alt Hacker NewsIt doesn't generate power by burning carbon and is a grid replacement for carbon sources. Grid cost rise sharply on 100% solar.
Taking china as an example they currently build solar, coal and nuclear. No country is building only solar/batteries.
Further if we build more nuclear we'd be better at it and it would be cheaper.
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zekrioca • yesterday at 5:34 PM
You are talking only about the operations of the nuclear, and ignoring all the high energy process required to mine and process uranium before it can be used as a fuel, and after as waste. But let’s pass this problem to the next generation, they will know what to do :)
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> 100% solar
100% solar is a straw man though, as much as the simplicity of it sounds nice.
> Further if we build more nuclear we'd be better at it and it would be cheaper.
This is far from being clear, nuclear is one technology that tends to have increased costs the more we do of it. Even in France!
The costs of the French nuclear scale-up: A case of negative learning by doing https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...
Human labor is very expensive, and every time we make humans more productive, that makes human labor more expensive, because their time becomes more valuable. Technological growth does that.
The cost of nuclear is primarily in labor and long-term financing, due to the very long lifetime and upfront labor cost. Until somebody has some sort of technological breathrough to decrease the labor cost of nuclear, it's not going to be able to compete. Even decades ago it had trouble, and now it's far worse.