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Solar Panels Are Now Producing So Much Power That They’re Leaving Nuclear Plants in the Dust: "Solar is now the engine of the power transition." (futurism.com)
submitted 2 weeks ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] [S] 18 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

Nuclear’s big selling point is that the sun goes down. Batteries have apparently missed that memo: they keep getting cheaper, better, and more efficient. Storage won’t solve every grid problem overnight, but pretending today’s limitations are permanent is a strange way to plan tomorrow’s energy system.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 weeks ago* (5 children)

    another big selling point of nuclear is it’s easy to drop in at old coal plants that already have grid connections ready to go.

    pretending today’s limitations are permanent is a strange way to plan tomorrow’s energy system.

    how long are you willing to wait for perfect energy storage?

    obviously battery tech will improve, but the point is we cannot afford to assume that problem will be solved 100%, meanwhile experiencing more and more irreversible damage to our environment. We need to put our eggs into all clean energy baskets to get off CO2 as soon as possible. Not whenever battery tech happens to be ready to handle everything.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 weeks ago*

    "it's easy to drop at a place that has grid connections"

    Funny, because solar or literally any other plant will also benefit from having existing connections, and all of them are easier and cheaper to build than nuclear.

    Nuclear is dead but for niche applications.

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  • [–] [S] 9 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

    Nobody’s asking us to bet on miracle batteries: Wind and solar paired with storage are already cheaper than building new nuclear. Reusing a coal plant’s grid connection doesn’t magically make a reactor cheap or quick to build. If speed and CO2 matter, follow the numbers, not the nostalgia.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 child)

    Maybe cheaper in money terms, not others, first of all space.
    But how much would cost to build a solar farm with the same output of a nuclear plant, both on days and night ?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago

    There are a bunch of studies about that, the point of all those articles like this one coming out recently is that solar has become so cheap it even beats nuclear when you factor in the still very high cost of storing the power

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