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Monocrystalline silicon panels last >30 years at near-initial production unless subjected to physical damage. Yes, investors in the uranium fuel rod production

Monocrystalline silicon panels last >30 years at near-initial production unless subjected to physical damage. Yes, investors in the uranium fuel rod production pipeline will feel a lot of pain as a result of what's going on right now, but it's not like they weren't warned. Like Theranos investors, they failed to do their due diligence. [edit] Just to add, the metric you want is ENERGY not $US, because what really matters is the amount of energy you have to put into mining the ore, extracting the uranium from the ore, enriching the uranium-235 in the ore to the point where it's useful in a nuclear reactor, and then packaging that refined product into highly expensive fuel rods made of fairly expensive materials. By the time you do that energy calculation, per-year, for the reactor (on top of ridiculously high initial construction costs), the whole thing looks like a massive long-term liability.

defrost 3y ago
Monocrystalline is the most expensive one to produce, the process of manufacturing monocrystalline solar cells is very energy-intensive and produces a big amount of silicon waste. They're not especially robust in cold weather and while they do last longer, they do also degrade in output over time just as the poly versions do. To maintain a 1 GW farm requires ongoing upkeep, etc. Again, there are no magic problem free resources, just like low volume uranium mining, large volume mining and production processing to sustain solar power has toxic side effects and impacts people.
- photochemsyn 3y ago
  I think that the overall cost of producing 1 GW of monocrystalline solar PV (a technique China has apparently mastered) is very comparable to the cost of producing a single year's worth of enriched uranium fuel rods, at that's from comparing the costs of acquiring the raw materials, putting them through the requisite processing stages, and producing the finished product. It's not even close, with some limited exceptions, like Finland and other Artic Circle zones.

defrost 3y ago

Monocrystalline is the most expensive one to produce, the process of manufacturing monocrystalline solar cells is very energy-intensive and produces a big amount of silicon waste. They're not especially robust in cold weather and while they do last longer, they do also degrade in output over time just as the poly versions do. To maintain a 1 GW farm requires ongoing upkeep, etc. Again, there are no magic problem free resources, just like low volume uranium mining, large volume mining and production processing to sustain solar power has toxic side effects and impacts people.

photochemsyn 3y ago
I think that the overall cost of producing 1 GW of monocrystalline solar PV (a technique China has apparently mastered) is very comparable to the cost of producing a single year's worth of enriched uranium fuel rods, at that's from comparing the costs of acquiring the raw materials, putting them through the requisite processing stages, and producing the finished product. It's not even close, with some limited exceptions, like Finland and other Artic Circle zones.