Price of solar dropped 89% in ten years

Knusper@feddit.de to Technology@lemmy.ml – 987 points –

Solar now being the cheapest energy source made its rounds on Lemmy some weeks ago, if I remember correctly. I just found this graphic and felt it was worth sharing independently.

Source: https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth

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Well that's simply false. Its been screwed by ignorance propaganda and fear mongering.

You clearly don’t understand the other side.

Sure buddy. And you clearly do.

Actually I do. I was a nuclear booster in the 1990’s because it means cheap limitless pollution free power.

Except that they don’t actually deliver on that promise. You can have safe nuclear or cheap nuclear, but if it’s safe it’s not cheap, and the public rightfully won’t accept something that can require evacuating hundreds of square miles for decades.

So wise one, where are those cheap safe nuclear power plants we keep hearing about since 1950?

In France. They standardized the designs so each one isn't a one-off and they trained more people to work in the field.

indeed. just order like 100 SMRs and all the problems go away. problem is the psychos would rather build gas plants and fund dictators

Those are not at all cheap and are subsidized by enrichment for weapons purposes.

France is trying to extend their service lifetime beyond what they were designed for because they can’t face the bill to replace them with newer reactors.

and are subsidized by enrichment for weapons purposes in order to reprocess the waste into new fuel

FTFY. That's a good thing and we should be doing it here in the US, too.

Uhh, I was referring to the new ones France has been building, not the old ones...

Those are not at all cheap and are subsidized by enrichment for weapons purposes.

they aren't, and the whole anti nuclear power movement is just people who don't understand science not being able to tell the difference between a bomb and a power plant. I mean science education wasn't that great in midcentury america but today we can easily know better

So the user above me actually gave the the answer so kudos to them but to further answer your question, there are no actually cheap reactors because the fight to actually build one is so insanely expensive. Where I live they'd been trying to build a reactor for over a decade. Constant lawsuits and legal battles after already obtaining permits and everything. Its ballooned the cost by tenfold. Why? Because of constant NGO pressure from the likes of greenpeace. So congrats, you win. They aren't cheap cause of the hell we've made for ourselves.

high speed rail and subways have the same problem. it's not inherently expensive, rich people sue and sue until it's too expensive

You’re blaming everyone else for nuclear’s failures.

Why are even French nuclear plants badly over budget and late? Answer: Nuclear is expensive as fuck.

Are you unable to read or are you just ignoring what I'm saying on purpose. I told you why they're badly over budget and late. This clearly is a dead conversation as you lack either a) reading comprehension or b) the ability to discuss in good faith.

of course I'm blaming the real problem: relentless attack by the fossil fuel industry

the other side is big oil

LOL. It’s “big solar” that’s eating their lunch.

yeah but I want the power to work between 4 pm and 8 am

Batteries.

Yeah, that doesn't scale well at all. Batteries are expensive, dangerous (so lots of safety measures at scale), and consumable, which is why very few places actually try to store energy at any kind of scale.

Until we have a good, cheap way to store energy, solar will be a supplemental power source to help with peak demand in the daytime. So we'll need something that's reliable and inexpensive to provide power the rest of the time. For many areas, that's coal or gas, but it could be nuclear. If people just accepted that nuclear is safe and effective, costs would come down.

the most dangerous part of nuclear power is not using enough nuclear power

Agreed. If people truly understood just how safe it is, we could make it so much cheaper.

I'm stoked about mini reactors, which should make remote factories and whatnot far more reasonable.