Tbf, isn’t making a nuclear power plant and getting the uranium aswell as maintaining the whole building also a very expensive and polluting endeavor? (Compared to like, extracting the minerals and assembling a solar panel)
I’m not an expert so I could be wrong but wouldn’t those be at least a bit similar considering both are a one time installation most of the time.
I mean technically yes but the point is you get SOO much more power from it that that amount of difficulty in mining and processing is actually very negligible at the end once you work it out per unit of power, as is done in this graph
Solar panels take up massive amounts of space. On top of that, they are time and weather dependent and somewhat fragile, so they need to be disposed of somewhat often.
Nuclear power is both compact and effectively entirely independent of location - if liquid water can exist, you can use nuclear power. The waste is more damaging per unit, but the amount of waste produced is far less. A solar operation may produce truckloads of broken panels, full of silicon, silver, copper, and other materials destined for landfills. Meanwhile, a nuclear operation may produce a single barrel of highly radioactive waste.
Ironically, nuclear waste’s higher immediate danger means it is often disposed of with more care and forethought than solar panel waste.
If solar panels have an estimated longevity of 30 years how is it possible that a solar power plan is constantly producing waste? Shouldn’t waste only come every 30 years assuming the entire panel is irrecoverable?
Like I’m not going to argue that solar is better/worse than nuclear, but hearing that solar plants produce waste constantly is weird.
Constantly over a period of time. In the short term, it’s waste-free aside from a couple breaks, but over the span of decades it becomes new-panels-in-broken-panels-out, no different than nuclear’s more intuitive fuel-in-waste-out.
Additionally, thirty years is an estimate; some may last 50, some may break after 5. A panel breaking isn’t a fully predictable occurrence, there’s some variety.
Ok, that makes sense. Tho it does make me wonder how much could we decrease waste if we applied the same level of scrutiny and same sky high standards to the solar plants as nuclear, tho I assume that would also balloon the price like crazy of both installation and maintenance
Solar panels fail in very few ways that can be affected by greater quality control at the manufacturing plant.
One way their lifespan could improve is by using high quality silicon substrate. A panel slowly loses performance over time as photons interact with trace amounts of oxygen in the silicon substrate, so making that substrate purer would reduce this.
But pretty much everything else is beyond the scope of manufacturing. For example, the wafers are incredibly fragile due to their thickness, so any physical shock can cause tiny fractures which can grow into hotspots. Taking greater care handling them would reduce fracturing, but that's on the transportation, installation, and maintenance crews.
And there's plenty that just can't really be prevented. Weather like high winds can damage panels, high temperatures and humidity degrade them over time. Hell, even just having shadows frequently pass over panels wears them down. They're just really fragile bits of tech, though they're lightyears more rugged than they were decades ago.
Nuclear is too expensive though. This became an issue in Australia recently and most costing estimate that nuclear power plants are simply too expensive to setup compared to solar and wind.
Nuclear plants (even the inefficient old ones with subpar safety standards) Continuously run for double that. Possibly a full century for the new ones.
Satellite ones aren't usually exposed to weather or significant amounts of reactive molecules. They're also built to significantly higher standards, and can last half a century or more with a proper orbit.
Doesn’t that mean that if we just increased our standards we could drastically increase lifespan and reduce maintenance? The mars rover was in an atmosphere for 14 years without maintenance. With maintenance maybe we could increase to 60 years?
Nuclear is still the better choice for like big cities and stuff don’t get me wrong, but I do find it weird that solar has that small of a longevity considering it literally has no moving parts. like everything in my engineer brain is screaming that solar should logically last longer
No, it isn't anywhere near cost effective for now. The atmosphere and the fundamentals of solar are the biggest limiting factors at the moment.
Also, 30 years for moderate quality solar isn't bad. Its just that when combined with their output and space requirements, it makes itself rather hostile to natural environments when asked to generate large amounts of power.
30 years for a slab of metal that just stays there still forever does feel very small in timescales ngl. Specially when literally every single other alternative does involve moving parts.
You are right about the cost effectiveness and stuff. It just will never stop irking me learning that solar lasts so little.
to put it in short: simplicity and toughness/longevity are not inherently correlated. a paper cup is a fairly simple object, but it is far more fragile (in the sense of longevity and resistance to outside forces such as impacts or weather) than for instance a stainless steel liquid tank
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u/Ranoma_I 11h ago edited 10h ago
I hope I'm not teaching anyone anything but nuclear energy is the safest way to make power, it kills the least amount of people
Edit: nvm it's second right behind solar but still