3 ms·
By “inefficient” I mean you need incredibly large amounts of space, and the power generated is relatively small, and never mind the materials needs! What kinda
by kulahan 1y ago
By “inefficient” I mean you need incredibly large amounts of space, and the power generated is relatively small, and never mind the materials needs!
What kinda batteries are you talking about? There may be tech I’m unaware of, but failing that, there simply isn’t a currently-viable storage solution.
Maybe we’ve made marginal improvements, but our grid certainly cannot handle sending huge amounts of energy to darker regions anyways. The superconductors needed for that don’t exist yet, and the grid overhaul needed to sidestep the superconductors would be tear-jerkingly expensive.
Nuke plants are ready to go. They’re the missing ingredient that steps around all those issues. It provides a large amount of energy, very safely, using a very small land footprint. You can skip huge amounts of the regulation process by using tried-and-tested reactor designs. You can store spent fuel rods in water, then more permanently in concrete and clay.
And again, the holy grail here is fusion. More fusion research will be a completely natural byproduct of a larger nuclear market.
As the other dude said, no one single tech will fix this, and being anti-nuke in an era where we need large amounts of clean energy generation, like, yesterday… we should probably lean on everything we’ve got, and this is tantalizingly low-hanging fruit.
Geothermal does seem to be having its “fusion moment” - I’m very excited to see where that goes! Some Nordic nation (Sweden?) has been living off geothermal for quite some time, so I imagine the tech surrounding its use post-extraction is quite advanced. I’ve got high hopes.
Along a similar line, there was a recent find in hydrogen tech - basically, a way to capture it from the earth, meaning we have an actually-efficient manner of gathering the stuff. Fingers crossed that pans out too!
- Synaesthesia 1y agoChina is deploying solar at scale and enabling many countries to do it too, like Pakistan. They are also starting use massive batteries including lithium phosphate and sodium tech for things like grid storage and powered locomotives.
- SchemaLoad 1y agoThose incredibly large amounts of space are generally completely unused though. Like on the top of car park sun shades, roofs, and the middle of the desert.
- defrost 1y agoSolar farms, in Australia at least, work both as providers of solar power and as "better than an empty paddock" livestock and feed farms. Solar panels provide shade, retain soil moisture better, and grow better feed crops for sheep and other animals to graze on while acting as living lawn mowers. (2022) Solar farm trial shows improved fleece on merino sheep grazed under panels - https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2022-05-30/solar-farm-grazing-sheep-agriculture-renewable-energy-review/101097364 https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2022-05-30/solar-farm-graz... and more recently (2025) Landline: Episodes 17 & 18, June 8th & 15th https://www.thetvdb.com/series/landline/episodes/11160565 https://www.thetvdb.com/series/landline/episodes/11160565 https://www.thetvdb.com/series/landline/episodes/11160566 https://www.thetvdb.com/series/landline/episodes/11160566 https://iview.abc.net.au/video/RF2404Q017S00 https://iview.abc.net.au/video/RF2404Q017S00 https://iview.abc.net.au/video/RF2404Q018S00 https://iview.abc.net.au/video/RF2404Q018S00 ie. In actual practice they're very much the opposite of "ineffcient".