To be clear, I'm not arguing against solar here. We should be building as many forms of non-carbon-emitting energy generation as we possibly can.
A challenge of large solar plants like you're describing is getting the energy to where it's needed and when it's needed. A ton of solar panels in the desert does no good if there's no way to store that energy or get it to a city a few hundred miles away. All of that requires significantly more investment in storage mechanisms and interconnectors to move it around the grid. The latter actually being most concerning to me simply because of NIMBYs fighting projects to build more high voltage power lines because they're ugly and ruin views from their properties. It's hard to quantify that, but when you need to run so many power lines over such long distances that touch so many people's properties it becomes a permitting nightmare which dramatically slows down, or even cancels, projects.
I also touched on this in another comment below: In terms of storing solar energy with our current method of lithium-ion batteries, well, the cost of lithium is up ~500% in the past two years and is expected to stay that way for the foreseeable future: https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2022/06/09/...
As to Swanson's Law, sure, I get where the trendline currently is, but as a counterexample: How's Moore's Law holding up these days?
I'm sure there's plenty of articles about different battery storage methods and all that being researched, but the fact is that we need proven, on-demand energy generation that drops into the existing grid NOW and nuclear provides that. But by all means, build all of it: nuclear, wind, solar, etc. Having too much carbon-free energy is a much better problem to have than too little.
First let me dispatch this "existing grid NOW and nuclear provides that" - it's a 7 year average lead time as of 2022; solar is 2. And if you granted all the accelerations you're going to propose to solar or wind as well, it'll still beat nuclear. It's just simpler and cheaper to deploy. It's also expandable and upgradable and you can start producing after the first station is done. Your 2022 nuclear reactor will still be based on 2022 technology in 2072. The solar farm, however, will be current with the times as the parts are swappable.
The predicted end to Moore's law had been anticipated for many years. This took nobody by surprised. The only surprise really is that it went on longer than expected.
From all indications we're in the solar version of the 1980s right now on the Moore's law timeline and in the future we'll see a solar PV equivalent that's as remarkable as say, the 2TB microsd card - imagine cheap, high-efficiency newspaper thin panels that you buy packaged like those plastic ponchos from a 7/11 that you just unfurl onto the ground, plug in and power whatever you feasibly need.
The future of solar will be like telling someone in the 1980s that we live in a time where we give away 32gb of storage for free with company logos stamped on it at trade shows and it is so normalized that nobody takes any notice.
> First let me dispatch this "existing grid NOW and nuclear provides that" - it's a 7 year average lead time as of 2022; solar is 2.
Nuclear can certainly be made quicker if we had the political will to do so but I'm not going to try to argue that it's quick. That said, if we would have invested in this 20 years ago like we should have it wouldn't have been a problem. The argument has been "wind & solar are going to ramp up so quickly in the near future so why build nuclear?" and then it takes longer than we thought and underwhelming progress is made.
Regardless of how long it takes:
> The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
> It's also expandable and upgradable and you can start producing after the first station is done. Your 2022 nuclear reactor will still be based on 2022 technology in 2072. The solar farm, however, will be current with the times as the parts are swappable.
This argument doesn't really make sense. You can't add reactors to a nuclear plant? Or retrofit them as needed? The primary form of generating all forms of electric other than photovoltaics uses steam to spin a turbine; that's the same now as it was 100+ years ago. Who cares if it's 2022 technology in 2072 if it's producing useful electricity?
I'm sure solar panels have some runway to the technology, but that's not the point here. Solar currently does not have the ability to drop into the existing grid with large scale, on-demand energy nor will it in the foreseeable future. It's a slice of the energy pie, but to say that it's going to improve so much doesn't mean it's a wise idea to put all your eggs in that basket.
A challenge of large solar plants like you're describing is getting the energy to where it's needed and when it's needed. A ton of solar panels in the desert does no good if there's no way to store that energy or get it to a city a few hundred miles away. All of that requires significantly more investment in storage mechanisms and interconnectors to move it around the grid. The latter actually being most concerning to me simply because of NIMBYs fighting projects to build more high voltage power lines because they're ugly and ruin views from their properties. It's hard to quantify that, but when you need to run so many power lines over such long distances that touch so many people's properties it becomes a permitting nightmare which dramatically slows down, or even cancels, projects.
I also touched on this in another comment below: In terms of storing solar energy with our current method of lithium-ion batteries, well, the cost of lithium is up ~500% in the past two years and is expected to stay that way for the foreseeable future: https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2022/06/09/...
As to Swanson's Law, sure, I get where the trendline currently is, but as a counterexample: How's Moore's Law holding up these days?
I'm sure there's plenty of articles about different battery storage methods and all that being researched, but the fact is that we need proven, on-demand energy generation that drops into the existing grid NOW and nuclear provides that. But by all means, build all of it: nuclear, wind, solar, etc. Having too much carbon-free energy is a much better problem to have than too little.