Hillhater
100 TW
Something tells me that "ultimate solution" is not going to happen,cricketo said:
..so you may as well stop dreaming and let those folk with workable solutions fix things ....one step at a time .
Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear
- Thread starter Hillhater
- Start date
..so you may as well stop dreaming and let those folk with workable solutions fix things ....one step at a time .
Hillhater
100 TW
So,..the "ultimate solution" is rooftop solar ?? :? 
Hillhater said:So,..the "ultimate solution" is rooftop solar ?? :?
Ultimate solution is solar in general. It's unlimited, works everywhere and is clean. It does have limitations that we need to work around via clever engineering, but all the necessary solutions have already been developed.
Here in San Diego, the zoo is taking this path. They've already installed ~100kW of solar to power their EV charging spaces (16 of them) with a battery to take care of charging at night. Since the zoo has its parking lot full during the day, and almost empty at night, this works very well to match load and demand.cricketo said:
They are now installing a 4 megawatt hour battery for the zoo itself, so that it can charge from solar during the day (or at night when loads are low) and discharge during peak demand times, usually 5-9pm. More and more companies will start doing this to take advantage of super cheap solar energy, and cheap late-night power rates.
Hillhater
100 TW
I suggest you backtrack a few pages and review the discussion on that !cricketo said:
MJSfoto1956
10 kW
Lithium molten salt reactors are coming back baby. Plus, the new designs can actually "burn" old radioactive materials instead of having to landfill them. Too bad they pulled the plug on this research back in the late 1960s/early 1970s.
M
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor
M
TheBeastie
1 MW
Yeah, the MSR reactors are going to be great because it makes it practically impossible to have an explosion which is hydrogen forming from water-based nuclear ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-water_reactor ), because nuclear tends to break apart h2o molecules into their single elements, hydrogen and oxygen, https://youtu.be/QwbkCa9wmtI to combat this they have things like re-combiners...MJSfoto1956 said:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_autocatalytic_recombiner
.. With salt, this doesn't happen, instead, it just sits there and if a serious accident happens somehow and the fuel escapes it just hardens into solid salt.
If you have never seen a block of salt it looks something like this
https://www.britannica.com/science/salt
https://www.amazon.com/50-Plain-Wht-Salt-Block/dp/B007025IZI
I been doing numbers on various next-gen nuclear, and some of them like the Bill Gates Terrapower TWR nuclear reactor are going to be so efficient that I personally find it quite scary, its something that genuinely creeps me out to a similar level like Super AI.
I have said this stuff on this forum in different ways via videos and article quotes etc 50 times already but I will say it again...
Not only does the Bill Gates Terrapower not ever need to be refuelled after its built (well you can refuel it after 60 years) it also needs very little workers to manage it, like he says you don't need to have the dangerous setup of people opening up the top of the reactor every year or so with specially made nuclear fuel to load in everytime, and there is a lot less to monitor.
https://youtu.be/-S6tQpeXpVE?t=433
https://youtu.be/JaF-fq2Zn7I?t=1177
Most of the cost of traditional nuclear is merely running the plant, let alone the cost of building giant plants that require huge domes etc to protect from a hydrogen explosion etc.
It also uses the other 99% of mined uranium that currently just gets stored as nuclear waste.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraPower#Environmental_effects
TerraPower notes that the US hosts 700,000 metric tons of depleted uranium and that 8 metric tons could power 2.5 million homes for a year.[8] Some reports claim that the high fuel efficiency of TWRs,
With next-gen nuclear, it doesn't matter what the waste is there is a reactor that can use it.
Every single efficiency metric of this TWR nuclear reactor isn't even worthy of the words "4th gen" its more like "10th gen". This is really going to change the world on a level the public, in general, have rarely seen.
This is where its a big problem for some countries who are setting up massive spending on renewables, because they are going to look completely retarded in around 10 years time for doing so.
Nuclear power is quite literally going to come out of nowhere and drop a nuclear bomb on the energy sector, no pun intended.
The thing is, folks talk about "false economies" in this or that, but it would be FAR FAR cheaper for any country to build the Bill Gates Terrapower reactor and just pay the same amount of money to all those people who were going to have jobs in the renewables industry to instead just go camping/fishing etc. No argument is possible here. On every metric possible, everyone would just be better off.
