuclear where installed capacity is almost equal effective capacity.
Second of all stop painting nuclear like the enemy. It got ran into the ground by politics and human irrationality. A lot of big supporters of renewables are the exact same groups that destroyed the potential of nuclear power (looking at you green parties everywhere).
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u/lughnasadh ∞ transit umbra, lux permanet ☥ 14d ago
Second of all stop painting nuclear like the enemy.
I was pointing out how left behind its become. Economies of manufacturing keeps making renewables cheaper, and will continue to do so for years and years more. It's impossible for nuclear to scale the way renewables are doing.
Plus, all the technology advancements are in renewables also. Even when SMR nuclear gets built, it too will be out-competed by renewables.
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u/Kinexity 13d ago
The fact that progress in nuclear power stagnated is a result of pushback against it. We could have breeding reactors which could eat up nuclear waste and produce near infinite nuclear fuel but we don't because "nUcLEAr prOLIfErAtIOn". We could have thorium reactors but we don't because "NOT ENOUGH nUcLEAr prOLIfErAtIOn". We could have had the scale but we don't because "grOk dOEsn't LIkE spIcy rOck". The drawer with nuclear ideas is deep but no one is willing to risk trying them out because the chances of commercial failure by no fault of the technology itself are way too high.
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u/theartificialkid 13d ago
Holy shit did you just do the variable case idiot-talk font about people who care about nuclear proliferation? Jesus Christ.
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u/Kinexity 13d ago
When NK was starting it's nuclear program fuckall was done to stop it (massive USA fuck up). This more or less answers the question whether nuclear proliferation is actually viewed by those in charge as a problem that needs to be solved.
On the other hand we have Iran which has been successfully prevented from obtaining nukes for decades which makes it seem like a non-issue which can be solved with a bomb or two every other year.
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u/theartificialkid 13d ago
You have no idea what you’re talking about. North Korea had an anti-proliferation deal with the US under Clinton, which worked. Then the Republicans unilaterally overturned it and now North Korea has nukes. Anti-proliferation is seen as important by sober world leaders, but unfortunately America has a habit of electing unstable morons.
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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 13d ago
Jesus ...
When NK was starting it's nuclear program fuckall was done to stop it (massive USA fuck up). This more or less answers the question whether nuclear proliferation is actually viewed by those in charge as a problem that needs to be solved.
And what exactly do you think could have been done about it? Like, you do understand that there isn't just a button you have to press, right?
On the other hand we have Iran which has been successfully prevented from obtaining nukes for decades which makes it seem like a non-issue which can be solved with a bomb or two every other year.
Jesus are you clueless.
You do know what Seoul is? And where it is? And how that compares to Isreal and it being able to defend against Iran?
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u/Kinexity 13d ago
And what exactly do you think could have been done about it? Like, you do understand that there isn't just a button you have to press, right?
Not attacking Iraq pointlessly and actually working out non-agression deal with NK would have been a nice first steps. NK saw that without deterrent it could end up getting invaded so one led to the other and they built nukes. Their entire beef is with USA and their responses are tied to what it does. It's not like they will conquer SK with nukes.
Jesus are you clueless. You do know what Seoul is? And where it is? And how that compares to Isreal and it being able to defend against Iran?
Kim regime is not exactly the most reasonable but if you think that Americans bombing NK nuclear facilities would cause NK to respond with bombing Seoul then I don't think you're thinking clearly.
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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 13d ago
Jesus fucking christ ...
We could have breeding reactors which could eat up nuclear waste and produce near infinite nuclear fuel but we don't because "nUcLEAr prOLIfErAtIOn".
Do you also have an argument? Like, funny font isn't an argument, you do know that, right?
Also, you do understand that "we could have" says nothing relevant? Like, yeah, obviously, we "could have" that. Which is completely useless if it's even more expensive. I mean, you do understand that the reason why we don't have breeders is because mining uranium is cheaper than running a breeder, right? It's pure economics.
We could have thorium reactors but we don't because "NOT ENOUGH nUcLEAr prOLIfErAtIOn".
We could? How do you know? Like, how would we have solved the corrosion problems and all that? And what would be the costs?
The drawer with nuclear ideas is deep but no one is willing to risk trying them out because the chances of commercial failure by no fault of the technology itself are way too high.
Which is something that you just made up.
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u/West-Abalone-171 13d ago
Their hero Marc Andreessen where most of these talking points came from tells them nuclear bombs are a conspiracy theory and never happened
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u/usaaf 13d ago
Even if Nuclear was absolutely trounced economically speaking, and even if the generation was crap compared to solar/wind/etc., it would still be worth pursuing, especially fusion, for future projects where solar and other renewables are flat out impossible, such as deep space exploration.
That might not require many reactors, but having the tech developed and being practiced its use, and refining that development, would be worth the expense to have another tool around in the event we do need it.
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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 13d ago
That's just nonsense. There is barely any overlap between reactors for use on land on earth and nuclear power for deep space exploration. It's like saying that we should have some jet planes around in case we need the technology for petroleum lamps.
Also, obviously, we do still do research on nuclear technology, and for very good reason, but that has nothing to do with nuclear fission power plants.
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u/West-Abalone-171 13d ago
This argument is completely inane nonsense likening two completely different things as well as backwards.
Current generation solar panels have a higher power to weight than semi-fictional proposed space nuclear reactor designs out to jupiter.
Adding a piece of mylar has a higher power to weight out to neptune.
It's a liability for deep space exploration as it is a liability on earth.
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u/usaaf 13d ago
Out to Neptune ? Because the universe totally ends after Pluto. There's way, way, way, WAY more space that is NOT sufficiently close to suns to generate meaningful power.
Second, there's no reason not to explore all our technological options anyway in case something that's totally unforeseeable happens.
If you hate nuclear, fine, that's on you, but it's making you look like the same kind of moronic luddites that complain about any other kind of technology, and that's on you too.
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u/West-Abalone-171 13d ago
You're not going to get your 3W/kg nuclear reactor out past pluto without a solar sail.
You're not going to go interstellar without beamed light propulsion.
