alt Hacker NewsIt takes ~10 years to build a new nuclear generator from breaking ground to first kw to the grid, and tens of billions of dollars or euros. Germany deploys ~2GW/month of solar, the US ~4-5GW/month. Total global nuclear generation capacity is ~380GW as of this comment. At current global solar PV deployment rates, even assuming capacity factor delta between solar and nuclear, you could replace total global nuclear generation with ~18 months of solar PV deployment.
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Nuclear fills a base load role better than solar+battery though, imo.
A healthy power network will have a variety of generations sources available.
> It takes ~10 years to build a new nuclear generator from breaking ground to first kw to the grid
There is only one country on earth that can currently build a new nuke in 10 years. They are currently building more than the rest of the world combined.
For everyone else it’s 20 years at the absolute minimum.
Yes, the biggest advantage of solar and wind is that they can be built as many small projects, instead of few gigaprojects we seem to have lost the ability to execute in the West.
I wish I didn't live in coal and NIMBY land.