I realized that Bill Gates wasn't very obvious or "literal" in his speech, he is very modest, he does say "people will just accept it because its quite literally cheaper than everything else", and then a funny (and I think deliberate) giggle
https://youtu.be/JaF-fq2Zn7I?t=1543
If he had come out and said it in a more obvious way as "this is going to destroy the fossil fuel industry and the countries that rely on it" he knows he would of made a lot of enemies who would have probably even tried to stop development of his reactor, but its been 10 years now and all the design work has been done and now a demo plant is being built. It's possible over the next few years he is going to be more literal and say "prepare to see incredibly cheap power".
If I was Bill Gates I would have been more paranoid, but this makes sense as to why his speech on his TWR is so mundane...
Also, I think he knows most people are pretty dumb and no one, in general, would ever suspect a nuclear technology to come out of nowhere and crush everything.
It's easy to do the maths of Tesla grid storage in land size like the South Australia Tesla Hornsdale battery reserve, and see that it scales quite similar to just a hydroelectricity dam in size in land and MWh's it holds, except a water dam has the advantage/"cheat" of depth/height.
Aside from having built all the cells, the biggest disadvantage is the energy doesn't build up for free from nature(rainwater), instead, you have to generate it and put it in the cells first. This is why folks like Bill Gates frequently say we are going to need an "incredible miracle battery" all the time, because right now for a Tesla grid storage to replace conventional energy is somewhat of a joke on people who don't know how to use calculators, to think of it any different in required size is making fools of people, https://youtu.be/JaF-fq2Zn7I?t=751
Unless they are happy with battery structures taking up more land than hydro-electricity dams and significantly more costs than hydroelectricity dams ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_hydroelectric_power_stations#Completed ) .
https://youtu.be/JaF-fq2Zn7I?t=751
Again, It's easy to scale out the size/MWh's of the SA tesla battery for a mere slice of China's power needs or even a greater use for SA's needs and see you need 100s to 1000's of km2 in Tesla battery, that would take 1000s of years to build if built at the same speed as the SA battery.
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=89002&p=1414864#p1414864
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=89002&p=1405704#p1405704
One of the more surprising things I have realized from this forum and other places is people don't really care how good or bad a product actually is if they have a personal attachment behind it, in that they really only like it because they own stock in it or have some kind of more personal direct gain from it.
That's the biggest problem with the Bill Gates Terrapower reactor, even when I put in "Terrapower" in google it always tries to autocomplete with "Terrapower stock", everyone wants to invest in stuff before they like it. Tesla is a great example of this.
This twisted reality makes me think that the best thing Bill Gates could do is publically list his currently privately owned TerraPower company so all these types of people could have their more personal selfish goals pushed on everyone else, this helps to kind of even out this type of human behaviour that is behind so much motivation to do anything.
Even if you look at more modest next-gen nuclear technology like Thorcon looks quite competitive, but doing math on a loose version of the TerraPower would be easy, all you would do is take the standard expensive reactor and imagine not having to refuel it for its expected lifetime and you have something blows away everything we have (and the ability to provide power at night time or anytime you actually need it, compared with renewables).
But even more boring next-gen nuclear claims it can beat coal. The ThorCon nuclear reactor only needs to be refuelled every 8 years compared to the typical 12-month refuelling cycle of 3rd gen nuclear. So while its nowhere near the TerraPowers 60 year cycle its still a big leap forward from traditional nuclear.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DqFRiBGU8AAJOWh.jpg
Where are they? It all comes down to what the public wants and the money, the reason why all wind/solar utility energy subsidies exist is due to the fact no private company in their right mind would want to build it otherwise, this is energy policy created by government for dumb voters to make them happy.
As Bill Gates says "we are spending our money very foolishly right now", if the money was diverted to nuclear right now it would come very quickly https://youtu.be/IsRlN1oDm60?t=34m44s
https://youtu.be/-S6tQpeXpVE?t=438
If you look at the co2 metrics on nuclear below right now its hard to argue that even if the Bill Gates TerraPower nuclear reactor was available today there would be greens groups in the streets chanting nuclear is evil and viciously fighting to ensure its never built, why? because they are just dumb people of course.
