That never really happens for grid scale installations. > Gridscale solar is much in the same situation, where, the panels themselves are rated for 25-ish years, but, are replaced early in favor of something newer and more productive. Battery backed solar is lower risk and similar ROI today, but projecting forward things keep getting worse for nuclear. ![]() What’s really scaring nuclear is battery backed solar as ~5 year construction timelines + 50 year lifespan means they need to complete not just with todays low prices but solar and battery prices from 5 and 55 years from now. Natural gas turbines fill the same niche at higher cost per kWh which opens the door for “base load” generation as long as it’s cheap enough. The ideal generation has low fixed cost per kWh and flexible generation right now that’s hydro where you get a limited number of kWh per month but have a lot of flexibility when in the month you’re producing power. We can probably run with that model until fusion power is a reality, or we find a way to make solar panels way more efficient (we're running at like 20% currently, but we can get to ~40% in a lab, theoretical maximum is 80%, so room left to grow there), or some other major breakthrough.įirst base load isn’t a benefit it’s a downside. That's more or less what France did, and it's served them well so far. Then allow that standardized design to bypass existing nuclear regulators, and spin up new regulators and regulations to fast track those standardized designs being rolled out. Really what we should be doing is yanking 100% of the future oil/gas/coal subsidies and shoving them at standardized reactor/plant designs and uranium mining. ![]() What you'll find is that solar/wind are indeed pretty cheap, but, they're also only pretty available, so you need base load, and if your goal is clean power, you need clean base load, for that job there's nothing even close to nuclear. Hence why you really have to look at total cost over time instead of just static operating costs, or post-subsidy costs, or just cost/MWH The reasons for the early replacement is simple really, land costs alot of money, and not all land is suitable for solar/wind, so, you can't expand your solar/wind farm past a certain point, so it makes sense to get into newer, better, generation devices as cost/subsidy availability allows. ![]() Gridscale solar is much in the same situation, where, the panels themselves are rated for 25-ish years, but, are replaced early in favor of something newer and more productive. Like a modern wind turbine is rated at 20 years, but most installations are operating at half that in favor of installing larger turbines instead of using existing turbines that produce less power. Solar/wind don't have fuel costs, but they do have maintenance costs, and they tend to get replaced fairly often relative to nuclear installations, and while none of the above lasts forever.
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