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Comment by Brometheus | Hacker News Reader

Are they though? A big fraction of those panels are made in countries other than China. The panels generally generate still more than 70% of their original power after 20 or 30 years.

They're hardend against hail, can be insured and do definitely not require a lot of copper wiring.

I wouldn't buy any stock related to mini nuclear reactors. It doesn't seem like a promising solution, since none of them have been actually deployed at all, they cannot be sold to less rich countries since they prefer solar in general, and the dangers to nuclear accidents, proliferation as well as the inevitable dismantling after their lifetimes.

We're good with solar, wind and hydrogen storage.

I'm not a nuclear engineer, but I wish there was more news about it.

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Just yesterday my state (in Central EU) has incorporated a company that is going to deploy several SMRs here. One of the US ones got certified just few months ago (they are buying that one too) and we also have our local designs ready to certify and then build - this country is extremely pro-nuclear (over 80% support) and has significant nuclear engineering industry and world-class nuclear regulation authority. I really don't think you're right it's not happening.

And talking about nuclear in general, we are building several standard big reactors too (expanding older power plants), with no sign of insurmountable problems - ever since we stopped letting the greens affect the projects with their FUD and fake "studies" it's going more than well enough, unfortunately they backtracked us for a decade before we were able to change the law otherwise we would have the new reactors running today (the local Green party went from 30% to literally 0 over this, lol).

The nukes will all be mothballed by 2040, as they find it impossible to compete.

That is, provided global society does not collapse first. If it does, they will be mothballed as unmaintainable, instead, if they don't blow up for the same reason.

Right, it is significant that the only places shelling out for SMR are the US and Romania. Only the latter is actually planning to deploy them. (The US hands over tax money to people making them, but US utility operators don't want any.) Corruption suffices to account for both.

Renewables+storage is just too obviously a better place to invest, if you care about investing wisely.

If you have so much free space as US or Romania, maybe. There are much smaller states without enough sunshine though, and people hate having wind turbines visible near their houses (also, if you care about ecology then the blades are a big problem). Both wouldn't be nearly enough to replace fossil fuels anyways - only nuclear allows us to ditch natural gas and benzin/diesel entirely.

Wishing doesn't make it so.

I don't know what you're talking about, we're building and the reactors we built previously work cheaper than any renewable/gas/coal/whatever, the only problem is that we don't have enough, but we will have more soon. You're the one wishing for renewables - and indeed, wishing won't make it happen.

The Greens slowed us down for two election intervals but they're gone and the building is resumed. Don't let Greens decide your policy and you can build too - and when you take them out of the equation it suddenly becomes cheap. We will happily build for you if your nuclear industry is not up to it, all it takes is ask.

> the reactors we built previously work cheaper than any renewable

This is generally false, depending on region PV is the single cheapest source of electricity right now by a significant margin.

Don't get me wrong, I value nuclear even if only for diversity of supply, but it isn't cheap.

If you're comparing only solar panels, then maybe. I'm comparing the whole system - batteries, transmission, gas usage when it's not enough sunshine for a third of the year here, etc. Our electricity got more expensive mostly thanks to renewables, not cheaper. Now we're building reactors to have it cheap again.

Your electricity got more expensive because of an artificial NG shortage. Failing to build out solar will leave you buying from neighboring countries that didn't, at prices less than it costs to operate your reactors.

I am not talking about the current situation, I am talking about the times when gas was cheapest ever around 10 years ago. People were building resistive electric heating because it still came out cheaper than using gas.

Currently our state is net-exporter and probably always will be since the states around us are refusing nuclear altogether. And Germany nor Austria has never ever offered electricity cheaper than our own.

Romania by itself has the land area for 3.5 TW of electricity average over a year, even assuming 15% efficient PV and a 10% capacity factor; the actual capacity factor given Romanian climate would be more like 5.5 TW; current global electricity use is only 2.7 TW.

Cyprus (the island) has a better climate, so despite its small size, it could produce 137% of the entire EU's current annual demand from PV.

Land use just isn't close to being a limiting factor, so even though PV does indeed need more land than some other things, it just doesn't matter.

Land use, even if, would not matter, because solar coexists with existing uses. Float solar on reservoirs and canals, post it in fence-rows on pasture and cropland, lay it out on industrial and warehouse roofing.

You're talking about electricity, I am talking about replacing the entire energetic demand. That means fuel for ICE vehicles, ships, etc in addition to all the fossil fuels used purely for heating.

What Cyprus, Romania and other states do internally is not so interesting - every state is selling electricity for outrageous prices internationally, so it's not really something we'd want to rely on.

My point remains valid even if you want to replace all energy and not just what is already electrified, and also boost global energy use to the per-capita rate of Qatar (I think the highest in the world at about 2.5 times the average of the USA), and also boost world population to 10 billion, and also the PV is placed slightly worse than if it was randomly scattered.

Simultaneously. And by a large margin.

There's a lot of land on this planet of ours.

(The reason I chose Cyprus as an example is because of how small it is, and yet could supply so much if it wanted to. Any single one of Bavaria, Lombardy, Brussels, Lubusz, Aragón, Île-de-France could individually supply the entire EU just from PV, not merely meet their own needs, but again this is just to give a sense of scale — the correct placement of PV is seldom "all in one place").

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