[Bobboau]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-06/solar-wind-reach-a-big-renewables-turning-point-bnef

[z64555]

My Dad, who has a close ear to this, says that right now is a great time to buy into Solar plants for home use, since some of the major manufacturers of solar panels essentially have plants that over produce.

Cheap energy! woo!

[Luis Dias]

This is good.

[Dragon]

That's good, I suppose. Though I still think nuclear is the way to go (they're the best of both worlds, with a high capacity factor and the fact you don't refuel them very often once built). Anyway, that the coal and gas plants are going is nice regardless of what is replacing them. Around here, solar is still expensive, but I suppose the tech will eventually trickle down from Germany.

[z64555]

That's good, I suppose. Though I still think nuclear is the way to go. Anyway, that the coal and gas plants are going is nice regardless of what is replacing them.

The warm glow of nuclear fission power plants will keep us warm at night, while the crisp shine of the solar panels well keep us cool in the day, and the silent wisk of the wind turbines shall make use of all the hot air that's going around. 

[Klaustrophobia]

I don't know how they can have an article focusing on capacity factor and completely ignore nuclear and its 97-99%.

[FlamingCobra]

It's called pushing an agenda. When you push an agenda you get to pick and choose your facts.

[Grizzly]

I think it's more that Nuclear has gone down the route where it's political suicide to even mention it, thus preventing it from breaking out of mold (because trying to break it out of hte political suicide mold is in itself political suicide).

[Bobboau]

which is a shame, nuclear could really help the world.

[headdie]

I think it's more that Nuclear has gone down the route where it's political suicide to even mention it, thus preventing it from breaking out of mold (because trying to break it out of hte political suicide mold is in itself political suicide).

Depends where you are, last couple of years the UK government has laid out plans for I think 2 new plants

[Grizzly]

I think it's more that Nuclear has gone down the route where it's political suicide to even mention it, thus preventing it from breaking out of mold (because trying to break it out of hte political suicide mold is in itself political suicide).

Depends where you are, last couple of years the UK government has laid out plans for I think 2 new plants

That's the exception that proves the rule .

[karajorma]

Depends where you are, last couple of years the UK government has laid out plans for I think 2 new plants

And then they asked the Chinese to build them. Now I'm not saying the Chinese can't build safely, just that usually they don't bother.

[666maslo666]

I doubt any western company would be capable of building the plant without going massively over budget as usual. Chinese can do it cheaply and with modern nuclear plant designs there is sufficient safety.

[Klaustrophobia]

The US had a very good track record for building plants on time and on or under budget.  Whether or not that expertise has atrophied remains to be seen.  Of course the biggest hurdle these days isn't the design or construction, it's regulation and 'environmentalist' opposition.  We took a pretty staggering political and societal setback round about 2008, right in the middle of what was starting to be called the "nuclear renaissance."  It looks like we're starting to recover from that, but also approaching an election year.  That has the potential to kill momentum again. 

[BirdofPrey]

It's ironic, the more people are afraid of nuclear power, the less likely anyone is to build a new plant to replace all the Three Mile Islands and Fukushimas that still exist with something safer.

That said, as good as nuclear power CAN be, and as safe as new designs are, there is still a large hole in that there isn't much of any nuclear fuel reprocessing going on which results in unspent fuel just sitting there taking up space putting out unusable radiation.
====
Anyways good to see solar and wind doing well.  If we could get more solar panels on roofs and windmills in backwards, we wouldn't need as many centralized powerplants in general anyways.

[Klaustrophobia]

spent fuel doesn't really take up a lot of space.  Most reactors have plenty of space for all the waste they've generated in the past 30-50 years in their parking lot-sized on site storage areas.  Some haven't even had to move it out of the pool yet.  But your other point of wasting still stands.

[BirdofPrey]

Well I mention space taken up, because there's been talk for some years about doing stuff like making a spent fuel vault in the middle of nowhere to offload spent fuel elements from reactor facilities.

Most of that stuff doesn't and arguably should need to be stored since most of it is still fissile.

[Dragon]

Yeah, using spent fuel to heat up some vault in the middle of nowhere is wasting perfectly good energy. At the very least, it should have heat radiator fins for radiothermal power generation (it'd be a small amount, but better than nothing at all). The best way, of course, would be reprocessing it and getting all we can out of it.

[Klaustrophobia]

Decay heat from spent fuel is pretty damn negligible as far as energy production goes.  I can't imagine it being useful outside of maybe space probe use.  And in that case, handling it is probably prohibitively expensive compared to what they already use.

[Dragon]

Right, forgot that we're talking fuel-grade uranium, which is wimpy as far as regular decay goes. Short half-life isotopes make useful amounts of heat, but I suppose a spent fuel pile doesn't contain all that much of them (otherwise ESA wouldn't have such an RTG shortage).