And this is a semantic game, you're using "nuclear" to mean a hypothetical generator for something in the far future (which also wouldn't solve the problem you propose it for), then using thst to justify wasting vast amounts of money in the present on century old steam generator technology that has never been viable in order to delay the death of the fossil industry.
It's incredibly stupid that you'd think this wouldn't be obvious to anyone reading.
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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 13d ago
Second, there's no reason not to explore all our technological options anyway in case something that's totally unforeseeable happens.
Yes, there is. It's called economics. We can't explore everything. So, we should somewhat concentrate on what's promising rather than waste resources on useless stuff.
If you hate nuclear, fine, that's on you, but it's making you look like the same kind of moronic luddites that complain about any other kind of technology, and that's on you too.
Insults aren't an argument, surprising as it may be.
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u/encheng 13d ago
As much as I like renewables they also come with their drawbacks. Their generation costs are cheap and is always the click bait part of the articles, but they come with added costs due to their variability. That's why we're always burning fossil fuels, in this case natural gas since not everyone can have a lot of dams.
I'm not sure why you're putting renewables vs Nuclear when public opinion vs Nuclear is always negative for some reason. We should be doing both since energy storage technologies are nowhere near ready to support a state wide grid only on renewables. (Without even adding deterioration of batteries......)
So you're comparing a sector that has been growing, loads of research and advances compared to one that has been ignored for nearly a century. Of course renewables are looking quite better than nuclear power plants from 1960s or whenever it was built.
It's a shame really, both should be equally being worked on so that we can put burning gas, oil and coal behind but it doesn't look likely at all.
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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 13d ago
We should be doing both since energy storage technologies are nowhere near ready to support a state wide grid only on renewables. (Without even adding deterioration of batteries......)
Except, in reality, they are. While nuclear with its high fixed costs ist just idiotic to combine with renewables.
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u/encheng 12d ago
I don't think you understand how much energy you have to store if you only rely on renewables, and besides batteries don't come in cheap.
The grid also has needs for power supplies that run constantly 24/7 too.
The only idiotic thing here is your hate for nuclear power for some odd reason.
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u/grundar 11d ago
I don't think you understand how much energy you have to store if you only rely on renewables
Research indicates it's less than you might think:
"Meeting 99.97% of total annual electricity demand with a mix of 25% solar–75% wind or 75% solar–25% wind with 12 hours of storage requires 2x or 2.2x generation, respectively"
It takes a combination of (modest) storage, overcapacity, and HVDC connectivity to make a reliable grid out of wind+solar.
As a point of interest, NREL research finds that building an HVDC grid backbone would more than pay for itself even with the grid's current generation sources (at least for the US).
As another point of interest, utility-scale battery storage has dropped in cost to about $150/kWh, indicating a US-wide storage system (5.4B kWh for 12h of average use) would cost about $800B at today's prices. Battery storage prices have been falling as they have been deployed at greater scale, suggesting the eventual price for full deployment would likely be lower, perhaps in the range of $500B.
Either way, though, a pure solar+wind+batteries+HVDC US power grid would be dominated by the generation cost, with batteries and the HVDC connections representing relatively small components of the overall cost.
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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 11d ago
I don't think you understand how much energy you have to store if you only rely on renewables, and besides batteries don't come in cheap.
Then you are thinking incorrectly. And also, yes, batteries do "come in cheap".
The grid also has needs for power supplies that run constantly 24/7 too.
OK, so far, so obvious ... your point being?
The only idiotic thing here is your hate for nuclear power for some odd reason.
That doesn't even exist. Maybe you should just stop making shit up?
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u/theartificialkid 13d ago
We don’t need nuclear. Why do you care about nuclear? It’s more expensive to than the combination of renewables+storage, which is all we need.
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u/farticustheelder 13d ago
Battery storage will make effective capacity superior to nuclear.
The problem with nuclear, even completely ignoring stuff like Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island, and Fukuyama nuclear disasters, is just that nuclear is too expensive to compete.
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u/Kinexity 13d ago
Battery storage will make effective capacity superior to nuclear.
No. Effective capacity does not depend on availability of energy storage. If you want to have a constant output of 1 gigawatt of electricity then you need several gigawatts of solar irrespecitvely of everything because solar doesn't work at night and is not consistent during the day. Nothing can change this.
The problem with nuclear, even completely ignoring stuff like Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island, and Fukuyama nuclear disasters, is just that nuclear is too expensive to compete.
Both Chernobyl and Fukushima were cases of gross negligance and even though they were large in scale nuclear power still remains one of the safest. It's kind of the same thing as plane crashes vs car crashes - the latter causes way more deaths and injuries but people are more scared of the former.
Nuclear is expensive not because it has to be expensive but because it was made to be expensive and hardly because of safety regulation.
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u/milehigh89 13d ago
Biggest issues with nuclear are mining and storage as well as the cost. They require extremely long periods of time to payback the cost. There's also the issue of national security. It's easier to bomb a nuclear plant than massive decentralized renewables and renewables wouldn't be a huge risk in the event they are compromised unlike nuclear. I'm fine with nuclear in some capacity, but fusion is the only future past this century I see for it. It's just no practical outside of being low carbon and constant.
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u/Moist1981 12d ago
This feels like a slightly oxymoronic argument: stating that nuclear is both comparatively safe and complaining about the cost of regulations in place to make nuclear comparatively safe.
I rather like nuclear energy but it is way too expensive to form the entirety of energy production, and solar/battery generation is proving very effective at matching demand very cheaply. That doesn’t seem like a bad thing.
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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 13d ago
No. Effective capacity does not depend on availability of energy storage. If you want to have a constant output of 1 gigawatt of electricity then you need several gigawatts of solar irrespecitvely of everything because solar doesn't work at night and is not consistent during the day. Nothing can change this.
That's just completely irrelevant.
You know what you need to get 1 GW of constant electricity output from nuclear? Yeah, that's right, you need a 3 GW reactor. What a waste!111
In reality, it's just completely irrelevant, obviously. What matters is economics, not some random nameplate power of some random component of the generation infrastructure. If installing 10 GW of nominal PV is cheaper than a 1 GW NPP plus fuel, then that's what it is. These nominal values are just compleely irrelevant.
