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Nuclear will never win the economy of scale war with renewables. Solar is extremely amenable to mass manufacturing. You can pump out solar panels by the millio
by dale_glass 5y ago
Nuclear will never win the economy of scale war with renewables.
Solar is extremely amenable to mass manufacturing. You can pump out solar panels by the millions. Then it all goes together with various metal brackets, wiring, and electronics, all of which have long been mass manufactured. They're made in many places and have uses in multiple industries, and there's plenty competition.
Wind is very amenable to mass manufacturing. Generators, gears, various nuts and bolts can all be mass made. The actual towers and windmills are definitely more specialized though.
And trailing way behind that is nuclear. You need to deal with radiation, use exotic alloys, and have a bunch of very specific tooling and instrumentation with lots of regulations and certifications. Plus lots of redundancy to make sure nothing bad happens.
And they have exactly the same "cheap electricity". A solar panel just sits there and makes power, only it comes for cheap from a factory in China and you don't need various backup systems. You can just build more solar instead, which produces more money.