Hacker News Reader

Comment by dalyons | Hacker News Reader

> If solar and wind can be made profitable, I don't see how nuclear is any different.

Nuclear is fundamentally way more complicated than wind and especially solar. Nuclear is 10s of kilometers of high pressure piping, 1000s of tons of concrete, exotic pressure welding. Solar on the other hand is brain dead simple and amenable to mass production in a way that nuclear can never be. As such, nuclear will never see the same scale of cost reductions.

View on HN

We also used to say that solar and wind were fundamentally flawed: solar panels had an exotic manufacturing process, energy storage was limited and expensive, they are fundamentally tied to specific environmental conditions which may not hold, etc. We still managed.

Likewise, we could see cost reductions with cheaper/better alternatives to concrete, models that don't require so much piping, the exotic pressure welding becoming not so exotic, etc. We also could see better reactor models with yields, increasing energy production.

I absolutely agree we could see cost reductions with scale. Maybe 2x ? But solar is a much more simple manufacturing process that’s amenable to massive massive volume. Print silicon, add traces, assemble. 100% automated. As such it has seen a 20x cost reduction since 1994. Nukes will never be able to touch that reduction.

Did you just call nuclear reactors as "nukes"?

Yes? So? Fairly common shorthand when discussing electric power systems. No one confuses it with bombs, because that would be silly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com