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Isn't nuclear hysteria created mostly by American CleanTech industry? Solar is not a reliable source to begin with so you can't use it to power anything critic

Isn't nuclear hysteria created mostly by American CleanTech industry? Solar is not a reliable source to begin with so you can't use it to power anything critical. It has to be combined with something like nuclear or fossil fuels to have reliable power. But if we go nuclear, we will have 1000s of years worth of power. So, where exactly does Solar fit in?

yellowapple 9y ago
Solar doesn't have to be reliable; it just has to charge a battery (or some other means of energy storage) which is reliable. Also worth mentioning (at the risk of being very pedantic) that solar is technically nuclear power.
- 0xffff2 9y ago
  >Also worth mentioning (at the risk of being very pedantic) that solar is technically nuclear power. At the risk of being even more pedantic, solar is fusion power, whereas "nuclear" in the common parlance refers specifically to fission.
- merpnderp 9y ago
  A very expensive battery made from a material we likely don't have enough of to scale for the world.
  - yellowapple 9y ago
    Even that's not necessarily true; your run-of-the-mill lead-acid car battery works fine for this at small scales, and a collection of them can be good enough for household-wide use. Not the most environmentally-friendly option, but such batteries are cheap and abundant. You're right that at large scales (neighborhood-wide, city-wide, nation-wide, etc.) we don't really have the battery infrastructure in place quite yet. I'd guess that said lack of infrastructure could be resolved well before 2025, though.
  - michaelsbradley 9y ago
    It's not impossible that someone could make a breakthrough in Flywheel Energy Storage for domestic use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage
    - dredmorbius 9y ago
      Modelling energy densities and costs tends to suggest that's not a viable option. Flywheel energy storage is useful as a substitute for spinning reserve (that is, the inertial mass of extand thermal generation turbines), but other than serving to dampen grid fluctuations, it's not good for more than a few minutes', perhaps at the outside a few hours', storage.
  - Tade0 9y ago
    There's so much lithium in the earth's oceans that if you manufactured batteries out of it would be enough to store 50 years worth of the world's electricity consumption.
- anotherbrownguy 9y ago
  >it just has to charge a battery (or some other means of energy storage) which is reliable. That's not true. Let's say you build your system with enough solar panels to fully charge batteries that lasts 3 days. And lets say sun doesn't shine for 4 days, which is not uncommon. Where is your reliability? Lets say you are designing a system to have reliable power. How many days worth of power backup would you design it to support? >Also worth mentioning (at the risk of being very pedantic) that solar is technically nuclear power. Yeah, and fossil fuels is solar. I don't see how it's worth mentioning.

yellowapple 9y ago

Solar doesn't have to be reliable; it just has to charge a battery (or some other means of energy storage) which is reliable. Also worth mentioning (at the risk of being very pedantic) that solar is technically nuclear power.

0xffff2 9y ago
>Also worth mentioning (at the risk of being very pedantic) that solar is technically nuclear power. At the risk of being even more pedantic, solar is fusion power, whereas "nuclear" in the common parlance refers specifically to fission.
merpnderp 9y ago
A very expensive battery made from a material we likely don't have enough of to scale for the world.
- yellowapple 9y ago
  Even that's not necessarily true; your run-of-the-mill lead-acid car battery works fine for this at small scales, and a collection of them can be good enough for household-wide use. Not the most environmentally-friendly option, but such batteries are cheap and abundant. You're right that at large scales (neighborhood-wide, city-wide, nation-wide, etc.) we don't really have the battery infrastructure in place quite yet. I'd guess that said lack of infrastructure could be resolved well before 2025, though.
- michaelsbradley 9y ago
  It's not impossible that someone could make a breakthrough in Flywheel Energy Storage for domestic use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    Modelling energy densities and costs tends to suggest that's not a viable option. Flywheel energy storage is useful as a substitute for spinning reserve (that is, the inertial mass of extand thermal generation turbines), but other than serving to dampen grid fluctuations, it's not good for more than a few minutes', perhaps at the outside a few hours', storage.
- Tade0 9y ago
  There's so much lithium in the earth's oceans that if you manufactured batteries out of it would be enough to store 50 years worth of the world's electricity consumption.
anotherbrownguy 9y ago
>it just has to charge a battery (or some other means of energy storage) which is reliable. That's not true. Let's say you build your system with enough solar panels to fully charge batteries that lasts 3 days. And lets say sun doesn't shine for 4 days, which is not uncommon. Where is your reliability? Lets say you are designing a system to have reliable power. How many days worth of power backup would you design it to support? >Also worth mentioning (at the risk of being very pedantic) that solar is technically nuclear power. Yeah, and fossil fuels is solar. I don't see how it's worth mentioning.