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> Right now wind and solar have dropped so much in price that they represent a serious threat to fossil fuels on a short time frame. I recommend sitting down a

> Right now wind and solar have dropped so much in price that they represent a serious threat to fossil fuels on a short time frame. I recommend sitting down and calculating the input cost for solar / wind. It's being subsidized substantially. There aren't even enough materials currently mined to support the US switching to mostly (>50%) solar / wind. Silver/gold/copper/nickle prices would go up an order of magnitude, for instance. I'm for cheap energy - period. It's directly correlated with improvements in life. If solar / wind get us there, great. If nuclear improves it, let's do it. Right now natural gas is also very cheap, should be drilling as much as we can. The more we maximize growth and cheap energy now, the quicker we advance technology, innovation and automation.

matthewdgreen 4y ago
Have you calculated the costs of nuclear without government subsidies? As best I understand, it’s completely unsupportable.
- lettergram 4y ago
  It varies wildly by government and if you built at scale costs would drop dramatically as they did in the French and Russian build outs.
  - asadotzler 4y ago
    And how do you get scale when the costs are so steep? Cut US regulations to lower costs and you also give up taxpayer supported insurance caps without which no new nuclear would ever be built. It's unsolvable while wind and solar have already gotten far cheaper than nuclear.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
> There aren't even enough materials currently mined to support the US switching to mostly (>50%) solar / wind. Silver/gold/copper/nickle prices would go up an order of magnitude, for instance. You're thinking of nuclear. Which has a variety of critical resources and no plan reduce them. Renewables live in the real world where using less of a scarce resource allows you to outcompete your competition. Modern perc panels use 30-50g (so half of silver production would produce 500GW/yr) of silver per net kW with commercial but not fully deployed technologies to reduce it to 18-30g, and feasible technologies to bring it below 5g (which is what a nuclear reactor uses). This is the only limiting resource that renewables necessarily use more of than nuclear other than concrete.

matthewdgreen 4y ago

Have you calculated the costs of nuclear without government subsidies? As best I understand, it’s completely unsupportable.

lettergram 4y ago
It varies wildly by government and if you built at scale costs would drop dramatically as they did in the French and Russian build outs.
- asadotzler 4y ago
  And how do you get scale when the costs are so steep? Cut US regulations to lower costs and you also give up taxpayer supported insurance caps without which no new nuclear would ever be built. It's unsolvable while wind and solar have already gotten far cheaper than nuclear.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

> There aren't even enough materials currently mined to support the US switching to mostly (>50%) solar / wind. Silver/gold/copper/nickle prices would go up an order of magnitude, for instance. You're thinking of nuclear. Which has a variety of critical resources and no plan reduce them. Renewables live in the real world where using less of a scarce resource allows you to outcompete your competition. Modern perc panels use 30-50g (so half of silver production would produce 500GW/yr) of silver per net kW with commercial but not fully deployed technologies to reduce it to 18-30g, and feasible technologies to bring it below 5g (which is what a nuclear reactor uses). This is the only limiting resource that renewables necessarily use more of than nuclear other than concrete.