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Chinese scientists achieve record-breaking 20% efficiency in single-junction organic solar cell
(www.pv-magazine.com)
this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2024
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Why do people favour solar and wind over nuclear? You wouldn't need as much land for the nuclear output and it can reliably generate huge amounts of power...
Nukes generate waste, have small meltdown odds (thus medium or larger meltdown odds the more you deploy them), and also the technology chain can be modified for uranium enrichment.
Solar and wind are also popular because their generation can be decentralized, but this is less of a concern for MLs who favor planning.
The actual dangerous waste is less than 0.1%. intermediate and low level can be reprocessed. Nuclear is also more capacity efficient than solar.
We also have reactors that do not have the ability to melt down, with the development of molten salt and thorium coming ever closer.
The problem is that capitalist nations cannot be trusted with nuclear; as they will fleece construction, regulation and qualifications every single time. Compared to Chernobyl; which was a design flaw in the early, ancient reactors of the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, incompetence and decadence run deep here and has been responsible for accidents here for that exact reason before.
I still believe nuclear is the way and there are plenty of much more worth it advantages to nuclear power for grid-use or military-use. I believe China is developing these organic panels as a form of "grid self-sufficiency" for rural areas, possibly. The less houses/homes in a nation of a billion connected to energy is more power for all. Could also be used in cars, space (Their first outer-solar system launch is coming up), etc.
Solar + batt in China is currently cheaper than coal and natgas.
Solar is a 100% mature technology that promises to provide further cost savings over existing technologies, and has reasonable odds of reaching the 1 cent per kWh point, where solar is competitive with fusion.
Fission can't scale to that point; the main point of fission is that it can produce reactors for warships and submarines, as well as uranium for fission, boosted fission, and thermonuclear weapons.
Iirc my math was for 3x overbuilding on solar and using massive battery banks, although the 4 cents per kwh figure assumes 1.5x overbuilding and enough batteries to capture all of a summer day's generation.
Fission and solar are actually enemies because the extreme intermittency of solar overloads the grid in the summer, and provides no energy at night. Coal and natgas have fast generation spoolup, whereas nuclear takes too long, hence solar forces nuclear off the grid.
Ultimately, solar is here. At present prices, in China, at least, panels with battery can compete with natgas and coal for total generation.
With further reduction in battery prices (40 USD is the marginal cost of batteries), and multi-junction carbon or carbon silicon, we probably can get solar + batt to completely replace all existing fossil fuels, as well as limit fission and fusion to baseload or strategically crucial power supplies.