kidicarus89 t1_iqs137n wrote
Reply to comment by beders in The US's largest ever combined wind+solar/battery electricity plant has opened in Oregon with a generating/storage capacity of 350MW/120MWh by lughnasadh
Nothing. It’s becoming clear that solar and wind will be cheaper, less complex, and faster to build than coal/gas/nuclear plants. The economic argument is becoming harder to ignore.
Ducky181 t1_iqvb9xl wrote
- The world electricity consumption is only 22% of the world total energy consumption. The building of more solar and wind farms won't result in the required level of reduction in emissions over the long run unless we figure out a low-cost way to use solar and wind energy to make steel, concrete, chemicals, and the creation of highly dense energy for long-distance transportation. The only source that can fulfil the high energy and heat needs necessary to address these aforementioned problems is nuclear power.
- The majority of solar cells and high level batteries are made within China, with questionable labour standards. We have already learned in the recent Ukraine war on how damaging it is to rely on another state with world view's that are highly contradiction to ours.
- The world uses equivalent to 140,000 TWH of total energy each year. In order to produce this much energy we need about 1,363,154km2 of land mass dedicated purely to solar energy production. This is twice as large as the total landmass of Turkey, and France, and almost the size of Iran. These solar cells and batteries need to be replaced every twenty to thirty year's, and contain a plethora of dangerous elements with no foreseeable recycling option.
MiguelKoch t1_iqw9hcd wrote
>Unless we discover a way to make steel, concrete, chemicals, and the generation and storage of high level energy for aircraft, long-distance transport.
This isn't even a sentence.
And "renewables can't power planes therefore the solution is nuclear" seems to have a pretty big logic leap, unless you are suggesting sticking a couple nuclear reactors in a commercial plane.
I_C_Weaner t1_iqssqjs wrote
But wHaT aBoUt NuClEaR?!!! It's totally carbon free, only emits skittles and baby farts, and would solve ALL the worlds problems if not for government red tape and over-regulation. Anyone who disagrees with this is ignorant, a communist, anti-American, and/or poorly educated. Oh yeah - molten salt and thorium reactors will do all this and get you a girlfriend who's a super model, fix your baldness, ED, and bring Jesus back. /s as if you didn't know.
invisiblesock t1_iqtmd4k wrote
you forgot the greens and greta thunberg.
[deleted] t1_iqu7r5z wrote
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sunsparkda t1_iqukwvj wrote
Then invest your life savings in a nuclear project.
What's that? You don't what to risk losing your money if the project goes bad, and don't want to or can't afford to wait for a decade plus to see any returns if it does come online?
Gee, wonder why other people aren't doing what you aren't willing to.
JonA3531 t1_iquu77i wrote
>Idk why ppl are so afraid of nuclear power.
because of this:
>Sure, they cost a good bit up front,
scitzo85z t1_iqvgt9d wrote
Little short sighted. It pays off over the life of the reactor. Sometimes you need to make sort term sacrifice for long term gain.
nerevisigoth t1_iqulung wrote
You also need to consider the capacity factor, which tops out around 30-35% for wind and 20-25% for solar. So with 300 MW wind and 50 MW solar nameplate capacity the best we can expect is average output of around 120 MW.
Nuclear has a capacity factor of >90% since it only ever stops for maintenance, so a single 1.1 GW reactor (eg an AP1000) is like 8x this plant.
But at least in the US we have plenty of otherwise useless windy land and it's incredibly expensive to build a nuclear plant, so maybe this is the way to go.
[deleted] t1_iquvaum wrote
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