5 ms·

Nuclear is not offering the best price per Mwh now (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricit

by Intox 4y ago

Nuclear is not offering the best price per Mwh now (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source), but it will certainly in the next decades. Solar and wind power sources requires an absurd amount of metal (sometimes rare metals) to build the generators (solar panels, wind turbines, etc). This metal is extracted today with an enourmous consumption of fossil fuels, and it will be difficult to have a greener alternative for this extraction (anything running on batteries will require even MORE metal). The prices per Mwh of renewable energy sources are heavily linked to the prices of fossil fuels, which are quite "low" compared to what will probably happen in the next decades. Moreover, most metals are getting harder and harder to extract (it's likely that we met the peak of copper extraction already), which means that we'll have to dig deeper and deeper to get metal. I'm not saying we should not invest in renewables, but it will be probably be 10x to 50x more expensive to maintain a renewable parc of solar panels or wind turbines without relying on fossil fuels at all, which will cause the prices per mwh to explode. Countries that try to go 100% renewable without a healthy dose of nuclear energy will probably end up either burning fossil fuels or buying raw materials from countries that does, at a very heavy price.

adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
you realize nuclear plants also require a lot of metal to produce?
- jokoon 4y ago
  much much less per unit of power please look at this, I'm tired of having to remind people that nuclear is the best on ALL fronts except cost https://i.imgur.com/qKzwxuj.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/qKzwxuj.jpeg
kragen 4y ago
basically you are working from wildly incorrect information and consequently coming to completely incorrect conclusions it's very difficult to predict future technological developments, especially as to pricing, but getting nuclear power down to the price of pv would require dramatic reductions in the cost of heat engines; the nuclear island is only a part of the cost of a nuclear power plant, and the rest of the plant is by itself enough to make the plant economically uncompetitive solar panels, as i understand it, contain minuscule quantities of metal; they're mostly silicon and glass, with much smaller amounts of boron, phosphorus, aluminum, copper, silver, and eva. but they are commonly mounted in aluminium frames, on the order of a gram of aluminum per peak watt or ten grams per average watt refining aluminum or iron from ore does cost a significant amount of energy, but there's no real obstacle to doing it with renewable energy and no fossil fuels; aluminum smelting pots won't even notice, and in the case of steelmaking, the technical problems of reduction with hydrogen are interesting but don't pose a risk to the success of the enterprise. the energy payback time on current solar panels is a few months, which is to say they generate all the energy needed to reproduce themselves (metals and all) in that time aluminum, silicon, and iron are among the most abundant elements in the earth's crust (#3, #2, and #4, respectively), so there's no real risk of having to dig for them. even copper averages 100 ppm. with silver there's a bit of a pinch, as about 10% of world silver production is going to solar panels; copper works as a substitute but significantly impairs efficiency windmills use the same kind of electrical generator you'd use in a coal or nuclear plant, just at a lower duty cycle, so at worst they have a small disadvantage relative to fossil fuels in terms of metal use. the counterbalancing advantage is that they don't need steam plumbing or a parsons turbine; windmill blades are fiberglass, not metal (sometimes generators do use rare elements, but that's just a matter of what's cheaper at the moment) that's why renewable energy from pv and wind is already much cheaper than fossil energy and continuing to get cheaper if your conclusion were correct, then despite your posited subsidy from cheap fossil fuels, pv and wind energy would already be more expensive than fossil-fuel energy, as it was until about 02014, because their energy payback time would have to be decades. you're two orders of magnitude outdated
jokoon 4y ago
Price doesn't matter, only carbon matters It's trivial to fund renewables with a chinese, coal-powered industry, so it will look cheap, but it's putting coal under the rug.

by Intox 4y ago

adgjlsfhk1 4y ago

you realize nuclear plants also require a lot of metal to produce?

jokoon 4y ago
much much less per unit of power please look at this, I'm tired of having to remind people that nuclear is the best on ALL fronts except cost https://i.imgur.com/qKzwxuj.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/qKzwxuj.jpeg

kragen 4y ago

basically you are working from wildly incorrect information and consequently coming to completely incorrect conclusions it's very difficult to predict future technological developments, especially as to pricing, but getting nuclear power down to the price of pv would require dramatic reductions in the cost of heat engines; the nuclear island is only a part of the cost of a nuclear power plant, and the rest of the plant is by itself enough to make the plant economically uncompetitive solar panels, as i understand it, contain minuscule quantities of metal; they're mostly silicon and glass, with much smaller amounts of boron, phosphorus, aluminum, copper, silver, and eva. but they are commonly mounted in aluminium frames, on the order of a gram of aluminum per peak watt or ten grams per average watt refining aluminum or iron from ore does cost a significant amount of energy, but there's no real obstacle to doing it with renewable energy and no fossil fuels; aluminum smelting pots won't even notice, and in the case of steelmaking, the technical problems of reduction with hydrogen are interesting but don't pose a risk to the success of the enterprise. the energy payback time on current solar panels is a few months, which is to say they generate all the energy needed to reproduce themselves (metals and all) in that time aluminum, silicon, and iron are among the most abundant elements in the earth's crust (#3, #2, and #4, respectively), so there's no real risk of having to dig for them. even copper averages 100 ppm. with silver there's a bit of a pinch, as about 10% of world silver production is going to solar panels; copper works as a substitute but significantly impairs efficiency windmills use the same kind of electrical generator you'd use in a coal or nuclear plant, just at a lower duty cycle, so at worst they have a small disadvantage relative to fossil fuels in terms of metal use. the counterbalancing advantage is that they don't need steam plumbing or a parsons turbine; windmill blades are fiberglass, not metal (sometimes generators do use rare elements, but that's just a matter of what's cheaper at the moment) that's why renewable energy from pv and wind is already much cheaper than fossil energy and continuing to get cheaper if your conclusion were correct, then despite your posited subsidy from cheap fossil fuels, pv and wind energy would already be more expensive than fossil-fuel energy, as it was until about 02014, because their energy payback time would have to be decades. you're two orders of magnitude outdated

jokoon 4y ago

Price doesn't matter, only carbon matters It's trivial to fund renewables with a chinese, coal-powered industry, so it will look cheap, but it's putting coal under the rug.