If only the "systems" we were considering were meant to provide limitless and virtually free electricity (nuclear), which is congruence with the "systems" of reducing poverty.
Commerical nuclear fission is unviable at this point [3], even at nimble startups [4] [5], but proponents are free to argue in support of it to anyone who will still listen. Renewables and batteries have reached an escape velocity trajectory [6].
This global energy system will eliminate energy poverty in our lifetime, and like bankruptcy, it'll happen slowly, and then all of a sudden.
[1] https://www.ku.ac.ae/two-minutes-of-sun-enough-to-power-a-ye...
[2] https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/12/25/all-i-want-for-christ...
[3] https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april...
[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38894631
[5] https://neutronbytes.com/2023/01/24/nuscales-smr-costs-hit-h...
Enough sunlights lands on earth every two minutes to power humanity if the whole surface of the planet including ocean was fully covered by 100% efficient solar panels. How is this even remotely relevant when we don't have close to the material needed to achieve that coverage and the efficiency of panels is famously extremely low.
The deployment in 2024 is - as usual - expressed in "theoretical max power". Which is nowhere near the actual throughput, and of course orders of magnitude higher than the "when I need it" actually delivery. Again; big numbers don't mean big results; real life scenario matter here, theoretical best is far less relevant.
Additionally, quoting "pv-magazine-usa.com" on this subject must be some kind of silly joke considering that it could as well be named "lobby-webiste-with-a-clear-political-agenda-to-push-for-photovoltaic-and-prove-it-also-cures-cancer.com" and no-one wold bat an eye. Similarly, other HN comment written by yourself usually don't count as "sources" for statements.
The links to my other comments are comments that contain citations supporting the thesis, versus an unnecessary wall of text. No facts I put forth are uncited.
Commercial nuclear fission is completely viable for anyone not allowing it to become unviable with lawsuits. See: China.
Downvote me all you want, but you'll live in poverty when there are no factories in your town because the lights turn off during a snowstorm.
Yeah, if you use standard new construction capacity planning in some cases solar + wind wins. If you target a much lower average/maximum cost per GW (and higher consumption) nuclear wins.
Things like EVs, electric furnaces for recycling, greener chemical plants and carbon capture mechanisms all become more viable with consistently cheap electricity.
I'd love to see your sources for this. To the best of my knowledge it isn't even close and solar is several times cheaper that nuclear. They used to be more comparable a decade or two ago, but solar costs have dropped dramatically since then.
It heaviy depends on how you set up the comparison. If you look at most current energy markets and say "how can I make money with these rules" the answer is almost always build a small amount of renewables. If you say, how should a government invest to retire coal power and achieve a low and stable energy cost, then nuclear can be viable (in some places).
Do you have any specific studies in mind I may have missed?
This is usually missing in typical cost calculations for solar or wind.
Take the California grid, peak energy usage is 2x minimum. Nuclear plants are insanely costly when ran at 100%. Imagine running at much lower capacity factors. Say the peaking plants run at 50%, that means the cost for consumers would be ¢2.4-4/kWh. [1]
Logically this entails that if we can solve a nuclear grid then we can solve a renewable grid since they impose the very similar constraints on the grid operators.
[1]: https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost...
Only if we build reactors in the modern way rather than like the French did in the 1970s. (The reasons why its so much more expensive are complex, but mostly a regulatory ratchet and an tolerance for risk so low that if applied to the rest of life we'd close down parks as too dangerous)
Nuclear (and construction in general) is a victim of the Baumol Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect , where the cost of something increases over time if it does not see labor productivity improvement, simply because other sectors of the economy do see labor productivity improvement.
It's not just Baumol.
It loses every way. Its LCOE is 5x higher. The PR campaign to save it was about neither its cost nor the environment but economically buttressing the nuclear military industrial complex.
It's SO much more expensive in fact that it's actually cheaper to use wind/solar to electrolyze hydrogen, store it underground in a salt cavern and burn that to generate electricity.
>Things like EVs
Things like EVs are even less suited to nuclear power because they dont need constant power and can charge while electricity is cheap. Ditto electric heating.
Electricity is cheap mostly when there is more base load than demand; i.e. at night. I don't think you can have that concept if you want to remove base load and just make electricity when the weather lets you.
The only reason we can realistically get to net zero with batteries and renewables is because we export our polution abroad by having China produce everything. And we then ship it back to us using incredibly carbon-intense modes of transportation.
If we had to onshore all that production and actually count it towards our own emissions we'd have no hope of meeting our climate goals with solar panels and wind power.
Nuclear is rather expensive and, with current technology, not „limitless“ in any sense of the word
Heck, can literally glass the waste and dump it on the abyssal plane, job done. (You can do the maths on this easily enough, essentially zero life is effected and the radioactivity of the ocean increases negligibly)
For one thing, it's neither limitless nor free - the limit is the amount of radioactive ore we mine, and the cost is the cost of setting up a plant, running it, mining the ore, purifying it, transporting it,... The cost of nuclear is actually pretty high. I'm not talking about safety except that the cost factors in both passive and active safety mechanisms. And, they take _forever_ to build and bring to operation.
On the other hand, the price of solar (even without subsidy) is already cost competitive with _coal_ leave alone nuclear.[1] But it's intermittent, and batteries like the article are expensive.
So, the question is not either this or that, but what's the right mix...
[1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Electric...