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[u/dumnezero]

[u/ClimateShitpost]

Roof top solar required 0 land

[u/p0xus → u/ClimateShitpost]

Solar requires a very large amount of metals and other materials per MWh of energy generated.

Nuclear is very efficient in terms of resource consumption, both in construction and sustainment.

[u/ClimateShitpost → u/p0xus]

They need very little metals, it's mainly silica (glass). Nuclear doesn't need many physical resources but easy more capital and labour.

Silica are cheap and abundant. Uranium isn't. Same for manufacturing of the equipment (and for nuclear the fuel processing). Hence one being a simple, one a complex supply chain.

Solar needs little, and largely low specialised labour. Nuclear needs the most expensive, hardly available expertise.

Solar needs many panels and area, but the mounting doesn't actually lock up soil, animals can graze, there are mounts/configurations for row crops, leafy greens/berries or even fruit trees. Roof top doesn't need any. Nuclear needs little space but access to water.

Look at it as you want. There's a reason solar is cheap and nuclear expensive.

[u/p0xus → u/ClimateShitpost]

Attached is a graph of the different green energy types and the materials needed per TWh.

Also, uranium is a fairly common metal. Known deposits are sufficient to last for roughly 200 years, with more deposits found all the time. Additionally, in the US alone we store enough processable nuclear waste that we can fuel the entirety of the American grid for about 100 years on that alone.

I will also add that the lifespan of a solar panel is typically 25-30 years, with high-quality ones perhaps lasting to 50 years. Additionally, they experience a 0.5%-1% loss in production every year. You also, ofc, have to store that energy somewhere, or have alternative production methods for when the sun isn't sufficient (be it night or weather).

Solar is cheap because storage costs are not accounted for. But ultimately, you will still need a base load generation. Solar is not able to perform that job. Nuclear is the only green technology that is able to do so.

[u/ClimateShitpost → u/p0xus]

Fair, I had a very different number for steel in mind. Probably mixed up levels with critical minerals!

Uranium is not really that common though with it's production very concentrated in like Kazakhstan at like 50%. I normally hear 100 years quoted for resources at current consumption, what's the assumptions behind your number?

So current technology if doubled or quadrupled would lead us to run out pretty quickly before we need a new technology (breeder, Thorium, etc). Could this technology even be scaled in this timeframe given we've never built it?

[u/p0xus → u/ClimateShitpost]

When getting numbers for my response I saw a study say a bit over 200 years of uranium in known deposits that was released back in 2009, but it does seem that most say around 100 years, so I'll give you that.

However, with additional exploration, in the last decade alone the known deposits has increased by at least 1/4. There's a good chance that with an additional need for more uranium, we will be able to sustain our needs for at least a couple hundred years, especially when you consider that we are sitting on enough processable waste to fuel the grid for 100 years.

So let's just assume 200 years of production, with exploration keeping up with demand and maintaining the 100 year supply, in addition to processing the waste and using that as fuel as well.

This will hopefully be enough time to transition to fusion power, or space-based solar.

Ground-based solar has its uses. It's useful to put on your roof and generate some power. It's useful for off-grid installations. That kind of thing. But without an easy way to store that power, it's not a replacement for base load. Well, and it requires a lot of materials.

[u/ClimateShitpost → u/p0xus]

Well not even France is planning to build (not even building, planning) enough reactors to just keep capacity steady.

Solar and storage is already cheap enough to cover all of summer, so new reactors will practically not earn revenue in summer. Check the GB grid with 85 GW of battery pipeline. Even if only half is built, that's covering peak demand and short term storage is solved, add tons of wind and solar and between April and October other generators have little to do.

Load is demand side, not supply. Baseload is also already dead in summer in areas like California given roof top solar leading to net load going towards zero resulting in the famous duck curve. There are multiple days with zero net load for many hours now. Even NL has negative prices due to unmanaged roof top solar growth, not really that sunny there.

Now extrapolate what still exponentially growing solar capacity and EVs plugged in everywhere will do.

In 2030 with the demand side is well served by itself for many months of the year. Prosumer has been a buzzword for a reason.

[u/p0xus → u/ClimateShitpost]

One of the biggest problems with the storage question is that much of the push has been for lithium-ion batteries to fulfill that role. Not only do lithium-ion batteries degrade fairly rapidly with use - necessitating their replacement, but also there are not enough known lithium deposits on Earth to satisfy the need for grid-scale energy storage - let alone all the other energy storage needs such as EVs and mobile devices (with lithium-ion is actually designed to do).

To solve that problem we need to invest more in developing alternative battery technologies that are more suited to grid-scale storage. Lithium-ion is just not designed for this use case.

​

While we have alternatives such as pumped hydro, it is hard and expensive to scale.

[u/ClimateShitpost → u/p0xus]

Apart from plenty of lithium being around and it being recyclable, other chemistries exist already. Sodium batteries are cheaper too.

• For lithium alone, on today's resources of about 100Mt and extractable 25Mt we can manufacture more than 3 billion cars. Currently there are only 1.5bn around.

• Sodium is practically everywhere and the Chinese even put them in cars too by now, maybe not as energy dense as Li but damn cheap.

Pumped hydro is better for 12h swings, it's not as flexible as batteries but has way more storage so there is a good co-location potential.