Comment by api | Hacker News Reader

Comment by api | Hacker News Reader

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Perhaps so, but at this point I'm starting to wonder if the point is moot. Solar is experience Moore's Law type effects in terms of cost per kW of installed capacity, and there is now immense R&D muscle behind energy storage due in part to the electronics industry.

The awesome power of exponential tipping points is not to be underestimated. When the cost/kWh curves intersect, it could happen fast. Look at the adoption of the Internet and smart phones for examples. Solar could go from <1% of our energy to >25% in 5-10 years. That might be conservative.

I'm seeing nuclear as a niche technology. In a post-fossil world I can see it for radionucleotide production (e.g. for nuclear medicine and space probes), maybe for a few really heavy industrial needs, and for some locations with very poor local renewable energy availability. But for the most part I see it as obsolescent.

I do think it might find its killer app somewhere else though: Mars. There are many reasons it would make more sense there.

China has 28 new reactors in the pipeline for a reason. Solar is nowhere near ready.

I don't see the actions of a huge, lumbering bureaucracy as a good predictor of the future.

Guyana has zero, if that makes you feel better.

You should study post revolution Chinese history a bit more, or at least click around on gapminder a bit. The idea that they're a lumbering ineffective bureaucracy is too simplistic to be useful.

Two examples: First, China doubled its life expectancy in a single decade, moving from one of the lowest to being at parity with the developed world. Second, in the early 1980s China implemented policies that moved them from having stagnant GDP per capita to steadily doubling it per decade, a pace it remains on since.

In fact, you could blame some of post revolutionary China's most disasterous events on the lack of bureaucratic inertia. The great leap forward was disasterous not just because the details of the plan were mistaken, but also because it was implemented so instantly and completely.

Anyhow, if you look at the data instead of repeating narratives that personify organizations, you'll see it's not quite so simple as saying that all Chinese economic decision-making can be summarily rejected as lumbering bureaucracy.

Sun radiation is limited. You get ~1.4 kW/m2 at 100% efficiency. You need enormous plots of land to get anywhere close to what a small nuclear plant can produce.

Renewables will only get so far if we don't stop increasing our energy demands exponentially every year. Since that seems unlikely, we will produce every single way we can.

That Elon Musk guy argued that if we installed solar panels all over the safety zones around a nuclear reactor, then those panels would generate more energy than the power plant.

If that's a profitable investment I'm sure it will be done.

Electric demand has been dropping for the last five or so years in the US. Not increasing exponentially.

You could cover 1/4 of the roof area in the US with solar panels and have enough power to close all other power plants. Add panels over parking lots and you get exponential demand back.

Doesn't matter, it's a global market.

Other countries have buildings with roofs.

Conveniently enough, the land for solar interception can be dual use with structures we already use and will build.

Sure. As I said, we will produce every way we can. Talking about the long term.

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