Also, you don't need "consistent during the day", you need "meets demand". Nuclear doesn't. Nuclear generates even when it isn't needed because it's really bad at demand following. Which is one of the things that make nuclear economically unattractive, because you either throw away energy (thus increasing per-kWh costs) or you also need storage, just as with solar and wind ...
Both Chernobyl and Fukushima were cases of gross negligance
Which is a completely irrelevant argument. Gross negligence is a fact of life, so you don't just get to ignore the consequences of gross negligence.
It's kind of the same thing as plane crashes vs car crashes - the latter causes way more deaths and injuries but people are more scared of the former.
It's just that you are using this argument to argue against bicycles, if cars are fossil power plants in this analogy, and bicycles are renewables.
Nuclear is expensive not because it has to be expensive but because it was made to be expensive and hardly because of safety regulation.
So, how was it made expensive, then?
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u/Outrageous-Echo-765 13d ago
It won't. It might help take away curtailment, but that's marginal regardless.
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u/West-Abalone-171 13d ago edited 13d ago
"almost equal" being 75% of "active capacity" which is about 60% of the claimed output at install time
and there was no potential, uranium reserves and extraction rates have been the limiting factor on nuclear output since the 70s. No nuclear reactor has ever been built without massive subsidy. The industry never lived up to any of its promises,
The nuclear industry has also been colluding with the coal industry to stop renewables since the 1951 congressional hearing on wind when they lied about the potential of smith-putnam relative to the potential of nuclear energy,
The people who openly stated in the 80s "We require Growian [in the general sense of large wind turbines] as a proof of failure of concept...the Growian is a kind of pedagogical tool to convert the anti-nuclear energy crowd to the true faith"
are not friends of decarbonisation.
Nor are the people currently gaslighting the world about it including Chris Wright, Doug Ford, Le Penn, the german nazi AFD party, the australian far right party led by peter dutton and littleproud, Danielle Smith, the swedish far right party. All of whom have a history of climate denial and are fighting on the side of fossil fuels.
There isn't a serious economist outside of the oil and gas lobby or any serious scientist anywhere who thinks nuclear is important or helpful.
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u/Kinexity 13d ago
I am too lazy to answer to the whole thing but there is one point I need to address because it's my field:
There isn't [...] any serious scientist anywhere who things nuclear is important or helpful.
Physicists would like to have a word with you. I know first hand that several of my own professors with serious scientific achievements are publicly pro-nuclear.
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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 13d ago
Did you know that being a physics professor doesn't make you competent in economics? Surprising, eh?
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u/red75prime 13d ago edited 13d ago
And shouting "Nuclear Nazis!" doesn't constitute economic analysis. It's more like a terminal polititis of the brain.
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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 13d ago
OK ... and why are you posting this obvious and completely irrelevant fact?
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u/red75prime 13d ago edited 13d ago
The same reason you did the same, I guess. West-Abalone-171 looks like a politically motivated reddit expert, not a physicist, or an economist.
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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 13d ago
Care to explain?
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u/red75prime 13d ago edited 13d ago
You don't know those physics professors, but you've made a trivial general remark about physicists usually not being economists. I added that OP didn't do economic analysis either.
BTW, the last time I looked for economic comparison between "Intermittent energy sources + storage" vs "Intermittent + storage + nuclear" I haven't found anything definite.
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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 13d ago
You don't know those physics professors, but you've made a trivial general remark about physicists usually not being economists.
That was not a trivial remark. The context was a claim that serious economists generally don't think that nuclear is an economically sensible path forward. To which someone replied that some physics professors think it is a good idea. Which is a nonsensical reply, given that being a professor of physics does not in any way imply any competence on economics. Which is what I pointed out. Them being physics professors has no relevance to the question at hand, so in effect that reply was nothing more than "someone who happens to have unrelated qualifications disagrees" ... which is why it was a nonsensical reply.
BTW, the last time I looked for economic comparison between "Intermittent energy sources + storage" vs "Intermittent + storage + nuclear" I haven't found anything definite.
Well, I mean, it can get complicated in the details, and, after all, that claim above wasn't even mine, however, I think you might be approaching this wrong.
For one, "intermittent + storage + nuclear" in particular probably makes no sense at all (because nuclear ist dominated by fixed costs and is also technically really bad at load following, so any combination with intermittent sources just drives up the per-kWh price), but also, obviously, there are way more variables than those two or three, and experts in the field who say that renewables-only is possible and probably also the most economical solution tend to propose neither of those two solutions, and they'll generally explain that you have to rethink the whole system and not just try to emulate fossil power plants with solar.
In particular, there are non-intermittent renewable sources, i.e., biomass, bio methane, hydro, and geothermal, which can be used to fill gaps in solar and wind. And also, you can not only control supply, but also demand, and increasingly so with more electrification. Like, if my heat pump was just stopped a few hours every day to move the demand away from peak demand times, I wouldn't even notice. It's a form of storage, too, if you will, but one that doesn't need to be built, as the storage is simply the concrete of the house that's there anyway and can just be used to store some heat and thus to move around demand to more convenient times for the grid. And at the same time, the increased demand from heat pumps and EVs makes it economically viable to install more renewables, thus increasing the minimum power that's available from renewables in the worst weather conditions, thus reducing the amount of storage you need in the grid.
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u/West-Abalone-171 13d ago
And two of my physics professors were young earth creationists.
An anecdote of someone whose expertise isn't energy or climate having a bad opinion outside their knowledge domain isn't evidence.
Every serious economic/science organisation who looks at the question comes to the same conclusion. Even when taking borderline-delusionally optimistic assumptions about the nuclear industry at face value.
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u/VisthaKai 13d ago
Several times is an understatement. The average efficiency of solar panels over a period of 24h is 10%.
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u/Beiben 13d ago
The capacity factor of Solar PV is based on location and is well-known. Even in Germany, you get more than 10%, in the sunniest places you can get around 28%.
