Australian should be fully informed of nuclear power including the extremely high cost, long delays in construction, high operating costs and risks and difficulties with nuclear waste disposal then also comparing that the the simple environmentally friendly strategy for solar wind and hydro and other forms of power generation. eg the only nuclear reaction we need is at the sun.
Having purchased a solar power system over 8 years ago when solar costs were higher then I have my investment recovered in 4 years and I have a zero or very low power bill. With Australians taking up solar at a record rate that covers at least 12/24 hours/ day no problems with new technologies coming forward.
Researchers improve efficiency of next-generation solar cell material Reducing internal losses could pave the way to low-cost perovskite-based photovoltaics that match silicon cells’ output. major advantage of perovskite over silicon or many other candidate replacements is that it forms extremely thin layers while still efficiently capturing solar energy. “Perovskite cells have the potential to be lightweight compared to silicon, by orders of magnitude,” Bawendi says.Perovskites have a higher bandgap than silicon, which means they absorb a different part of the light spectrum and thus can complement silicon cells to provide even greater combined efficiencies. But even using only perovskite, Yoo says, “what we’re demonstrating is that even with a single active layer, we can make efficiencies that threaten silicon, and hopefully within punching distance of gallium arsenide. And both of those technologies have been around for much longer than perovskites have.”One of the keys to the team’s improvement of the material’s efficiency, Bawendi explains, was in the precise engineering of one layer of the sandwich that makes up a perovskite solar cell — the electron transport layer. The perovskite itself is layered with a transparent conductive layer used to carry an electric current from the cell out to where it can be used. However, if the conductive layer is directly attached to the perovskite itself, the electrons and their counterparts, called holes, simply recombine on the spot and no current flows. In the researchers’ design, the perovskite and the conductive layer are separated by an improved type of intermediate layer that can let the electrons through while preventing the recombination. https://news.mit.edu/2021/photovoltaic-efficiency-solar-0224
