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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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[–] 2 points 1 week ago (10 children)

Only because solar/wind's been subsidized (by nearly everybody but the US and Russia) to heck. This is like saying trains aren't profitable because of how much the US subsidizes roads. Even then, nuclear ROI is still better in the long term, it just comes slower.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago* (6 children)

    Only because solar/wind’s been subsidized

    Nothing has been more subsidized than nuclear energy. It's entire existence is predicated on public R&D. Virtually all of its generators are public projects. It's a notorious money loser to operate. We still don't have a good solution for nuclear waste, so that gets stashed on public lands and in Superfund sites, too.

    That's not the reason it lags the alternatives, though. If public spending got us cheap energy with zero trade offs, everyone would be France by now.

    Solar/Wind, by contrast, get dogshit subsidies both relative to nuclear and fossil fuels. It outperforms in defiance of subsidies, often growing market share in states that are actively hostile to its expansion.

    Even in the face of enormous cuts to public spending and bailouts to coal, under Trump 1 & 2, renewables increased their market share.

    That's because renewables aren't just efficient, they're profitable. Enormously profitable. The private sector loves high margins on their capex spend, and renewables consistently deliver.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (4 children)

    Nothing has been more subsidized than nuclear energy. It's entire existence is predicated on public R&D.

    You seem to be implying that solar cells weren't. I don't believe that is true. Photovoltaics were brought about by US the government for satellites. (PV was initially discovered privately, but so was nuclear.) Solar was considered a notorious money loser to the point where it was only deployed for spaceflight. It was only after 60 years of public R&D that private commercial solar became variable in the 2010s.

    We still don't have a good solution for nuclear waste, so that gets stashed on public lands

    This I'll concede. In fact, in the US, it's worse than "public lands": it's often indigenous reservations, so land the US doesn't even own and sacred sites.

    I'll note that despite this being indeed a very big issue, nuclear land use is still two orders of magnitude less than solar for equivalent energy generation.

    Virtually all of its generators are public projects. [...] Solar/Wind, by contrast, get dogshit subsidies both relative to nuclear and fossil fuels.

    Not true at all. In FY 2016 alone, US subsidies were just 415 million to nuclear, compared to 3036 million for solar (https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/pdf/subsidy.pdf Tables A3, A4). That's nearly an order of magnitude. Nuclear is operated by companies just as solar is.

    Solar only became the knockout winner it is today after 70 years of intense research. Nuclear only got 40. I am simply saying we should give it the fair chance before you can say that there really is no potential.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (3 children)

    You seem to be implying that solar cells weren’t. I don’t believe that is true

    Tell it to Bell Labs. Tell it to the the Solar Energy Industries Association. Idk why Americans couldn't get on the ball publicly. But solar was squarely in the private domain for generations.

    Photovoltaics were brought about by US the government for satellites.

    They were brought about by the industrialization of satellites, certainly. But the R&D was all heavily privatized by and for the private telecommunications sector.

    When the US began rolling out large scale solar power plants in earnest, Walmart became the nation's largest installer and purchaser. No state or federal department came close to it.

    The largest investors in new build construction are NRG Energy and Google. Even the state regulated utilities lag behind.

    Solar only became the knockout winner it is today after 70 years of intense research.

    Largely overseas and financed by foreign governments or private firms. The US efforts at subsidizing solar are regularly stymied and gutted by conservative governments.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 days ago* (2 children)

    Tell it to the US Council for Energy Awareness. The existence of Bell Labs was a bit of an aberration as AT&T was effectively a government-supported monopoly. They had a consent decree with the government to release innovations into the public domain so AT&T would not be broken up as a monopoly. In fact, since 1913 it had official recognition by the government as the natural telephone monopoly, until of course its breakup in the '70s.

    Solar R&D was hardly private. You're completely excluding things like the U.S. National Science Foundation's Advanced Solar Energy Research and Development Division. I only haven't mentioned things like the Atomic Energy Commission because that seems obvious, not that there is no solar analogue for these things.

