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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 1 week ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 38 points 1 week ago (21 children)

Averaging nuclear over the entire world really doesn't give it a fair shake, since there are many jurisdictions that won't build nuclear capacity for political and societal-preference reasons, rather than technical ones. Where I am, the percentage of electricity supplied by nuclear power plants is more than five times what's supplied by solar and wind combined, and we're doing just fine (and building out more nuclear in addition to more renewables).

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  • [–] 17 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    In UK in 2010, 10 new nuclear plants were announced. Since then 5 older plants have been shut leaving us with 5 active. 1 of the 10 new ones started construction and it's massively over budget and delayed.

    In the same time we've added about 20GW of solar.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    New nuclear plants take like 10 years to build, and need to plan out a 50+ year useful life in order to be worth the up-front construction costs.

    I wonder what the state of energy production in 2075 will be, where a nuclear power plant designed in 2025 and completed in 2035 will still have 10 years in order to break even on cost, competing with whatever the state of the art is on generation in 2075. Fusion? Widespread solar+wind+geothermal+batteries? Something we haven't even dreamed of?

    That's why I'm skeptical of nuclear fission these days. It locks us in too long.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    I'm all in on solar for most places.

    Sure it uses a bit more land, but it makes no noise, no pollution, there's zero risk of an accident, no targets for terrorism and your grid isn't completely shut down if it is somehow turned offline.

    You don't depend on others for your own resilience. No need for oil, gas or uranium.

    Unless you live in the high northern latitudes, there is almost no reason to not be building a durable and resilient battery-renewable grid

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