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uhhNo t1_ixxsoup wrote

Reply to comment by cwesttheperson in Record efficiency of 26.81% for large silicon solar cells by Wagamaga

In a decade, nuclear will be 3x more expensive per unit of energy than wind and solar.

Nuclear is only good up to the baseload of the grid. For the rest, wind, solar, and storage will be more economical while still being reliable.

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ttux t1_ixydm51 wrote

But your baseload has to be the same as your entire solar + wind production until electricity storage has been solved so why build both solution when you can build only one. I say this often but Germany spent 600 billion euros on wind and solar since 2000. They would have spent this on building nuclear plants and not closing the ones they already had and would have 100% co2 free and cheapest electricity on the planet. There is a difference between theory and practice. Now we are screwed because we lack energy and building nuclear plants will take minimum 10 years so in the mean time we burn gas and coal for baseload and add more solar/wind. At 40% renewables, 11% nuclear and the rest fossil. And that's just for electricity. So optimistically another 800-1000 billion euros to go? Then 2 times that to replace use of fossil fuel beyond electricity?

source: https://www.aicgs.org/2021/09/germany-has-a-math-problem-and-its-about-to-get-worse/

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uhhNo t1_iy2cvb4 wrote

All the money spent developing wind and solar should be looked at as an investment for humanity. Wind and solar prices dropped by so much for the entire world. Massive benefit for reducing global emissions.

Wind, solar, and batteries are already the best option for peaking load, but currently providing baseload energy this way is too expensive.

There will still be a huge baseload energy need so it would still make sense to add much more nuclear.

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