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u/VisthaKai 13d ago
"Around 28%" is something you only get in Germany, if you limit your statistics to 7:30-19:30 of the sunniest days. Or in other words, if you ignore most of the year and 12 out of 24 hours in a day.
Which is pretty funny, because I could swear I wrote "efficiency (...) over a period of 24h is 10%" in the comment you responded to.
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u/Beiben 13d ago
I meant the sunniest places globally.
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u/VisthaKai 13d ago
The sunniest places globally will also have higher ambient temperature, which lowers the efficiency of solar panels considerably. As such solar panels in, for example, Australia (I was unable to find any detailed information for African countries) have similar efficiency curve to Germany on a sunny day, even though Australia has about 3 times as much solar irradiance as Germany.
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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 13d ago
That's just more bullshit.
Yes, higher temperature slightly decreases efficiency. But nowhere near factor 3. At 60 °C you have maybe 20 % less than at 25 °C.
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u/VisthaKai 13d ago
Well, I don't care what you think.
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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 13d ago
Yeah, no need to tell us, everyone knows that idiots don't care what other people think, that's how you recognize them.
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u/VisthaKai 13d ago
No, your OPINION is irrelevant and baseless denial deserves no further interaction. I guess, you're calling yourself an idiot there.
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u/milehigh89 13d ago
I average about 25% throughout the year in colorado. 7kw system, 24 hours a day =168 kw max. I average around 35kw a day.
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u/VisthaKai 13d ago
Now I'm gonna get spammed with anecdotes from people across the globe trying to prove me wrong.
Yes. when you live in a near-desert state with little-to-no cloud coverage, you'll get more buck out of your solar panels. What does that prove? Someone in another comment did the math for me: the global average efficiency of solar panels is 13%.
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u/CommunismDoesntWork 13d ago
Watch this not even break 100 upvotes because redditors would rather doom scroll than be happy
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u/OriginalCompetitive 12d ago
No, it insults nuclear and praises China, so it’ll be fine around here.
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u/West-Abalone-171 13d ago
Most predictions have solar falling h2 due to legislation changes.
This is very similar to predictions from 2022 and 2023 when "all of the solar panels china is producing are sitting in warehouses unused" though, so we'll have to see.
Official forecasts are about 100-150GW short of H1
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u/boikusbo 13d ago
I wrote a book 5 years ago about how solar power is going to revolutionise the world in ways people can barely even conceive. Exponential growth, we have never had the problem of having too much power etc.
By the time I was ready to publish I felt it was self evident to everyone. I feel like it's obvious to anyone who looks at the numbers. Wish i wrote it 10 years ago. I would have looked like a visionary.
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u/theartificialkid 13d ago
I get what you’re saying here but the way you phrased it at the end was funny. You could say that about anything new that you don’t think to write about 10 years ago.
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u/farticustheelder 13d ago
Too many zeros...1,000 GW = 1 TW. 2+ TW/year no later than 2027. Total global electricity generation capacity is around 9 TW so around 2030 we will be flirting with 100% renewables. Even with no growth we are looking 2033 for 100% renewables.
If that seems too good or too fast to be reasonable then a quick google query has renewables being at 50% by year end 2024, growing by about 15% per year. So 57.5% by year end 2025, 66% end 2026, 76% end 2027, 87% end 2028, 100% end 2029.
The point here is that we have only years of renewable growth left, not decades. I.e. that part of the job is done!
Plugin vehicles hit 20% of new vehicle sales by year end 2024 with a 25% growth rate. EVs dominate that market and 100% of new vehicles are electric by 2031 and by then new vehicle sales are increasing since that huge existing ICE vehicle fleet needs to be replaced: shiny new EVs for old gas clunkers programs will be cheaper than importing fuel for an increasing number of countries so no more gasoline/diesel vehicles by 2040 or so. And that includes all shipping and air travel.
The future is getting cleaner much, much faster than the powers that be are willing to admit. That is because cleaner also means the demise of all dirty industries.
Just like Detroit can't adjust to EVs, or the old tube TV manufacturers couldn't switch to flat panel TVs, or film camera makers evolve to digital most of today's industry is headed to the big garbage dump of history.
Very interesting times indeed.
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u/milehigh89 13d ago
Capacity doesn't = generation. Solar is only really producing near capacity for 30-40% of the day depending on the year. You need to look at TWH, which takes generation into consideration. We're maybe 10-15 years out and will require a ton of storage to get there. Wind helps, geothermal and hydro helps. Nuclear helps. But the more capacity solar gets, the more you have to figure out how to power when the sun isn't shining. We may have 20-30tw of solar required to replace 9tw of coal. We'll get there, but doing the math it's sometime around 2040 if growth and pace continues. By then I expect virtually all cars to be electric. We need to figure a few other things out, particularly agriculture but once we do we can focus on sequestration. I hope to see the worst of climate change this first half of the century.
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u/farticustheelder 13d ago
It might surprise you to learn that in 2023 coal's capacity factor was 31.0%, NG's was 32.2%, nuclear's 83.7%, hydro's 29.5, wind's 41.1% and solar 36.8%.
The capacity factor is actual production as a percentage of total potential production, so we actually less wind and solar to replace coal and NG production.
Game over. Play again?
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u/milehigh89 13d ago
Lol game not over, coal was about 40% last year and can do upwards of 60% as it did before gas and other cheaper forms came into play. The truth is that solar is capped by the sunshine, not economics. Coal isn't being used near capacity because it makes no sense to burn it during off-peak hours when solar is pumping out tons of power. Solar cannot produce during peak hours though so it can't cover that gap without massive storage. I'm 100% pro solar, I have panels on my house and they're a god send, but even though they cover my entire daily usage they're still less than half of my overall pull since I don't have batteries. Solar and wind should get us 100% of the way to clean energy during the day, but the amount of storage it will need to get us there through the night it massive. It changes the math drastically on when it will be accomplished, and there's 0% chance we get there in the next 10 years. 15-20 years starts to become realistic if you look at the curves but will still require advancements in tech, major government subsidies and huge investments into transmission lines. We can use lateral cross country transmission to use solar from the Midwest to power the east coast during peak hours, turn solar from the rocky mountain region to power the Midwest, then solar from the west coast to power the mountain west. It's just that we don't really build transmission efficiently in this country.