Here is the list of 4th gen nuclear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor#Table_of_designs
Most of them use either "Sodium" or "Fluoride/chloride salts" as their coolant
For the sodium designs there are a lot of "experimental" reactors now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-cooled_fast_reactor#Reactors
For MSR there is a lot of projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor#Commercial/national/international_projects
In terms of moving out of "experimental" reactors and into "demonstration" reactors the only one that I have easily found is this one which is currently being built in China. According to some articles, this reactor site location was possibly originally supposed to be the TerraPower demonstration plant, but it looks like it was changed to be some kind of hybrid of many 4th gen nuclear technologies now owned by China.
Construction of China's 600 MWe demonstration fast reactor at Xiapu, Fujian province, has officially begun with the pouring of the first concrete for the reactor's basemat. The reactor is scheduled to begin commercial operation by 2023.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-China-begins-building-pilot-fast-reactor-2912174.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraPower
According to Wikipedias page on TerraPower the second paragraph says this, which is also what Gates has said in interviews "demonstration around 2020".
In September 2015 TerraPower signed an agreement with the China National Nuclear Corporation to build a prototype 600 MWe reactor unit at Xiapu in Fujian province, China during 2018 to 2025.[2] Commercial power plants, generating about 1150 MWe, are planned for the late 2020s.
It's possible its the TerraPower MSR wasn't ready but China wanted to build a 4th gen nuclear reactor of some sort in the same location. Interestingly it has the same energy size at 600MW, but now all the original news headlines have changed from Terrapower having anything to do with it to just all Chinese only companies that have anything to do with it.
http://www.globalconstructionreview.com/news/china-help-bill-gates-develop-p7io7ne7ering-nuclea/
According to ^that article its only 60 times more efficient in fuel use, which is not nearly as efficient as the true TWR, but 60 times is a lot better than 3rd gen.
The advantage of these reactors, which use fast neutrons to split uranium atoms, is that they are about 60 times more fuel efficient than slow reactors, they generate less radioactive waste and they can be used in a “closed cycle” system, in which waste is reprocessed into new fuel.
https://neutronbytes.com/2015/09/23/terrapower-inks-deal-with-chinas-cnnc-to-build-fast-reactor/
https://425business.com/china-partnership-critical-for-terrapower/
But it seems the Fujian province is a favourite spot for new reactor technologies in China. As they connected to the electricity grid their 20MW experimental sodium-cooled, pool-type, fast neutron reactor back in 2011.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-Chinese_fast_reactor_starts_supplying_electricity-2107114.html
Maybe I am looking at it all a bit too "Jason Bourne"..
But a new article here talks about the silent war on nuclear secrets with China, makes sense really.. If the TWR was a super efficient magical reactor, then logically the first place it would show up is in military applications, so it could be argued Bill Gates TWR project is helping Chinas military technology.
Of course, the whole reason all this stuff is being developed in China and Russia is due to less regulatory hurdles the western world has on nuclear.
https://www.ft.com/content/84ab26f6-d7a5-11e8-a854-33d6f82e62f8
https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d3d774e7a59444f7a457a6333566d54/share_p.html
https://www.power-technology.com/features/future-of-nuclear-china/
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/12/china-spending-us3-3-billion-on-molten-salt-nuclear-reactors-for-faster-aircraft-carriers-and-in-flying-drones.html
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2122977/china-hopes-cold-war-nuclear-energy-tech-will-power-warships
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/09/terrestrial-energy-applying-for-800m-to.html
You can go here and scroll down to the table of new 4th gen reactors being built under "FNR designs for near- to mid-term deployment – active development"
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/fast-neutron-reactors.aspx
World-Nuclears website for upcoming 4th gen here is large article here.. Interesting the first few sentences talk about the fact a lot of these new reactors are going to be for Hydrogen production..
Generation IV Nuclear Reactors
An international task force is sharing R&D to develop six nuclear reactor technologies for deployment between 2020 and 2030. Four are fast neutron reactors.
All of these operate at higher temperatures than today's reactors. In particular, four are designated for hydrogen production.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/generation-iv-nuclear-reactors.aspx
A twisted future I am thinking could possibly happen is when ultra cheap nuclear comes that completely blows away everything in costs etc, its possible that green groups/voters will decide they just don't care about co2 any more and ignore it and decide they are just so afraid of nuclear that they would rather just have a fossil fuel power station. Such a hypocrisy seems hard to believe right now but things about human behaviour never cease to amaze me.
