3,807 karma · joined August 18, 2012
The main argument for nuclear besides "baseload" is that nuclear plants can potentially last for a century and will thus amortise its capex quite easily and afterwards become relatively cheap for most of its life. Except, given just how quickly solar is dropping right now, it's unreasonable to assume that 50+ years from now (so, in ~2076) already-built nuclear will be cheaper than contemporary solar tech (I.e. solar panels built in 2075). In fact, it's unreasonable to assume that nuclear plants will necessarily be longer-lasting than future solar panels, given current research into self-healing solar panels (which clearly isn't commercially ready, but very likely will be within 50 years). Even if they can only self-heal 3 times, that's 4x the lifetime for 120 years total, and much longer if the base lifetime of the panel is more than 30 years. And frankly nuclear will never beat solar panels on operational costs - nuclear has a 24/7 guard, a nuclear reactor and a turbine, whereas the closest thing PV has to moving parts is the de-dusting machines.
Similar logic for solar also applies to wind and batteries, of course - their price has been dropping like a rock for decades. And that compounds - if both solar and batteries get twice as cheap and their lifetime lasts twice as long, then the whole package becomes 4x cheaper. And the cheaper wind turbines get, the fewer batteries solar needs to plug the holes in intermittent generation.
A quick aside: a lot of focus on solar lifetimes assumes the minimum will be the average, but e.g. 1980s solar panels are still in operation with only 10-20% performance degradation IIRC so the popular assumption that solar panels last only 30 years seems a bit ridiculous.
China's nuclear stats should be kept in perspective by the way: IIRC ~90% of the generation they're building is non-nuclear renewables. They're also building more of basically everything than the rest of the world combined, so an absolute stat like "they're building 37 of X" isn't particularly useful except for conveying that China is building a lot of stuff.
To repeat, though: the US should still build nuclear plants (unless/until they get financially blitzed by renewables). My point here is to keep it in perspective.
And I don't mean to insinuate you said otherwise, I'm just kind of pre-emptively responding to a stereotype/common set of associated arguments, I guess.
The last mile could be fairly easily electrified at this point, battery trucks are quite sensible for short distances.
Skylights also suck because they're exposing the window directly to the sky (and thus rain), whereas conventional windows are somewhat protected by eaves and the fact that the window is vertical so water can't pool on it.
- the main input (land) is also an output, so when the price of the output goes up, so does the value of the input.
- economies of scale don't really work, due to the impracticality of transporting the good (houses) and fitting the good inside a machine (in house "factories", normal workers go inside the house and work on it by hand; not a lot changes compared to traditional construction)
- more supply in one area increases the value (and therefore demand) in that area, so it's not actually clear-cut whether building more would reduce the price more than it increases it, at first glance.
Pffft no. Most of us think that AI is being used as a political trick - like firing unionized workers "to replace them with AI" and then hiring new un-unionized workers to replace them, 2 weeks later. Replace the AI with an empty cardboard box labeled "AI" in black marker, and nothing changes.
See also: using AI to launder pirated material, for big businesses.
Meanwhile, there are cases where copyright of more than 2 years is overkill.
I don't know what, but it seems like we need some sort of mechanism for variable-length IP duration is needed.
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China is building everything at a pace never before seen in history. Partly because their construction industry is a jobs program, and their economy is so dependent on it that they prefer building things at a loss rather than not building at all. Which is financially dumb, but welcome to politics.
BREAKING NEWS: China is big.
We appreciate your restraint.
If you build more solar it'll meet 100% of demand for a larger portion of the day, which is what we're doing.
Not even then. Coal is dead, and gas killed it. The externalities are a distraction, coal plants are just straight-up uneconomic.
Are you talking about the marginal cost? Don't blame the govt, blame the economics textbook.
No it's not. I'm not talking about the environment either, coal plants are just straight-up more expensive than gas plants and renewables.
Coal plants are necessarily steam turbines and not internal combustion, because coal is filthy and the mercury/sulfur/etc would wreck the guts of any machinery it goes through. Thus, it's only used to boil water.
Gas turbines don't have that problem, so they spin the turbine with the combustion products directly. They're far more efficient, the machines are smaller and cheaper, and because you don't need to wait for a giant kettle to boil before ramping up the power, they're far more flexible and responsive to demand. It also helps that the gas is fed with a gas pipe, whereas coal needs to be fed with a bobcat.
Which is why nobody is building new coal plants - they're way more expensive than gas plants, even if the gas fuel itself is more expensive than coal.
>Strategic surrender is smart; if you know ahead of time which force is most powerful and can evaluate it objectively, you can save yourself the trouble of dying and you end up with a better outcome than you would have otherwise. It's risk management.
France didn't particularly surrender early. WW2 France surrendered because they were fucked and didn't have a choice; if they hadn't surrendered when they did, they would have been slaughtered and then their replacements would surrender just the same.
Russia would have done the same (and in fact, Ukraine tried to switch sides, especially with the Holomodor in such recent memory), but the Nazis were not pragmatic about permitting 'subhumans' to live.