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points by kulahan 3 days ago | 0 comments

There's also, like... winter. I'm fairly sure there's a calculation somewhere you could determine the number of deaths this will cause with pretty good accuracy.

Solar is never gonna be a complete solution. At the end of the day, we could do it more efficiently by just building suns here on earth for the panels, but of course then you've achieved fusion and you're already generating more than solar could ever hope to. We shouldn't hinge our future on half of a technology.

[–] TheCoelacanth 3 days ago

There's still sun during the winter; you just need more solar panels for the same amount of energy. Also, there tends to be more wind during the winter, so wind power makes a good complement to solar.

[–] kulahan 3 days ago

So the winter, by definition, will always generate less? or we're just like... covering up a bunch for half the year or something? I don't get your point.

My larger point is that solar is only ever going to be a piece of the puzzle at best. In space it might be quite nice, but otherwise it's kinda goofy to invest too much in.

[–] lostlogin 3 days ago

> My larger point is that solar is only ever going to be a piece of the puzzle at best.

Doesn’t that apply to any power source?

[–] kulahan 2 days ago

Correct

[–] TheCoelacanth 3 days ago

With the way prices are trending, soon solar power is going to be the cheapest power source even in the winter. No one is going to complain that electricity is too cheap during the summer.

[–] kulahan 2 days ago

Only if we give up on nuclear and enhanced geothermal and continue subsidizing it massively so we can force it to be cheapest

[–] TheCoelacanth 2 days ago

Nonsense. It's going to be the cheapest no matter what.

[–] kulahan 1 day ago

You’d have to explain why we give up on technology, because otherwise this will never be true

[–] TheCoelacanth 14 hours ago

Look at the trend lines. Solar and batteries are getting cheaper on an exponential curve; nuclear and fossil fuels aren't. Those trends won't continue forever, but they're pretty much locked in for the next few years because the engineering work is already done and often contracts are already in place.

Short-term we're waiting for mass production and distribution of the new designs (relatively easy to predict), not R&D which is less predictable.

[–] Maxion 3 days ago

In lower latitudes, yes. Where I live December has an average of 4 hours of sunlight (yes, the entire month).

[–] jmyeet 3 days ago

Fusion, I hate to say it, is a pipe dream. Why? Because any fusion reactor loses a ton of energy to fast neutrons, which have the added negative of destroying the reactor. So-called aneutronic fusion (eg using He3) isn't zero neutrons. It's just fewer neutrons.

Stars don't have this problem because they're very large so there's only so far neutrons can go.

[–] kulahan 3 days ago

This is such a weird thing to assume is just impossible in physics, I don't quite know how to respond other than "yes, there are many unsolved problems in every energy sector, which is why it's an open question where we go from here"

[–] jmyeet 3 days ago

I've heard every counterargument a million times at this point. And they fall into one of two buckets:

1. Stars do it. Yes. But stars also have size and gravity, something no nuclear plant will ever have; and

2. "People once said X was impossible" ie the Galileo Gambit. Just because Galileo was mocked for his heliocentric model but was later proven right does not mean everything is possible.

Thing is, I'm not even talking about physics. I'm talking about engineering. Something not only has to be possible but it has to be technically viable and sufficiently cheap. Put it this way: would you pay $60 billion for a 1GW power reactor with a lifespan of 30 years and an annual maintenance cost of $2B? Even if the fuel was completely free the wholesale cost per MWh would be ~$600. Nobody would build that.

Fusion research has been going on for decades and the best we've done thus far is fire a laser for about a second to induce a fusion reaction and also spend billions building magnets to try and contain a turbulent fluid at 100 million degrees, which, again, will do nothing about the neutrons that will destroy that vessel.

The joke is that fusion is always 50 years away and always will be. If you're an optimist it's always 30 years away and always will be.

[–] kulahan 2 days ago

I’m just glad we finally, today for some reason, have the ability to determine what will and won’t ever be possible with physics. It’s also crazy to me that we know fusion so thoroughly we cannot reliably perform it but we know it’s possible to do but we also know it’s impossible to do for extended periods.

You should inform nuclear physicists and engineers of your new-to-mankind knowledge.

Did you know we once argued over whether or not to close the patent office because “everything had already been invented”? This isn’t the Galileo concept, it’s recognizing we’ve only been doing global hard science as a species for like 50 years.

[–] garbagewoman 3 days ago

Energy storage, on the other hand, has endless solutions which exist right now

[–] kulahan 1 day ago

Yeah and they’re all terrible. Why do you think nobody is building energy storage at massive scale? Don’t be silly.

[–] garbagewoman 1 day ago

No need to be condescending