But given the awesome power of people just wanting things cheaper, next-gen nuclear will get there, even if it takes a while, to me its really just a question on how much money does the public want to waste in the meantime, this seems to be the question the nuclear scientific community asks as well, as far as I know.
As said before and proven constantly every day, wind and solar is for political retards who are OBVIOUSLY completely incapable of reading BASIC CO2 emissions charts. With nuclear based France CONSTANTLY emitting 10 to 20 times less co2 than Germany or South Australia with their massive wind/solar/biomass setups.
If we were comparing cars and one car was emitting 10 to 20 times less co2 than the other it could be considered a complete utter joke, but here we are with nuclear vs renewables..
So when is this thing going to be online commercially at the GW scale? Because we need to reduce carbon emissions TODAY, not in 10, 20, 30 years.
Your post smacks of the classic "even if AGW is real we don't have to do anything because a technological miracle will occur to fix everything".
Various nuclear technologies always do look so simple until after a few months or years of running it's discovered critical parts are cracking or corroding.
I hope it works, but it needs to prove itself, rather than just buy into the hype and promises. Same with the supercritical CO2. It's very interesting and would be great if it works as claimed. It would help the ease the transition away from fossil fuels and could be used for concentrated solar. However, previous large scale capture and sequestration projects were not successful and I couldn't find anything explicitely stating (plenty of implied) that the efficiency of 50-60% includes the sequestration and the production of the necessary pure oxygen.
Your post smacks of the classic "even if AGW is real we don't have to do anything because a technological miracle will occur to fix everything".
Various nuclear technologies always do look so simple until after a few months or years of running it's discovered critical parts are cracking or corroding.
I hope it works, but it needs to prove itself, rather than just buy into the hype and promises. Same with the supercritical CO2. It's very interesting and would be great if it works as claimed. It would help the ease the transition away from fossil fuels and could be used for concentrated solar. However, previous large scale capture and sequestration projects were not successful and I couldn't find anything explicitely stating (plenty of implied) that the efficiency of 50-60% includes the sequestration and the production of the necessary pure oxygen.
Probably 10-20 years, like all cheap/reliable/safe reactors, from the SMR's to PBMR's to the new MSR's. And of course fusion. (It's the power source of the future, and always will be!)Punx0r said:
One of them may well pan out one of these days, which would be great. But as you mention, we also have solutions right now that work. So what we should be doing is implementing solar and wind full speed. They will cause problems with a lack of baseload power. We can hope that one of the above reactor technologies comes along and solves that problem, or in the interim we can use natural gas/storage/hydro to fill the gaps. (Which we have right now.)
The GE, then Westinghouse, then Toshiba AP1000 reactor is a cautionary tale here. This was going to be an inherently safe, cheap, easy to construct and operate nuclear power plant based on plain old light water fusion. Several companies played "hot potato" with this until it landed in the laps of Westinghouse and Toshiba. That part of the project went bankrupt.
The Vogtle plant in the US was going to use AP1000's, but the company had to abandon construction of the plants after the bankruptcy. (There is one currently running in China.)
So when a new, awesome reactor project is announced, people tend to look at the last new, awesome reactor project and see how it went. And it didn't go so well. And that was a much smaller change in technology than a PBMR or MSR.
Definitely. For example, above the Beastie talks about how safe MSR's are when water is added. It is quite true that water won't dissociate in the core of an MSR as it does in malfunctioning light water reactors. However, what he misses is that when you add water to molten salt at 1500 degrees C it flashes to steam instantly - and you get a steam explosion, driving steam, molten salt and reactor parts into the air. And most MSR's have water at some point as a working fluid to drive turbines.
Is there a solution to that? Probably. But it will take time to hammer it all out.
Thanks for confirming that - it did seem like there would still be a risk of a dangerous steam explosion, as happened (at least once) at Chernobyl.
On carbon sequestration in general I see it as a positive move if it's removing CO2 from the atmosphere, but am suspicious of using it as mitigation for continuing to burn coal. For one thing, I'm not certain that the various other pollutants would be safely scrubbed or sequestered underground. For the sequestration itself it will probably be mostly effective, but there will almost certainly be some leaks and induced earthquakes. Not producing the stuff in the first place ought to be the primary aim.
