I'd rather have a few more nuclear plants than vast arrays of panels scattered throughout land and sea.
It can't be great to cover so much of nature.
It can't be great to cover so much of nature.
Because there is absolutely no reason not to assume that those new nuclear power plants will once again take least 20 years to build (and will be 3 times over budget). That's quite a long time span that you need to fill with fossil fuels.
The only reason countries want to maintain an industrial nuclear supply chain and skills base is because they are a nuclear power already (France, Russia, US, etc.) or because they are purchasing the option to become one in a hurry (Iran, Sweden, South Korea, etc.).
Governments don't firehose subsidies at a form of power that has an LCOE 5x the cost of its competitors and give it free catastrophe insurance on top for the hell of it.
People will post stuff like this and then act surprised when others are put off.
Political will requires a median IQ high enough to understand the tradeoffs and lack fear from decades pass, which I don't think is possible this century.
You'd be surprised! Solar panels provide shade for local wildlife and improve crop/grazing yields due to the cover moderating the hot sun and providing spots for dew to form. As much as I love nuclear, we really should have started deploying it 10 years ago to make a difference. Solar is cheaper now and easier to deploy.
This dual-use of land for solar panels and agriculture is called "agrivoltaics".
where X and Y could be integers depending on location for 12 + hr demand.
Reality is that solar is being built at a much faster pace than predicted for much cheaper than predicted.
Nuclear. Crickets.
Also you are overplaying the amount of panels covering land and sea.
Oh, what's the amount of land & sea needed to rely on solar then?
I also wonder (not asking) about the resources to make and replace each panel every 30 years vs the equivalent of making and maintaining nuclear plants.
> Reality is that solar is being built at a much faster pace than predicted
I see, so the Christmas wish is coming true!
Ideally, I'd like to see the NRC dial back it's strict regulations.
That's the main reason nuclear development is slow here.
Other countries build nuclear much cheaper and quicker, just as safe.
That's my Christmas wish.
We need a reactor going online each week to make a dent.
Not disagreeing that the regulations in the US are way too onerous for nuclear.
What happens if in 30 years we have to discuss nano PV particulates in blood and great PV patch in some ocean?
("Externalities of wind power"? Oh.... is this bird strikes?)
Noise is problematic for wildlife, and in some areas we tend to build wind power in previously quiet areas.
Completely forgets the impact of climate change to the ecosystems.
Adding to that, by acknowledging the harms of wind power we can locate it where it’s less harmful. Near cities or at sea, instead of destroying the few quiet places.
Not being a scaremonger, these are just real costs that come along for the ride into a brave new future.
Spodumene processing in Malaysia from Australian concentrates (Mt. Weld, etc) to produce litium for batteries creates massive acid dams of wate and tonnes of radioactive waste.
Copper mining has always been problematic (albeit out of sight for many) and much more of that is called for.
Without being pro or anti any of the possible solutions for power generation we need moving forward, they all have toxic waste issues that bear looking into.
2021 produced 50 thousand tons of pure lithium.
Coal gets used ONCE, lithium stores energy thousands of times before recycling to do it again.
This kind of context is important before whatabouting.
Lithium, Copper, Nickel, and a slew of other minerals and elements are on the increase and have some serious waste products.
The comparison here is to
> Good thing nothing like that ever happens with nuclear.
(with implied /s)
with the rational response that all resources come with a downside.
This kind of context is important before whatabouting.
You've whatabout'd by dragging in coal.
Mixed, obviously, and different mixes in different parts of the world, but what should be our first-choice energy source? Assume fusion's off the table for now, lets stick with things that already exist.
My gut feeling is that wind, with its primarily local ecological impacts that are able to be minimised with careful placement and design, is a strong candidate for least-worst solution. The catastrophic failure mode of a wind farm does a lot less damage than the catastrohopic failure mode of a nuclear reactor, for a start. I do realise a lot of that wind power is probably going to end up in batteries (I'm hopeful for StEnSEA, but like fusion it's a bit Real Soon Now).
In a very real sense to date the actual catastrophic failure modes of nuclear haven't been that bad on a realistic industrial scale.
Chernobyl persists as a bad place to dig into the soil if you're a Russian soldier commanded to do dumb things, as a large area nature reserve the case could be made that it has been a positive for non human animals.
The events at the Fukishima nuclear plant had few actual direct deaths, as an incident embedded within the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that directly caused 19,759 deaths, 6,242 injured, and 2,553 people missing it would fade from sight were it not for the evacuations and containment costs.
The areas evacuated are already allowing returns to much of the region, the containment costs are the kinds of things that can be mitigated with engineering on future projects.
I'm no great fan of nuclear but pragmatically designs and safety have improved over the decades and actual deaths and casualties look small compared to deaths in conventional resource mining and industrial accidents such as the Bhopal disaster (500,000 people exposed to the highly toxic gas methyl isocyanate).
Sure, let's go with as much wind and solar as we can, let's have battery farms, green gas production, overnight thermal energy storage in sodium salts, etc.