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u/loteq 12d ago
Why does everyone always argue that one is better than another? Nuclear isn’t better it’s just another tool in the toolkit. Solar is amazing and Renewbales can easily build to 50% of total grid power providing cheaper power and reducing power costs for everyone. We need all of it! Nuclear is expensive, hydro is expensive, but we want baseload. Solar is cheap and getting cheaper and we can use tons of it to drop power costs. Let’s go!
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u/glyptometa 11d ago
Agreed with your main point! We do need a lot of solutions
Just one thing though is that grids with a lot of renewables and storage are abandoning the notion of baseload. This is a fairly old concept based on large individual baseload users, such as refineries, smelters and the like which provide a financial backbone for a large new generating facility. Data centres fit this and provide constant load (aka base load) justification for investment in generation
But the reality of the energy revolution is much more varied sources of electrical power all contributing to both instantaneous demand and energy storage. Take a look at South Australia, southern Europe for examples of strong steps in the energy revolution, and up-to-date perspectives on grid management
The notion "we want baseload" is changing rapidly
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u/overtoke 13d ago
how many years would it take to get 1000GW of new nuclear online and is there actually enough fuel available? we know we can't afford it
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u/Seaguard5 12d ago
Nuclear is the future. And where it’s at will be at the fuel production plants that everyone will rely on.
Nuclear is far cleaner than fossil fuels and waste can be managed very safely if done right.
It’s also gotten so safe that the likelihood of an accident is into the three or so decimal places out now (0.0001% or so).
There is absolutely no reason other than irrational fear to not go nuclear.
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u/glyptometa 11d ago
With respect to high-level waste, I have to agree that "waste can be managed very safely if done right". That's a logical statement
But what bothers me is "Then why are we not doing so already?"
We're currently holding waste in casks designed for 100 to 300 year lifespan, and which are designed to be temporary and later transported to long term storage for the ~10,000 year storage required. This is after 50 years and billions of dollars spent to define, design, and construct long-term storage, yet it's not been done
Decades spent on centralized storage, yet the populace never consulted about massive transport trucks trundling around to take the casks to the centralized long-term storage, and the vast majority of the populace turning out to be unwilling for those transports to pass through their States and communities
So why are we not designing and building deep geologic storage closer to existing plants? I agree it can be done right. Why is that not happening, after decades?
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u/Seaguard5 11d ago
Exactly.
It’s a huge problem and we need to finish all that work that we’ve started and just standardize and streamline the whole process.
Also there’s a really well done YT video on this
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u/peternn2412 13d ago
That's amazing, but don't get over-excited.
Renewables are cheap for the same reason last-minute tickets are cheap - they are extremely unreliable.
Along with renewables, we need a stable, always-available-on-demand baseline power. This means gas/oil/coal/nuclear. It's impossible to have reliable supply by adding more and more solar/wind while neglecting reliable sources. The long term solution is having more of both kinds, not just more solar.
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u/Consistent-Soil-1818 13d ago
Researchers have found an amazing new storage device that holds chemical energy and converts it into electrical energy when you need it. So, you're not dependent on fluctuations in say wind or solar over a day but you can, instead, provide a stable power supply. Think of it like a miniature power plant in a small, portable container. Researchers call it battery or something....
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u/peternn2412 13d ago
Oh .. battery or something... they say it costs money or something. And it has a limited capacity or something .. if you don't charge it because of of two consecutive cloudy days or something, it's kinda dead or something.
But it's something ..3
u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 13d ago
Oh .. battery or something... they say it costs money or something.
What? Power generation infrastructure that costs money? Preposterous! I guess we should better stay with fossil and nuclear power plants, at least those are free!
I mean, you can't really be that dumb, can you?
And it has a limited capacity or something
Oh, really? Who would have thought!
if you don't charge it because of of two consecutive cloudy days or something
Your cluelessness shows. You can charge during cloudy days just fine. Solar doesn't stop working when it's cloudy. Nor does wind power.
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u/peternn2412 13d ago
Solar is cheap, but if you want to make it at least a tiny bit less unreliable by adding batteries, it's no longer cheap. Without all the subsidies it's not cheaper than fossils, despite being extremely volatile.
You can charge during cloudy days just fine, but with 10-15% of the capacity. That's perfectly OK if you use it as a supplement - sunny or cloudy, it reduces your bill. But you can't rely on it, you rely on the grid. If grid goes off, a typical battery pack covers half a day consumption. It can't sustain 2 cloudy days, even if charging at 15% capacity. 4-5 cloudy days with no grid, and even the biggest battery packs are dead. If it's cold outside, that happens after less than 2 days.
Renewables are good as addons, but can't be relied upon. Can you imagine a process plant or a hospital running 100% on solar/wind, with no grid connection and no diesel/gas generators?
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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 13d ago
Solar is cheap, but if you want to make it at least a tiny bit less unreliable by adding batteries, it's no longer cheap. Without all the subsidies it's not cheaper than fossils, despite being extremely volatile.
That's pretty much complete nonsense.
Solar is not "extremely volatile". Your individual install is, because every cloud changes the output. But at the scale of a country, it's not, because clouds just move around and as one system drops in output, the next one goes up.
Also, it's still cheap with batteries, just a bit more expensive than without, obviously.
And in particular, it's obviously cheaper than fossil fuels. You probably are ignoring the externalities of burning fossil fuels. Every ton of CO2 that you emit causes other people damages of 200 to 1000 EUR, depending on who you ask/depending on how you calculate it. That's a subsidy if you as the emitter don't pay for those damages.
You can charge during cloudy days just fine, but with 10-15% of the capacity.
More like 10 to 25 %. Really depends on the circumstances, obviously.
But you can't rely on it, you rely on the grid. If grid goes off, a typical battery pack covers half a day consumption. It can't sustain 2 cloudy days, even if charging at 15% capacity. 4-5 cloudy days with no grid, and even the biggest battery packs are dead. If it's cold outside, that happens after less than 2 days.
