alt Hacker NewsThis is gas brain thinking.
Solar panels are not gas. You don't burn them to make energy.
There is no dependency on solar panel manufacturers. Once you install a panel it's going to make electricity for the next 25 years. At least. After that you can recycle it and use it another 25 years.
Reactors on the other hand require fuel that is consumed. Unless you can mine it yourself, you're just trading an oil dependency for a uranium dependency.
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asdff • today at 3:34 AM
There is a dependency considering these are evidently valid targets for missiles
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And this is two dimensional thinking.
PRC has spent the better part of the last two decades gobbling up the supply chains that feed into solar panel manufacturing. Suppose you and I, being experienced technologists and enterprising individuals, decided tomorrow that we were going to start a solar panel manufacturing company. Surely this will be a growing, potentially high margin business because demand will be high if we're electrifying everything because of the aforementioned energy crisis. We are going to run head first into a wall of raw materials supply that is controlled by ... China.
So my point is that if you want to flip the energy generation to "green" and solar on some aggressive timeline, you are going to be dependent on China to do so. There are very obvious geopolitical reasons for why this is a very dumb idea. One of the ways I gauge how serious someone is about moving energy generation in the United States to solar is if they are okay with opening up closed mines so we can produce the rare earths, here, that are needed to manufacture the panels themselves. If they're cool with that, great, let's get stared. If they aren't, then they're not serious and are bandwagoning.