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Comment by lukeschlather | Hacker News Reader

I think you're applying an imaginary capacity factor to a number that already accounts for solar's intermittent yield. Solar is simply way cheaper than nuclear.

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It depends if the $/kWh is cost to build or price paid for the energy.

I believe the .03 figure for the solar plants was $/kW and therefore had no bearing on total energy generated.

I think you would need a solar plant that incorporated energy storage to deliver nameplate power overnight for 40 years to be making an apples to apples comparison.

Does that account as well for the longevity of it? The current nuclear reactors lasted around 40 years already without much issues, I wouldn't bet the solar installations to last that long.

Solar installations are generally rated for a 30 year life, so ¾ of nuclear isn’t bad, especially when you add in decommissioning costs which are going to be a lot lower for solar

UK discounted provision for decommission costs:

£100+ billion in 2013 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jun/23/britain-...

£161 billion in 2017 https://web.archive.org/web/20170516093449/https://www.gov.u...

£234 billion in 2018 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nuclear-provision...

... and counting.

When you hear "nuclear reactors last for 40 years" you should instead hear "nuclear technology improves at such a slow pace that it's reasonable to talk about 40 year lifespans".

Almost no one cares if your desktop computer can last 40 years. And PV is improving so fast that making it last 40 years would be nearly as pointless.

Cost of products are averaged for their lifespan, if the solar panels only last 10 years, they need to be 4 times cheaper than nuclear to be at the same price per year.

And nuclear does not improve in a "slow paced", I don't know where you got that impression, there's been a lot of innovations on the last 10 years.

Nuclear technology has improved in cost in the past decade by a factor of 6, like PV has? If not, I will call its rate of improvement "slow".

that's not how percentages are working... There's clearly some math issues here... And the latest generation of plants are already 20% better than the previous ones.

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