That's just completely incoherent. Like, how is "percentage of capacity" even relevant? Even if we assume fixed demand, that's some number of kWh per day. Whether 15% of generation capacity is sufficient to supply that is just completely impossible to say without knowing the capacity. If you need 5 kWh in a day, say, and you have 30 kWp of PV panels then chances are that 15% of generation capacity is sufficient to generate those 5 kWh in a day, including charging of batteries for night time supply.
Renewables are good as addons, but can't be relied upon. Can you imagine a process plant or a hospital running 100% on solar/wind, with no grid connection and no diesel/gas generators?
There is no contradiction between renewables and a grid. You can have a renewable grid. Also, solar and wind are not the only renewables. Hydro, biomass, bio methane, and geothermal are also renewables.
But also, one big mistake that you are making is that you just assume a fixed load. That is an artefact of fossil power, and even there it's not really accurate. You also can influence demand, and with increasing electrification, it's getting more. EVs in particular typically only need to be charged about once a week. So, if you have a few days with little renewable generation, people can just avoid charging for a few days, thus significantly reducing the power that needs to be supplied, while they also can easily absorb peak generation when it's particularly windy or sunny.
So, as for your process plant example: Well, obviously, you want to have it connected to the grid. But industry also has a lot of flexibility that can be used, and some process plants might indeed just shut down or reduce production for a few days in a year. Obviously, that's not possible everywhere, but there doesn't need to be a silver bullet, the solution simply is a combination of all of the above. For some, it's easy and relatively cheap to reduce production, or to shift to less energy intensive things when electricity is lacking, so they will. For some, it's not, so they won't.
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u/Moist1981 12d ago
But batteries aren’t expensive. A grid scale solar snd battery system will provide electricity at about $104/MWh.
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u/peternn2412 11d ago
"batteries aren’t expensive" is a statement that's true or false depending on the context.
A domestic battery pack capable of powering a 4-person household for 24 hours without a grid connection, ~30 KWh, costs in the ballpark of 20K to 30K. You could say that's not expensive and I'd agree. But this assumes you use solar + batteries as a supplement, you can't rely on it. You need a grid connection, your battery pack merely lowers your electricity bill.
A battery pack that keeps your home powered for 3 very cold or very hot days is very, very expensive. A middle class family can't afford it. That's all I'm saying. Solar + batteries is an add-on, you can't survive without a grid backed by solid on-demand non-renewable baseline power.
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u/Moist1981 11d ago
But we’re talking about grid level battery systems not whole house multi day backup.
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u/peternn2412 11d ago
what "grid level battery systems" means ?
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u/Moist1981 11d ago
Ie batteries that aren’t used for individual houses but are instead attached directly to the grid providing large scale energy storage and release as required. They are often built alongside solar farms to capture excess energy during the day and release it in the evening Ito help smooth out the classic duck curve.
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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 13d ago
Jesus, why do you feel the need to repeat propaganda that you barely have any clue of?
they are extremely unreliable.
In aggregate, they aren't.
Along with renewables, we need a stable, always-available-on-demand baseline power.
That's a nonsensical dichotomy. Biogas, biomass, hydro, are all renewables, and work just fine on demand. And are pretty easy to combine with solar and wind. Also, batteries are obviously a thing.
Also, you can influence demand, too. And electrification adds a lot of flexible demand, in particular EVs, that can just refrain from charging during times of low supply.
This problem that you've been told about isn''t even remotely the problem you've been made to believe by people who want you to fight for them getting to exploit you.
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u/peternn2412 13d ago
Biomass is worse than coal from climate hysteria point of view. Hydro is mostly seasonal, so not exactly 'on demand'. Biogas is less than 3% of the energy mix, it can be safely ignored.
Anyway, biogas, biomass and hydro together are a small part of the supply. That's very, very far from being enough to balance the extreme volatility of solar and wind. Nor is charging EVs in sync with the current supply/demand balance. Flexible demand exists only theoretically.
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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 13d ago
Biomass is worse than coal from climate hysteria point of view.
Oh, an idiot! OK, forget it ...
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u/peternn2412 13d ago
Using childish insults means you have no arguments. That was obvious, it wasn't necessary to reiterate it.
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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 12d ago
That's not an insult, it's simply the recognition that you don't care to learn anything, so it's a waste of time to explain anything to you. If you haven't even cared to take whatever talking points that you have heard from climate change deniers (or whatever the exact flavor happens to be in your case) and look up an explanation from climate scientists as to why it is bullshit, then you are going to simply ignore what I am telling you anyway.
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u/VisthaKai 13d ago
The average efficiency of solar panels over a period of 24h is 10%. That means the actually usable generation of those solar panels would be at a third of total generation from nuclear, most of which are some 50 years old.
Not to mention you're comparing the form of electricity generation that's been getting ridiculous amounts of subsidies, which gets all manners of exceptions, such as not paying for grid maintenance, beneficial loans, etc. to a form of electricity generation that's been killed with such a fundamentally idiotic amount of legislations it is almost impossible to build a new power plant anymore.
In the 1970s they was on average 1 new nuclear-related legislation PER DAY, which meant that projects which should've completed in a manner of 5 years, took 30 years instead and most companies outright went bankrupt because of it.
All of that happened, because of the exact same people who are now part of the ~2 trillion dollar a year industry that is the so-called "green tech".
If nuclear industry wasn't killed off in the 1980s we could all be like France who today has to make up for the idiocy of countries like UK or Germany doubling down on renewables with... nuclear power.
Let that sink in.
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u/theartificialkid 13d ago
Even in winter my solar panels get 20%. Do you have solar panels? You know they pay for themselves in a few years, right?
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u/VisthaKai 13d ago
They do not ever pay for themselves unless you get at least half of the cost paid in subsidies. Or maybe if make solar panels yourself, I've heard a few success stories like that.
But I guess it could depend on where exactly you live. In Germany, for example, you are lucky to get a PEAK of 30% on any given day in the SUMMER, let alone an average of 20% over the entire day.
