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A renewable energy transition that doesn’t harm nature? It’s not just possible, it’s essential
(theconversation.com)
this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2024
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If you use the metric of LCOE, sure, throwing a bunch of cheap solar panels all over the place can just barely be cheaper than the cost to produce them. However, the article even admits this doesn't include the nessesary use of batteries for renewables, assumes battery technologies will get cheaper and better, while disregarding alternatives. I have to still stress that even if I concede the point they're almost the same where solar just barely wins, the waste is nowhere near the same. The need for batteries is nowhere near the same. These are hurdles solar still faces that nuclear doesn't need to solve.
Photovolatic panels still generate thousands of times more waste than anything I've seen from nuclear and we don't have cheap enough batteries to be able to make arrays to support entire cities the way a nuclear plant can and does.
I get why renewables are attractive but I still don't see the downside to nuclear. The only valid point I've been given is "time to build" which yes, we should have started thirty years ago. Why not right now?
Solar pays for itself within the first 2-3 years, and lasts for decades. Batteries are cheap enough to do overnight storage at utility scale so that wind + solar + batteries do overnight power more cheaply than nuclear.
This leaves nuclear only able to maybe compete with longer-duration storage. Which is why nobody is building much.
If they last for decades, why is there so much ewaste for specifically photovolatic cells? Theoretically lasting decades, sure, but they seem to have a high chance of breaking.
I don't think there's a single real world instance of a city having batteries being able to sustain the load for the night without any added generation. That would be newsworthy and a massive win for renewables. They might get there eventually with sodium based batteries but that has yet to be seen.
If solar panels were discarded less and battery arrays could be cheaply made so that nuclear and coal weren't nessesary, I'd agree with you, but I haven't seen either of those things. They're "likely in the future" but by that time, we could make another nuclear power plant.
And all this without even considering fusion, which in my humble opinion, would replace renewables.