Solar cheaper than Nuclear?
It was brought to my attention that an article published by wired this week, discussed the fact that solar power has now become cheaper per MWh than Nuclear. This must be a significant milestone to have been reached in the development of new novel power solutions to our current massive drain. We have had numerous seminars in the department over the last few years discussing new ways to make more efficient solar cells, and decreasing the reliance on expensive rare earth metals to make them.
I don’t know what the current development has been to drop the pricing below that of Nuclear, however I want to put forward that this could be somewhat of a misnomer. Nuclear has a huge (in the order of billions of £s) initial outlay, with, what wired has called huge chances of defaulting on loans (greater than 50%) which will obviously increase the interest on any loan of capital that these consortiums are taking. One of the primary reasons that nuclear is so expensive is that there has been a reduction in the number of plants being built. This must have led to a loss of the specialist knowledge required to build and manufacture the components. I put forward a discussion that had we carried on building Nuclear to keep up with the current demands then Nuclear would be significantly cheaper, enabling much cheaper power plants to be created.
If you haven’t realised by now I am a huge proponent for nuclear power, I still believe that it is the only way to keep up with the current world energy demands (well until fusion becomes a significant possibility, cheap enough to be created for domestic use). Anyone who is against Nuclear just because of the inherent risks, then you really should look up how these systems are controlled, and why catastrophes such as Chenobyl happened. Most people blindly follow their media of choice, and so until the media gets behind the only possible option to keep up with the current power draw then Nuclear is bound to fail.
Which leads back to why Solar is not the best option. Primarily it is because these require very rare earth resources, and secondly because the conversion ratio of each *cheaper* panel is well under the 50% mark.
No matter how cheap solar becomes, it will never become a more viable option than Nuclear, the only way to completely move towards solar and wind would be for each country to decrease their reliance of electricity, and decrease the amount they use.
its great news that solar power is becoming cheaper, its what the world needs. but prices are always susceptible to fluctuation due to supply and demand. when you take a look at our global solar power production capacity, it is still terribly low compared to our oil, coal and natural gas generating capacity, it may take several decades to get anywhere near its competition. solar also has the inherent problem of its low power density (takes a lot of space to get large power requirements)… so the world NEEDS an alternative.
Nuclear power. I agree with you on this one, it’s the only thing currently that can supply equivalent power densities to replace our ageing oil infrastructure.
There is one problem with nuclear fission power though, it is only a temporary solution; if you were to replace our current global electricity production with nuclear power, we would run out of uranium in just 10 years. it takes over 10 years to plan and build power stations. the nuclear radiation is always a potential risk, we deal with our current waste capacity okay at the moment, but with the increase in waste production, this could have some unforeseen consequences in the future.
In conclusion – nuclear fission power NEEDS to be built to help ease solar & wind power development, but I would like to see a day when no more fission, coal & gas power stations are in use; only solar wind and other renewables. I’m going to keep my fingers crossed that we crack nuclear fusion! the power of the future.
Great blog post.
Rob