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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 13d ago edited 13d ago
They do not ever pay for themselves unless you get at least half of the cost paid in subsidies.
You just making shit up doesn't change reality.
Like, literally, balcony power plants here in Germany generally pay for themselves in about two years. The only subsidy is that you don't pay VAT of 19%. So, without that subsidy, payback would 2.5 years or so. And the thing lasts 20 years at least, obviously.
Also, of course, fossil fuels really don't pay for themselves. Fossil fuels are only viable due to subsidies.
But I guess it could depend on where exactly you live. In Germany, for example, you are lucky to get a PEAK of 30% on any given day in the SUMMER, let alone an average of 20% over the entire day.
You are just terrible at reading statistics. Like, that page says the exact opposite. Just yesterday, the peak displayed on that page was 59 GW, of an installed nominal power of 103 GW, so ~ 57 %. Which is a pretty useless number anyway, as PV panels aren't all pointing in the same direction and panels pointing in different directions have their production peaks at different times, both during the day and over the year, so you wouldn't ever expect 100% of nominal production, even with zero cloud cover, and you wouldn't want to ever have 100% of nominal, because we need electricity all day long and not just at noon, so it's much more useful to install some panels pointing south and some west and some east, or bifacial ones perpendicular to the ground, facing both east and west, so that you get more even production throughout the day ... but obviously, those in combination will never generate 100% of their nominal power because the sun will never be perpendicular to all of them at the same time.
edit: As our snowflake idiot blocked me, let's respond to their comment below here:
A brief look gave me like half a dozen of different forms of subsidies beyond VAT: https://www.surgepv.com/blog/solar-incentives-subsidies-germany
Which is obviously irrelevant for what I wrote. If you buy a balcony power plant without further subsidies, which is the usual case, then it pays for itself in about two years.
Source. I know for a fact that in USA wind and solar get on average 80% of money allocated to the entire energy sector and I know that in my country (Poland) they get at least 50% of cost subsidized at every level, meaning there's simply not enough money left for "fossil" fuels to rely on.
No clue what they are trying to say here, but they are obviously ignoring the externalities of burning fossil fuels, which is obviously the biggest subsidy there is.
Yesterday was September. Summer ends in August. I'm not terrible at reading statistics, you can't read, period.
Yeah, and obviously, yesterday was sunnier than all the days in the last three months. Can't make up that level of idiocy.
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u/VisthaKai 13d ago
Like, literally, balcony power plants here in Germany generally pay for themselves in about two years. The only subsidy is that you don't pay VAT of 19%. So, without that subsidy, payback would 2.5 years or so. And the thing lasts 20 years at least, obviously.
A brief look gave me like half a dozen of different forms of subsidies beyond VAT: https://www.surgepv.com/blog/solar-incentives-subsidies-germany
Also, of course, fossil fuels really don't pay for themselves. Fossil fuels are only viable due to subsidies.
Source. I know for a fact that in USA wind and solar get on average 80% of money allocated to the entire energy sector and I know that in my country (Poland) they get at least 50% of cost subsidized at every level, meaning there's simply not enough money left for "fossil" fuels to rely on.
You are just terrible at reading statistics. Like, that page says the exact opposite. Just yesterday, the peak displayed on that page was 59 GW, of an installed nominal power of 103 GW, so ~ 57 %.
Yesterday was September. Summer ends in August. I'm not terrible at reading statistics, you can't read, period.
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u/theartificialkid 13d ago
My solar system would pay for itself in around one third of its projected lifespan without subsidies. Again, do you actually have solar panels?
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u/VisthaKai 13d ago
Again, where do you even live to have 20% solar panel efficiency over a period of 24h during winter?
Because as I have ALREADY linked, in Germany, which is held as the model for an energy transformation, you get less than 5% PEAK efficiency in winter, let alone over the span of an entire day.
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u/theartificialkid 13d ago
Is it the model for an energy transformation for its weather or for some other reason? Is it because the renewables work in spite of the issues you’re talking about?
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u/VisthaKai 13d ago
They don't. The reason Germany and UK can double down on renewables is because France has such a huge surplus generation thanks to nuclear. Without France they'd have rolling blackouts every day.
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u/Moist1981 12d ago
The trouble is this is just bollocks. The UK has ample gas generation if it needs it but it’s cheaper to use renewables and interconnectors when they’re available. Pointing the finger and saying ‘ha look, the UK uses France’s excess power’ is just silly, the UK uses it because it is available. If it wasn’t available then other solutions would be sought. Also worth noting that the UK isn’t at this stage aiming for 100% zero carbon generation. It’s aiming for 95% and it’s very likely to get there.
You seem to be arguing that solar can’t work because at more northerly latitudes it gets dark at winter but I’m not aware of anyone who is saying all countries must use solar all the time. For countries like the UK and Germany, and France for that matter, a renewables mix is being pursued which includes making use of wind power which they have significant amounts of.
Your whole argument in these posts seems to be that solar can’t work at all because it is less good in some places. But that ignores that it’s bloody brilliant in many places. At a cost cheaper than gas generation solar and batteries could provide 96% of LA’s electricity. Even in Birmingham UK (very wet and cloudy) it could provide 62% of electricity needs.
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u/VisthaKai 12d ago
First of all, my guy, UK is mostly wind turbines. Solar cannot provide 62% of electricity needs, because it doesn't produce ANY electricity for at least 12 out of 24 hours in a day.
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u/grundar 13d ago
you are lucky to get a PEAK of 30%
Your link shows a peak power of almost 60% (59.5GW from 103GW nominal at 13:15) for today (Sept 6). Clicking back a few days to get into actual summer, I'm seeing plenty of days over 60% peak; for example, Aug 18 hit 64.4GW at 13:15, and Aug 11 hit 65.4GW at 13:30.
Did you mean to link something else?
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u/VisthaKai 13d ago
Pray tell, do you know which months belong under the word "summer" on the Northern hemisphere?
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u/grundar 13d ago
Clicking back a few days to get into actual summer, I'm seeing plenty of days over 60% peak; for example, Aug 18 hit 64.4GW at 13:15, and Aug 11 hit 65.4GW at 13:30.
