You’re comparing the largest solar plant in the world to a SINGLE reactor at a nuclear plant. You’re forgetting that solar plants are not able to produce anywhere near their nameplate capacity (and the fraction they do produce is not reliable). You misunderstood that the $30B figure is for two reactors, only one of which is operational atm. Solar farms have much shorter lifespans, and the panels are toxic and non recyclable.
Also why do we pretend that we can just magically clone 3x of the Bhadla plant from pakistan to the US for identical costs? Why do we assume we have infinite rare earth metals for panel/battery production?
Im down to have a discussion, but youre leaving so much out that its hard to take the argument seriously.
> You’re comparing the largest solar plant in the world to a SINGLE reactor at a nuclear plant.
I'm using that as an illustration of what is possible. You know, be inspired to do new and better things. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (in the US) says solar is $1.06/watt installed, today. Go with that if you don't want to believe the US can do things that other countries have already done.
> You’re forgetting that solar plants are not able to produce anywhere near their nameplate capacity (and the fraction they do produce is not reliable).
No I'm not. I very clearly show the fact that the nameplate number of solar needs to be divided by 6 to account for night and seasonality. Read the numbers again. I proposed installing 7mW of solar to "equal" 1,114 mW of nuke.
> You misunderstood that the $30B figure is for two reactors, only one of which is operational atm.
OK, so let's say it's $30 billion for 2,228mW of nuke capacity (even though the article clearly says it's more than $30 billion... but it doesn't say how much more).
So now we need 13,368 mW of Solar to allow for our nameplate capacity thing of 6 for solar, leaving only $16.7 billion for storage.
At $500 kWh as pointed out by another comment from a real installation that has happened, we can buy 33,400,000 kWh of storage (33,400 mWh), or enough to output the required 13,368 mW for about two and a half hours.
> Solar farms have much shorter lifespans
This [1] says most nuclear plants were designed for a thirty year lifespan, while new plants are more like 40-60. I couldn't find real-world numbers on the nuke being discussed in the article.
> the solar panels are toxic and non recyclable.
... ahh, are they as toxic and non recyclable as nuclear waste and the entire nuclear facility and the land it's built on? Also how much of that is recyclable?
Remember we're comparing the nuke to solar+storage here, so it is the comparison that is relevant.
> Also why do we pretend that we can just magically clone 3x of the Bhadla plant from pakistan to the US for identical costs?
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (that is .gov in the US) says installed solar farms are $1.06/watt installed, today. So we're not magically assuming anything.
> Why do we assume we have infinite rare earth metals for panel/battery production?
From this article [2] "A new report by the French Environment and Energy Management Agency (Ademe) shows that rare earth minerals are not widely used in solar energy and battery storage technologies. And despite their name, they aren't actually that rare at all."
Do you know something the French Environment and Energy Management Agency doesn't?
Please enlighten us.
> Im down to have a discussion, but youre leaving so much out that its hard to take the argument seriously.
I'm not leaving anything out, you're just conveniently ignoring parts of what I'm saying.
I understand nukes have made a lot of sense for a lot of years, and if we had built a ton of them in the 80s and 90s we'd be in a better position today. We didn't do that, and we shouldn't start building hundreds of billions of dollars worth of things in 2024 using assumptions and numbers from the 80s and 90s.
We need to realize the equation has shifted DRASTICALLY in those years, and it's going to continue to do so.
Look at the price of installed solar and installed storage capacity prices by year [3]. Where do you think they'll be in just five years before a single nuke is even approved?
Where do you think they'll be in 10 years before a single nuke is even built?
What do you think that will do to all my calculations above?
It feels like you want to spend decades building out new regular trains when other countries have tens of thousands of miles of bullet trains operating TODAY.
Skate to where the puck is going, not where it is now.
Also why do we pretend that we can just magically clone 3x of the Bhadla plant from pakistan to the US for identical costs? Why do we assume we have infinite rare earth metals for panel/battery production?
Im down to have a discussion, but youre leaving so much out that its hard to take the argument seriously.