The US government opens 22 million acres of federal lands to solar::The Biden administration has updated the roadmap for solar development to 22 million acres of federal lands in the US West.
The US government opens 22 million acres of federal lands to solar::The Biden administration has updated the roadmap for solar development to 22 million acres of federal lands in the US West.
So I guess we’re not going to do the smart thing, going nuclear, and instead landscape more of the country.
The ideal of nuclear has a lot going for it but the reality is much more expensive than any other power generation. We need to let it go: revisit if research points to an order of magnitude cost reduction or if fusion becomes practical
Can we define “expense”? I consider the loss of public lands extremely expensive. As well as the care and feeding of the carbon based plants required to operate so the base load is maintained. I don’t know numbers, but wouldn’t such an expanse of new solar install demand huge maintenace costs - in areas increasingly prone to natural disaster?
Doubt it. Solar has no moving parts, nothing has to feed it. It just works. Given the massive repetition, when something breaks, it should usually have very little impact, very little administrative overhead, no risk of making the land unusable, and the repair person should be much less expensive than someone working nuclear
The article doesn’t say much about the land except “away from sensitive areas” and a fraction of that used by oil and gas.
Nuclear would be best I agree, but it takes 20+year to build a station and by the time it’s online, it’s already obsolete. Plus the whole nuclear waste issue. I’ve been hearing about thorium rectors for the past 25yrs and they’re still not building them. The biggest concern with renewables right now is grid integration.
Sorry, but I’m curious about a few statements here. In what way is a reactor obsolete? And how does whatever degree of obsolescence compare with solar grids that are still undergoing massive innovation- isn’t anything we build today obsolete tomorrow? Do SMRs really take 20+ years to build?
Nuclear waste “issue” must be compared to electronic waste “issue” - with total cost of ownership calcs of rare earth mining and discarding batteries on a regular basis.
And yes, of that doesn’t address the main concern which is grid integration and base load sustainment.
There’s a station in Orange County they just shut down after it sat there unused for however many years. They already bury nuclear waste in the Arizona desert, they can’t act like that’s somehow off limits when they’re willing to destroy the rest of the desert with solar panels, wind farms, and lithium mines. It’s bullshit that the American desert is viewed as being empty and without value, unless it’s pretty enough to charge tourists and entry fee. There’s zero excuse for destroying what little we have left of our open land in the US. It will be completely gone before we even have time to realize it.
Why are these solar panels not going on top of buildings? On parking lots and parking garages? We never seem to have a problem finding more room for those? I know the answer is that it will cost more and they would need some kind of rights from the property owners. That’s still not an excuse to destroy the land, the ecosystems, and the species that live there. It’s fucking disgusting, soulless, and short sighted. Teddy Roosevelt is rolling in his grave.
But nuclear doesn’t waste as much money, so of course they won’t
Your comment is 100% at odds with reality. Where do you come up with this stuff?
It’s not a simple issue. It is very complicated. Permitting, real estate, time to build, construction offsets, battery needs (solar’s weakest point likely).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
I’m more of a let’s do both, and we’ll everything we can, kinda guy.
Here’s the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
Different methods of electricity generation can incur a variety of different costs, which can be divided into three general categories: 1) wholesale costs, or all costs paid by utilities associated with acquiring and distributing electricity to consumers, 2) retail costs paid by consumers, and 3) external costs, or externalities, imposed on society. Wholesale costs include initial capital, operations & maintenance (O&M), transmission, and costs of decommissioning. Depending on the local regulatory environment, some or all wholesale costs may be passed through to consumers. These are costs per unit of energy, typically represented as dollars/megawatt hour (wholesale). The calculations also assist governments in making decisions regarding energy policy.
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I disagree, it is a simple issue: Do you want to pay way more than you need to for electricity?
“These stark differences are echoed in the most recent Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis by Lazard, a leading financial advisory and asset management firm. Their findings suggest that the cost per kilowatt (KW) for utility-scale solar is less than $1,000, while the comparable cost per KW for nuclear power is between $6,500 and $12,250. At present estimates, the Vogtle nuclear plant will cost about $10,300 per KW, near the top of Lazard’s range. This means nuclear power is nearly 10 times more expensive to build than utility-scale solar on a cost per KW basis.”
https://www.energysage.com/about-clean-energy/nuclear-energy/solar-vs-nuclear/
"“Nuclear power is irrelevant in today’s electricity capacity market,” the report’s main author, French nuclear consultant Mycle Schneider, told pv magazine, noting that power generation from nuclear power dropped by 4%, while non-hydro renewables increased by 13%.
According to the report, the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of solar PV dropped by approximately 90% over the past few years, while the LCOE of nuclear energy climbed by around 33%."
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/09/28/renewables-vs-nuclear-256-0/
Your first link is from a solar company. Mycle Schneider is a “self-taught anti-nuclear activist”. Cherry picking does make things simple.
But regardless, it’s worth considering the self-fulfilling prophecy. Starting with the state of public discourse leading to tax-incentives heavily favoring solar and wind. And how these articles’ statements exclude all manner of externalities.
If you had bothered to do more than skim the article you’d know that it links to the underlying data.