If you are pushing nuclear power by saying renewables are non-starters, Texas would like a word. 40% of our electricity is renewable.
It takes less than a year to build wind or solar farm.
It takes three to six YEARS for nuclear — and the power is more expensive. About triple. That’s insane!
The SPOF are also higher with nukes.
And the mind boggling reality is that if you want to reduce climate change quickly, renewables are faster to implement, cheaper to run and result in a power that is less harmful to people than nuclear (which ALWAYS hurts poor people in the same way coal mining does).
Read a great article where people are using heat energy as batteries. Upside is they are cheap and have no failure points. Unlike chemical batteries, they can be reused up to 50 years.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/12/16/climate/solution-hot-rocks-renewable-energy-battery/index.html
Here is an example. The solar array of photovoltaics in the background heat up the carbon blocks in the insulated box that says “Antorra” — that is a battery and stores 10 times the energy of a lithium ion battery. Bill Gates has invested cash and they were at the climate conference.
It’s a really cool and simple tech.
Another competitor is using plain old bricks!🧱
I thought that was awesome and seriously low tech!
BTW, no one is talking about concentrated solar power.
This uses normal photovoltaics. Excess power is used to heat rocks as a thermal battery.
Some people need to read the article, yo.