Are these batteries super easy to make and produce? Accounting for the production and mining of all these minerals for the batteries and the solar, is it still better than nuclear?
Here is a neat video to watch about why nuclear is the solution, not renewables, and why one side is preventing it from happening. https://youtu.be/diHish6yC1g?si=_BQNfgBl8fAyTMuL
So I was going to add a paragraph about nuclear, but just decided to keep it with renewables since the post was about solar. Ideally nuclear reactors are built and they would be more than enough to supply power with less harm to the environment that mining all of the rare earth metals causes. And in a perfect world nuclear is used in tandem with renewables. Its always better to have multiple forms of energy generation just in case something happens. But yes you are right, nuclear is the best option.
At least with existing nuclear power plants, they are susceptible to climate change issues ironically. In Europe this year several of them had to be shut down or run on partial capacity due to insufficient water supply for their operation.
I'm not sure if that is down to the specific implementation assuming Europe's traditionally plentiful water availability in those regions, or if it is a more general technical issue of nuclear power plants.
To the best of my knowledge, the same issue should also affect any other power plant that uses water avaporation to turn turbines, which would include at least coal; I am not entirely sure about gas.
It is not the specific implementation, it's literally just not enough water because of rising temperatures.
When you build a nuclear power plant near a river, you can't move it. If the river dries even a bit, but enough so water can't reach the plant, you are fucked. That's what happened in Europe. Previously stable water sources dried just enough that the power plants had to work in diminished capacity.
Maybe future plants can be build in a way that is more flexible...
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u/Outdoorsintherockies Sep 13 '26 edited 25d ago
Are these batteries super easy to make and produce? Accounting for the production and mining of all these minerals for the batteries and the solar, is it still better than nuclear?
Here is a neat video to watch about why nuclear is the solution, not renewables, and why one side is preventing it from happening. https://youtu.be/diHish6yC1g?si=_BQNfgBl8fAyTMuL