Nuclear Power?

[Hygro]

Definitely solar is the current and future. Having a niche of nuclear I think is more for our technological and practicing-of-technologies benefit than it is to solve an energy problem.

 

[innonimatu]

There's a reason virtually all the new build happening now is solar and wind now. The IEA expects it to constitute 95% of new electricity generation over the next few years. The world added 19% to solar capacity and 13% to wind in 2021 alone, rates that are projected to accelerate. In a few years we will have over a third of world electricity being renewable:

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In most of the world, utility scale solar is now the cheapest way to get new electricity. Nuclear power by contrast is at 10% of global electricity production and steady or declining. It sits at about the same level, in absolute terms, that it was at in 2000.

That's where the market is at these days. A very rapid expansion of renewable electricity generation is already underway, we're not talking about some hypothetical planning scenario. where the world is paused and waiting to decide whether to have solar panels or nuclear reactors.

To be clear, it's still not going fast enough for net zero quick enough to keep under 2 degrees warming. Not unless acceleration increases more than projected (we probably need to be adding about triple current annual additions by 2030), while electrification of things like transport also intensifies. But it's still going pretty damn fast and it's the only game in town as far as even approaching enough decarbonisation goes.

I'm increasingly taking IEA predictions with a lot of salt. They're good at collecting data, but predictions... Keep in mind that the "International" Energy Agency is just a small group of countries. Most of those that count in terms of primary energy production and consumption are not members. The world changed that much in a couple of decades.

I'm all for investment in solar but what I've seen in the recent past is that fossil fuel use just keeps growing and growing, despite all the talk about dropping them.

 

[Arwon]

I mean historically it was mostly for bombs and national security/energy independence