    When the US began rolling out large scale solar power plants in earnest, Walmart became the nation's largest installer and purchaser.

    Amazon is still the largest purchaser of solar. If the implication here is meant to be that solar's biggest supporters are private, no state or federal department ever came close to being the largest installer and purchaser of nuclear power plants because there are absolutely no public-sector nuclear power plants. All builders are private. Westinghouse of Nikola Tesla fame has been the top builder for a very long time and was bought out by private equity (thanks to a bankruptcy, sure, but that bankruptcy can be blamed on Bush's rugpull shortly after announcing long-term nuclear funding, the Great Recession, and Fukushima).

    This is also to say nothing of

    The US efforts at subsidizing solar are regularly stymied and gutted by conservative governments.

    And yet, my point is, even they're still subsidizing solar orders of magnitude more than nuclear! I am simply saying we should give it the fair chance before you can say that there really is no potential.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 days ago* (1 child)

    AT&T was effectively a government-supported monopoly

    It was certainly a monopoly. But hardly government supported. The government has issued major sanction against the company no less than three times.

    • The Kingsbury Commitment, which forced AT&T to divest its stake in Western Union, stop acquiring competing independent local phone companies, and allow other companies to connect to its long-distance network
    • The 1956 Consent Decree, requiring AT&T to stay out of the emerging computer/data processing market and license its transistor patents royalty-free
    • The 1984 Bell System Breakup, which formally split the comment company eight ways.

    Solar R&D was hardly private. You’re completely excluding things like the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Advanced Solar Energy Research and Development Division.

    The NSF has always languished in funding and has historically failed to deliver major breakthroughs, much less any kind of physical rollout, of a public solar/wind energy grid.

    If anything, it has operated as an echo chamber of the fossil fuel industry, downplaying the efficiency and ultimate profitability of a renewable grid.

    Hardly a subsidy.

    And yet, my point is, even they’re still subsidizing solar orders of magnitude more than nuclear!

    Show me the solar powered submarine.

    Show me the solar powered aircraft carrier.

    Show me any meaningful federally contracted project to implement solar power for domestic or international consumption.

    At the very least, I can point you towards Georgia's Vogtle 3 and 4. Nothing like that exists in the renewable space.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago

    This is complete distortion that tries to repeat the last two sentences of my first paragraph. Every one of these times that wasn't a breakup was a concession because the law says that a vertically-integrated monopoly such as AT&T should be broken up. These settlements, commitments, consent decrees all have the government officially recognize AT&T as the natural monopoly. The government straight-up set AT&T's rates. Bell Labs then had very little to show after the government broke up the Bell System.

    And again, one of these conditions was to have Bell Labs release inventions' patent rights into public domain. Ma Bell rates were effectively a tax, Bell Labs was effectively a public institution.

    The NSF was historically heavily funded. The fossil fuel industry had extremely little power towards fossil fuel adoption in the 70s due to a series of events starting with OPEC's embargo, and the vast majority of that redirection went towards renewables.

    Show me the solar powered submarine.

    Show me the solar powered aircraft carrier.

    These applications make no sense. An aircraft carrier needs armor and there's no fucking sunlight in submarine territory. Show me the nuclear helicopter and the solar smartphone.

    Vogtle 3 and 4 had no federal funding unless you count the loan guarantees, in which case I easily found Ivanpuh which has loan guarantees for 72.7% of its funding compared to Vogtle 3 and 4's less-than-25%. Vogtle was also an unfair example as a notable case of mismanagement resulting in cost overruns like Crescent Dunes.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago

    It is literally impossible to operate a fission plant without government subsidies. Private insurers won't touch the things, as the potential damage they can do in a worst case scenario is something only the budgets of nation states can absorb. Nuclear plants always rely on national insurance schemes to make them viable.

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