| Solar has more than 15x the materials throughput per energy generated: https://www.energy.gov/quadrennial-technology-review-0 Solar produces 4x more carbon than Nuclear: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg3/ The value of variable renewables declines with increased deployment: https://neon.energy/Hirth-2013-Market-Value-Renewables-Solar... Wind and solar combines receive 94x the US Federal subsidies and Fossiel fuels receives 2x (per TWh of generation): https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/ There is also the fact that most wind farms use about 400x more land per TWh generation, and solar is about 150x. You can compare solar plants to nuclear on Wikipedia. Then you’ve got the countless real world examples of where nuclear plants get shut down and the per capita emissions of that area shoot up, despite a bunch of politicians talking about renewables and clean energy (Vermont, California, etc.) Nuclear isn’t hype. Look at France vs Germany for a great real world example of why nuclear is the better technology. You talk about 50 years under delivering, but there have hardly been any nuclear plants even built in the last 50 years in the West, mostly due to public opposition to a technology that kills less people than wind farms. If it’s so expensive why are places like Bangladesh, India, and China making massive investments in new reactors? |
Back your main comment: These are all statistics without any significance for deployment of the technology.
For example, 15x material means.... what exactly? Is 15x more material bad somehow? Sure doesn't seem like it. The amount of material that goes into solar panels is not a fundamental constraint on their use.
When wind power "uses" land it does not require exclusive use of the land. That same land will be used for other purposes without impact. Similarly, the amount of land we need to use solar is vanishingly small.
> Look at France and Germany for a great real world example...
For France, I have looked, never found the cost numbers. I do know the Mesmer plan never reached fruition, and that only about a third of the planned reactors were built. I used to cite CANDU as a potential success too, but then somebody who knew better pointed me to the financial numbers...
Bangladesh and India are building new reactors because of corruption, the same reason that they build completely uneconomical new coal plants. China is building a few nuclear reactors, as part of a "try everything" approach, but they are building only a minuscule amount of nuclear compared to renewables, because nuclear is mostly hype, and renewables mostly deliver. Remember that even a construction power house like China, when building France's EPR design, ended up with a build that took twice as long as expected.