But let us also pay attention to the costs of "green energy" - the ramp up to meet the current fossil fuel power creation levels will drastically ramp up toxic waste byproducts from nickel|copper mining, litium for batteries, rare eath processing, etc.
We are in a looming CO2 crisis that is worse for being kicked down the road since the 1970s when eraly action could have been taken.
Let's not blindly walk into another e-waste crisis by greenwashing away the real issues that come with new energy sources.
Coal might have peaked but it has an insanely long way down.
Mining waste problems need to be dealt with but they are localized and can be cleaned up afterwards.
Climate change is neither.
Right .. like recycling in the USofA - greenwashing.
Just be self aware about advocating to continuing to kick a can down the road and admit to yourself at least that you have no intention of being bothered by mining waste.
I'm glad to see the back of coal, but were it not for the associated C02 emmissions I would much prefer to live within 20 km of (say) the Muja coal | power site than (say) Lynas Malaysia, Kuantan.
Nickel | Copper mining in Sudbury and nearby generates more than 650 million tonnes of tailings every year from 200 operations along with about 10,000 abandoned mines that are "managed" by the Canadian government. "Managed" is essentially a euphermism for "not actively dealt with". Mine remediation has a long way to go in countries such as Canda and Australia and the majority of sites with problems are elsewhere and out of sight out of mind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muja_Power_Station
https://aidwatch.org.au/stop-lynas/
"Can be cleaned up afterwards" is very different from "Will be cleaned up".
> Also from IAE https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FpLhuguXsA8YE8V
Seriously? Not sure what point you're attempting to make with an graphic that lacks context and in any case supports my point that solar related waste will be rising seemingly "expontentially" along with solar.
If you're serious about understanding global energy and mineral resources I advise you to look at presentations that put total usage and transitions in the same picture - coal has a long way to fall to zero and solar has a long way to go to replace.
I'd also reiterate that I care about the issues here that come along with energy transitions - I'm not advocating for any one over another.
PV aren't just sand, if they were my windows would be PV. Small impurities matter over long times and large quantities.
Also wrong on long term plan for nuclear. Long term plan is wait. Radioactivity reduces itself with time.
Yes, we need to recycle the materials. Landfill is not a viable solution for any waste, none of that is unique to solar power.
> Long term plan is wait
Waiting a lifetime is easy. Waiting hundreds of generations after we’re dead is not. Is that an argument against nuclear power? Not in my opinion. There’s still no finalized plan describing how waiting will work in practice though.
90% of nuclear waste is harmless within a year or two. The rest is so dense, that it fits a couple of trucks, and can be stored indefinitely long in a very small storage
Voila what? If you're concerned about people degrading so far down that whatever we leave behind is "tombs of the third millenium", then storing a truckload of nuclear waste isn't really an issue.
I’m talking about the massive externality of climate change that is certain.
Waiting for nuclear to maybe get its shit together is not a gamble that we can take.
That said, I have nothing against nuclear. It’s just not happening unfortunately.
My point is even plastic packaging was invented to deal with problems of previous packing techniques namely glass, tin, paper, etc. Now we have a huge plastic environment issues.
Seems doable to be honest, even if you assume real-world inefficiencies and double or triple the area required. Especially when you fold it into existing infrastructure (eg solar panels on buildings).
These are 0.02% of the earth landmass.
Values are like this, when calculating conservative: 1 KWp needs an area around 10m². For enough maintenance distance multiply by 3 = 30m².
=> 1 Megawatt = 3 * 10m² * 1000 = 30.000m².
=> 1 Gigawatt = 3 * 10m² * 1000 * 1000 = 30.000.000m².
=> 1 Terawatt = 3 * 10m² * 1000 * 1000 * 1000 = 30.000.000.000m².
7.6% of Nevada
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28US%20power%20consump...
https://www.iea.org/energy-system/electricity/nuclear-power# “ Nuclear energy, with around 413 gigawatts (GW) of capacity operating in 32 countries”
So the total global nuclear capacity ever built is now producing 413GW. Eerily the same as the solar capacity installed just last year.
Whoever is pushing for nuclear instead of solar in 2023 either doesn’t have the slightest idea about the current energy market or simply wants to help the fossil fuels to survive given how long would it take to build a nuclear power plant and at what cost.
Peak power isn’t the right measure of comparison here, I don’t think. Average power and guaranteed power on a 24- hour basis seems a more logical comparison.
“Can it run my heat pump at 5 in the morning on a cold winter day?” matters a lot to people.
The capacity factor of solar at night is exactly 0%.
You don't have to cover nature if you cover buildings.
Los Angeles, for example, could provide a very significant amount of it's electricity needs if it got a 5 mile radius of commercial buildings to all cover their roofs with solar panels.
Now, we can argue whether those buildings, themselves, are a good thing. But, given that they exist, we should cover them.
For 24x7 grid supply at .9999 reliability? I’m not nearly so sure; it might be, and if that were the case, it’s great news, because it makes that almost an inevitability.
Only billionaires could afford the cheap smartphone you have in your pocket if it wasn't manufactured at scale.