India has one nuclear reactor's worth of diesel power plants (about 1000 MW). And 90 times more (90 GW worth) of all kinds of smaller diesel generators used as backups during power outages.
If the new nuclear electricity decreases the outages in the grid, I am sure it will almost 1:1 turn to savings in burned diesel.
LCOE estimates for at least the short duration gaps has solar+ batteries beating nat-gas peakers. This is pretty recent, in actual construction bids for IIRC < 4hr capability. Expect more encroachment onto basically mature nat-gas tech space as batteries and solar continue to get cheaper.
What about solar pv module and battery module waste?
What about the environmental impact of mining and extracting the rare and not so rare elements that go into making solar pv modules and battery modules?
What about the water use in the production of these modules?
What about the greenhouse gas emissions in the industrial scale processes involved in producing these modules?
What about the impact on wildlife and the environment through land clearance, habitat destruction, species dislocation, threats to bird species, …
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From the way people go on about solar pv and battery tech you'd swear they had zero externalities.
> It could replace it faster and cheaper by financing distributed solar or wind and batteries.
Faster, probably. Cheaper, probably. But at what cost to animal and human lives, and at what cost to the environment? Coal plants can be built fast and cheap too. That's why we've so many of them.
Energy dept on energy lifecycle of PV pays back in < 3 years of their typical 20-30 year lifespan. (and that's a span to 80% sustained production - the panels can go longer...)
I could keep answering all those questions point by point, but they're googleable and I feel there is a distinct lack of curiosity on those points...
Millions upon millions of tonnes of e-waste just in panels, no mention about batteries.
And the industrial processes involved?
(A) Silicon based PV panels
(1) Disassembly of aluminium and glass parts
(2) Thermal processing at 500C!
(3) Physically separating cell modules
(4) Etching away silicon wafers (using acid!)
(5) Melting broken wafers (at what temp?)
And what % rates does that give you? 100% metal reuse, 95% glass reuse, 85% silicon reuse, 80% modules reused: all in all sounds pretty energy intensive and doesn't even result in 100% recycling
(B) Thin-film based PV panels
(1) Shredding the PV panels into 4-5mm pieces to remove lamination
(2) Separating solid and liquid with a rotating screw
(3) Removing film using acid and peroxide!
(4) Removing interlayers materials with vibration
(5) Rinsing the glass (using up how much water?)
(6) Separating and processing metals
And what % rates does that give you? 95% semiconductor material reuse, 90% glass reused: all in all sounds pretty energy intensive and doesn't even result in 100% recycling
And of course you have to build the reprocessing and recycling plants which is energy intensive and generates greenhouse gas emissions because construction is a major source of greenhouse gas emission.
And again, that's saying nothing about battery waste.
But yeah, solar pv panels and battery modules: great solution …
To be fair, you'll have to compare this to the treatment of the fuel waste and the decommissioned plant. Especially the former problem seems to be largely unsolved.
An area less than half a (european) football stadium to contain 45 years of fuel waste for 4 nuclear plants. As of April 2018, there are 449 operable power reactors in the world.
That means you need an area as large as 56 football stadiums to contain all the fuel waste in the world. Not exactly an impressive area. A solar park this size would output energy equivalent to less than a 10th of one modern nuclear plant.
*EDIT: changed a 1000th to a 10th. It greatly exaggerates the solar capacity, but it doesn't change the point anyway.
If the new nuclear electricity decreases the outages in the grid, I am sure it will almost 1:1 turn to savings in burned diesel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_and_gas_industry_in_India#...