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Spicy Air ☢️ (thelemmy.club)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/Memes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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Nuclear is the best btw.

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[–] 4 points 4 months ago* (5 children)

Yes, but why waste time and effort with a stopgap like Nuclear when we can just go to wind and solar that we already have the tech for?

Bonus, the more its used, the more we learn, the better it gets for efficiency and ability to manufacture.

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  • [–] -2 points 4 months ago

    I think you have it backwards, wind and solar are the stopgap.

    Wind and solar require heavy mining of non-renewable, relatively rare resources that will likely run out in a couple generations. Solar panels and wind turbines have a short lifespan of a few decades, and we aren't good at recycling.

    Look at the world leader in clean energy- China - and their long term plans. They are heavily invested in solar, for now, as a stopgap measure as they develop thorium reactor power and other related technologies.

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  • [–] -3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    I addressed this in another comment, but basically wind and solar both require large amounts of open land to generate significant amounts of electricity. They aren't a complete solution, they simply can't fit everywhere.

    Most places that can't fit in fields of solar arrays or wind turbines are reliant on fossil fuels for electricity, and those circumstances aren't going to change anytime soon. The best solution right now would be to replace the coal and gas plants with nuclear.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Solar can be put on already used spaces like building roofs and parking lots that would be otherwise unproductive.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    True, but this doesn't really work for densely populated areas. There isn't enough roof space on top of a 20-story apartment or office building to place enough solar panels to serve the building's needs.

    For places like Barcelona:

    New York:

    Seoul:

    etc. there's a lot of energy demand, but all of the nearby ground space is already occupied. Even if you put solar panels on top of all the buildings, each rooftop wouldn't be enough to power its own building, so collectively you would only get a fraction of the city's energy needs. The cost of doing each install and the wiring infrastructure would outweigh the benefit, it would never be practical.

    *Edit: just to ballpark this, New York City used 15-16 billion kWh in Jan 2026, so ~15 million MWh/month, 180 million MWh/year. The Mojave Solar Project is one of the largest solar installations in the world. It generates ~580 GWh/year (580,000 MWh/year). So, to serve New York City we need only 310 equivalent MSP installations. The MSP installation takes up ~1765 acres, so we only need about 540,000 acres (2100 sq km), or a little over 1/10 of the state of New Jersey.

    Just for New York City. Not the whole state.

    And that's assuming reliable output, with no transmission losses.

    And that estimate is probably too low, because any solar installation in that area wouldn't get the same amount of regular sunlight as the Mojave Desert.

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