Nuclear vs Solar

An old debate

It’s always a good exercise to read the debates and thinking that went into many of the technologies that we now take for granted.

Why were they designed and what did we eventually use them for?

Below is an old article from the 1990s that was written by the late Dr. Bernard Cohen on the Solar vs Nuclear debate. It was written when the US government increased their investment into research for developing PVs - when electricity generated from solar was dismissed by many critiques.

It would be nice to conclude this chapter with a statement that politics doesn't matter, that scientific and economic facts make it clear that nuclear and solar electricity are not in competition, and that they probably never will be. But as we found in Chapter 9, politics cannot be ignored in a democracy like ours. If the public believes strongly enough that solar is good and nuclear is bad, and that it is worth any price not to use nuclear power, we will not have nuclear power. Our country will suffer economically from competition with others that do use nuclear power, but that will only be part of the price we will pay. It is therefore extremely important that the public be properly educated before making such a decision.

Remarkably the predictions cited in the 1990s showed that photovoltaics will penetrate the market by the end of the last century was quite spot on.

According to the directors of the government program, for photovoltaics to penetrate the utility market,² the module cost must be reduced to $45 per square meter if the efficiency is improved to 15%, or to $80 per square meter if the efficiency can be raised to 20%, assuming that the system life expectancy can be extended to 30 years (all costs are in 1987 dollars). These are the program goals. In 1982, the best performance was an efficiency of 9.8%, a cost of $1,140 per square meter, and 15 years life expectancy. In 1987, this had improved to 12% efficiency, a cost of $480 per square meter, and a life expectancy of 20 years.³ If these trends continue — i.e., if every 5 years the efficiency improves by 2%, the cost is cut in half, and the life expectancy is increased by 5 years — photovoltaics will penetrate the utility market by the end of the century.⁴ Those involved in the development are very confident that this will happen.

It’s interesting to note that the exact same debate on the application of solar vs nuclear is now taking place in the French and German political standoff.

France, which produces two-thirds of its power from nuclear plants and has plans for more reactors, is fighting for the low-carbon technology to be factored into its targets for reducing emissions and for leeway to use state subsidies to fund the sector. For Germany, which closed its last nuclear plants this year and has been particularly shaken by its former reliance on Russian gas, there’s concern that a nuclear drive will detract from renewable energy advances. But there is also an economic subtext in a region still reeling from an energy crisis last year, when prices spiked and laid bare how vulnerable households and manufacturers could become. Berlin is wary that Paris would benefit more than its neighbours if it ends up being able to guarantee low power prices from its large nuclear output as a result of new EU rules on electricity markets, people close to talks between the two countries say.

Yet the US grid shows, quite convincing, that different sources are ideal for baseload, intermediate load and peak load generation and that if we are serious about phasing out fossil fuels (a viewpoint that I am skeptical of), then there shouldn’t be a political restriction on expanding any energy source.