Physics guy here. They are majorly good; They produce extremely clean energy with minimal input fuel, their waste is localized and extremely tiny, and the field has an incredible amount of room to grow to be even better with investment (thorium, reprocessing, fusion). The problem is the input cost of constructing the reactor and it takes like 10 years to make.
Solar and Wind don't produce a lot of energy compared to the amount of rare input materials necessary to construct them, but they are much faster to build. They are also much more likely to break down.
Degradation is ~1%/yr, we're hedging that the panels will be good for 25-30yrs but nobody has been around long enough to actually know. In good states, the panels justify themselves much sooner than that.
In certain parts of the country solar makes a ton of sense. Others, not so much. If millenials ever start owning houses, hopefully it'll become normal to see panels (and batteries) on most people's houses. Boom, instant distributed power grid... No more blackouts in CA and the west coast as climate hell continues to engulf us all.
The panels are exposed to the environment, and do eventually break down. They also need constant maintenance to clean off the surface. They also need batteries to be useful in any way, which also have a shelf-life and need to be replaced.
yes, theyre made of rare materials that are very finnicky and can ablate into the environment. wind turbines also require plastic to function and leech microplastics into the environment.
thats a lot of labor actually, in comparison to nuclear. in fact it requires something like 79 solar workers to produce enough power to equal 1 coal worker's energy production.
for example: the wind sector employs 101k in the usa, solar employs around 370k on and off workers, coal at 86k, and nuclear employs just 68k. when you consider that solar produces 1.8% of our energy grid, wind produces 7.3%, and nuclear 19.7%.... you start to ask some bigger questions about labor use efficiency here
Really? Even once it’s running? Coal stans in Australia winge about solar not creating any jobs and I believed them.
EDIT: could those numbers be because renewables are a growing sector? Or are they just that inefficient. Also wind and solar don’t need any material input aside from construction and maintenance. Shouldn’t the labour required to extract and transport the coal be included.
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/01/f34/2017%20US%20Energy%20and%20Jobs%20Report_0.pdf this is my source, afaik it includes that labor for coal calculations, same with solar. all the little bits that go into it, including auxiliary services.
they are extremely labor inefficient. just think about it. you need to hire people to fix panels, go out and drive to maintenance, clean them, and you can have random panels fail at any point so you need to constantly be ordering new ones. they slowly grow more inefficient as time goes on, too. nuclear is a very controlled environment and each plant hires around 500-1000 people. the upfront costs are big but labor cost and maintenance arent huge.
Huh ok, thanks for the source. The Australian government has looked into the feasibility of nuclear multiple times and decided its not economical viable, but I think a large contributing factor to that would be the lack of skills, knowledge and equipment in the country already.
there are some places where wind and solar make more sense with current nuclear tech, i dont think australia would fall into that category. places that are very remote and are not connected to a grid currently are the best options for wind/solar. with australia they might just be jerking it to coal though. wind is also highly unavailable for the vast majority of global south nations. whitey is hogging all the good wind spots.
also, whoever is downvoting me: show yourself, coward.
Not much seems to be happening with thorium research tho. Didn't the Russians have thorium reactors a few decades ago, but abandoned a technology that seemed to be working?
the chinese are the main benefactors of the tech right now, i read an article recently about how they basically bought up all the thorium researchers to come to china to work on things
Yeah i know, it would need a societal effort to dedicate money to research it more. Unfortunately, the world is fucked except for China basically. I don't know what they're doing regarding nuclear, though.
I believe they are good for 25 but it’s a new technology that is rapidly improving. By the time you replace them in 20 years you’ll get panels that’ll last 50 years.
Physics guy here. They are majorly good; They produce extremely clean energy with minimal input fuel, their waste is localized and extremely tiny, and the field has an incredible amount of room to grow to be even better with investment (thorium, reprocessing, fusion). The problem is the input cost of constructing the reactor and it takes like 10 years to make.
Solar and Wind don't produce a lot of energy compared to the amount of rare input materials necessary to construct them, but they are much faster to build. They are also much more likely to break down.
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Well, those parts still degrade. Efficiency also drops over their lifetime, I think.
Degradation is ~1%/yr, we're hedging that the panels will be good for 25-30yrs but nobody has been around long enough to actually know. In good states, the panels justify themselves much sooner than that.
In certain parts of the country solar makes a ton of sense. Others, not so much. If millenials ever start owning houses, hopefully it'll become normal to see panels (and batteries) on most people's houses. Boom, instant distributed power grid... No more blackouts in CA and the west coast as climate hell continues to engulf us all.
Green New Deal could be dope ya'll.
Source: i work in solar
The panels are exposed to the environment, and do eventually break down. They also need constant maintenance to clean off the surface. They also need batteries to be useful in any way, which also have a shelf-life and need to be replaced.
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yes, theyre made of rare materials that are very finnicky and can ablate into the environment. wind turbines also require plastic to function and leech microplastics into the environment.
They also need very little labour, just have to clean them.
thats a lot of labor actually, in comparison to nuclear. in fact it requires something like 79 solar workers to produce enough power to equal 1 coal worker's energy production.
for example: the wind sector employs 101k in the usa, solar employs around 370k on and off workers, coal at 86k, and nuclear employs just 68k. when you consider that solar produces 1.8% of our energy grid, wind produces 7.3%, and nuclear 19.7%.... you start to ask some bigger questions about labor use efficiency here
Really? Even once it’s running? Coal stans in Australia winge about solar not creating any jobs and I believed them.
EDIT: could those numbers be because renewables are a growing sector? Or are they just that inefficient. Also wind and solar don’t need any material input aside from construction and maintenance. Shouldn’t the labour required to extract and transport the coal be included.
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/01/f34/2017%20US%20Energy%20and%20Jobs%20Report_0.pdf this is my source, afaik it includes that labor for coal calculations, same with solar. all the little bits that go into it, including auxiliary services.
they are extremely labor inefficient. just think about it. you need to hire people to fix panels, go out and drive to maintenance, clean them, and you can have random panels fail at any point so you need to constantly be ordering new ones. they slowly grow more inefficient as time goes on, too. nuclear is a very controlled environment and each plant hires around 500-1000 people. the upfront costs are big but labor cost and maintenance arent huge.
Huh ok, thanks for the source. The Australian government has looked into the feasibility of nuclear multiple times and decided its not economical viable, but I think a large contributing factor to that would be the lack of skills, knowledge and equipment in the country already.
there are some places where wind and solar make more sense with current nuclear tech, i dont think australia would fall into that category. places that are very remote and are not connected to a grid currently are the best options for wind/solar. with australia they might just be jerking it to coal though. wind is also highly unavailable for the vast majority of global south nations. whitey is hogging all the good wind spots.
also, whoever is downvoting me: show yourself, coward.
it’s not me! not sure why I’m being upvoted when you clearly know a lot more about the subject than me.
Not much seems to be happening with thorium research tho. Didn't the Russians have thorium reactors a few decades ago, but abandoned a technology that seemed to be working?
the chinese are the main benefactors of the tech right now, i read an article recently about how they basically bought up all the thorium researchers to come to china to work on things
Yeah i know, it would need a societal effort to dedicate money to research it more. Unfortunately, the world is fucked except for China basically. I don't know what they're doing regarding nuclear, though.
right that one of the things that worries me, I mean it right be less true now but don't solar panels only last like 15 years
I believe they are good for 25 but it’s a new technology that is rapidly improving. By the time you replace them in 20 years you’ll get panels that’ll last 50 years.