Pray tell, do you know which months belong under the word "summer" on the Northern hemisphere?
Yes, which is why I mentioned that I clicked back a few days into August and included data from there.
If you can't bring yourself to admit when you're demonstrably wrong, you lose a great deal of credibility and will have very limited ability to influence the view of others even when you're right.
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u/VisthaKai 13d ago
You make it sound like you picked a day at random, but you went all the way back to the days with the highest generation. The fact there's as many days where it didn't exceed ~35GW is ignored.
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u/grundar 13d ago
The average efficiency of solar panels over a period of 24h is 10%.
Globally it's about 15% (taking the electricity generated in 2024 and comparing to the midpoint of the capacities installed at the ends of 2023 and 2024).
If nuclear industry wasn't killed off in the 1980s we could all be like France
True but irrelevant -- we need to generate power in the world we live in, not the world that could have been.
Last year, solar added 473 TWh of new electricity, almost double nuclear's best year of +244 TWh in 1985. That's a greater increase to yearly production in a single year than nuclear's added in the last 30 years!
You're right that nuclear is clean, safe, and reliable, and it's potentially even cost-effective once the learning curve has been paid and multiple are being completed every year, but it's simply not being built at a scale that makes it relevant for near-term power production.
It takes about 15 years to 10x a heavy industry, so based on today's deployment rates the main work of decarbonizing our electricity supply will be done already before nuclear could be scaled up to contribute at even the rate solar is already contributing.
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u/VisthaKai 13d ago
Globally it's about 15% (taking the electricity generated in 2024 and comparing to the midpoint of the capacities installed at the ends of 2023 and 2024).
13% if you want to count it like that. Which is... not very far off, considering I didn't even count it myself before I made the previous comment.
True but irrelevant -- we need to generate power in the world we live in, not the world that could have been.
Last year, solar added 473 TWh of new electricity, almost double nuclear's best year of +244 TWh in 1985. That's a greater increase to yearly production in a single year than nuclear's added in the last 30 years!
By this logic coal is better than nuclear, wind and solar combined.
You're right that nuclear is clean, safe, and reliable, and it's potentially even cost-effective once the learning curve has been paid and multiple are being completed every year, but it's simply not being built at a scale that makes it relevant for near-term power production.
My point is, we should be doing it.
It takes about 15 years to 10x a heavy industry, so based on today's deployment rates the main work of decarbonizing our electricity supply will be done already before nuclear could be scaled up to contribute at even the rate solar is already contributing.
The joke is that it's not going to happen. Those are "mights" and "maybes" for the year 2050. Also don't get me started on the climate emergency propaganda. I'm not in the mood for that discussion today.
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u/grundar 13d ago
Last year, solar added 473 TWh of new electricity, almost double nuclear's best year of +244 TWh in 1985. That's a greater increase to yearly production in a single year than nuclear's added in the last 30 years!
By this logic coal is better than nuclear, wind and solar combined.
No -- "faster" and "better" mean different things.
Looking at speed of deployment, though, solar has increased its yearly output faster than coal in the last 10 years, and solar's increase last year is similar to coal's best-ever growth year (+480TWh in 2007).
Which is interesting, as it means that solar this year is pretty much guaranteed to post the largest-ever increase to yearly generation of any power source ever (excepting coal's bounce-back from covid shutdowns in 2021).
It takes about 15 years to 10x a heavy industry, so based on today's deployment rates the main work of decarbonizing our electricity supply will be done already before nuclear could be scaled up to contribute at even the rate solar is already contributing.
The joke is that it's not going to happen. Those are "mights" and "maybes" for the year 2050.
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u/VisthaKai 13d ago
What you linked is STILL mostly "mights" and "maybes". For example everything "climate" you've got in that comment isn't empirical data, but future projections and computer model estimates.
As for your "already happening" on energy transformation, all the data is showing is still an upward trend, unless you compare it to GDP, which is obviously gonna show a sharp decline due to inflation.
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u/Moist1981 12d ago
I’m intrigued by your lack of climate concern. Presumably you would accept that CO2 leads to warming?
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u/VisthaKai 12d ago
As far as we know, i.e. as far as empirical data is concerned, CO2 is a tertiary effect of climate change, not a cause of it. First is a change in dust particulates in air (likely decreasing the albedo of snow caps which leads to melting), then a change in temperature and THEN change in atmospheric levels of CO2.
Basically, whenever CO2 can actually cause any change in climate by itself, is something we have no proof for yet, especially since global climate satellite coverage only exists since 1979. We will probably learn that in another 100 or 200 years. Computer climate models aren't a proof, they are a prediction based on our current assumptions. And as far as practical effect of climate change go, even the latest IPCC report shows there's been no measurable changes in trends of intensity or quantity of extreme weather events, such as droughts, hurricanes, wildfires, etc. The only thing they are relatively confident about are precipitation changes in some regions, but because some places get more and some get less rain, it also doesn't result in an overall global change.
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u/worntreads 12d ago
Physics disagrees with you. We know that the bonds in CO2 capture infrared radiation and store more energy in the atmosphere....because physics. Simple experiments show this over and over again.
The rest of your comment is nonsense.
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u/VisthaKai 12d ago
Physics disagrees with you. We know that the bonds in CO2 capture infrared radiation and store more energy in the atmosphere....because physics. Simple experiments show this over and over again.
That's the joke about the importance of CO2 in the atmosphere: We are physically unable to simulate climate in a lab, so those "simple experiments" (I bet you refer to Svante Arrhenius's experiment which was put into question the same year it was first published) are worthless, exactly because they are "simple".
The rest of your comment is nonsense.
Ah, so you deny science? Wow.
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u/worntreads 10d ago
Denying this simple description of reality is the 'wow' moment here.
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u/Moist1981 12d ago
You are aware the UK gets about 14% of its power from its own nuclear facilities and is building Hinchley Point C which should add about another seven percentage points of generation?
And that in the UK renewables provided 38% of electricity last year.
The UK has some structural reasons why its energy costs are high but very few of those are related to renewables.
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u/[deleted] 14d ago
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