On carbon sequestration in general I see it as a positive move if it's removing CO2 from the atmosphere, but am suspicious of using it as mitigation for continuing to burn coal. For one thing, I'm not certain that the various other pollutants would be safely scrubbed or sequestered underground. For the sequestration itself it will probably be mostly effective, but there will almost certainly be some leaks and induced earthquakes. Not producing the stuff in the first place ought to be the primary aim.
Hillhater
100 TW
I suspect that problem has already been solved with the SCCO2 turbine technology.billvon said:
But any system with high energy/high temperature processes has an inherent risk in the event of a failure.
Agreed, but in the interim there is value in reducing the damage. 100% sequestration is possible, but expensive. Even today, with pretty good scrubbers to get rid of most particulates, SOx, NOx and ash, you end up with massive open-air ponds of ash that are both radioactive and full of heavy metals. And periodically the dams fail and you end up with mercury in your drinking water.Punx0r said:
We can definitely do a better job of sequestration there. A requirement to get all the exhaust underground (particulates, CO2, SOx, everything) would make the air a lot cleaner - and help ensure that water supplies and farmland aren't damaged by dam failures.
Oh, in the short-term sequestration of all the emissions would be better than treating the atmosphere is an open sewer (although based on the results of fracking I bet many people would expect some of it to end up in drinking water), my objection is some people will inevitably think it's a licence to keep burning coal forever...
I honestly have no problem with people burning coal forever, provided:Punx0r said:
1) They sequester their CO2, ash and other waste to make it as clean as, say, natural gas combustion. Come up with a BACT standard for fossil fuel power; base it on our cleanest fossil fuel plants. Then everyone meets it, period. No special favors for coal.
2) They do not destroy entire mountain ranges and rivers with mining. Instead of subsidized mining leases, they purchase the property they want to mine like anyone else. They can then sell it after they restore it to the condition they found it in.
The problem with coal is not coal. The problem with coal is the damage it does to humans, the environment and our infrastructure.
Hillhater
100 TW
Nobody wants pollution,...but different people see different things as pollution .
Personally (as im sure you are aware) , i dont see CO2 as pollution or a problem, but there are many other products and situations that should be addressed.
Some people (increasingly) see wind farms as "visual" pollution and there is much debate about noise from turbine blades.
And there is always the ongoing debate regarding the impact of the pollution from the manufacturing / construction industries for wind, solar, and batteries etc, which is not always seen or considered outside those countries involved .
The bottom line is, ..there is no "free lunch" with any energy system, they all have compromises which have to be faced and dealt with.
Personally (as im sure you are aware) , i dont see CO2 as pollution or a problem, but there are many other products and situations that should be addressed.
Some people (increasingly) see wind farms as "visual" pollution and there is much debate about noise from turbine blades.
And there is always the ongoing debate regarding the impact of the pollution from the manufacturing / construction industries for wind, solar, and batteries etc, which is not always seen or considered outside those countries involved .
The bottom line is, ..there is no "free lunch" with any energy system, they all have compromises which have to be faced and dealt with.
That sounds suspicously like you're trying to claim wind and coal power are equal in terms of pollution on the grounds that some people do not find wind turbines aesthetically pleasing or some other ill-defined/intangible/subjective measure.
On the basis of them being as bad as each other we might as well continue with the convinient incumbent and keep burning coal, right? Clever.
On the basis of them being as bad as each other we might as well continue with the convinient incumbent and keep burning coal, right? Clever.
Hillhater
100 TW
Currently , there is no choice.Punx0r said:
Fossils still produces 80+% of all electricity, and even with thebest efforts of the RE advocates , it will be a long time before there is a significant change as to where the majority of electricity generation comes from.
You may not like that, but its a fact that we have to deal with, since without that fossil power , society as we know it will come to a very unpleasant grinding halt pretty quickly.
Yep. Some people think smoking is good for you. (mainly smokers) Some people think that a bacon-centric diet isn't a problem. Some people think that drunk driving isn't a problem because they've never had a problem driving drunk. Lots of opinions out there.Hillhater said:
Of course. And some see solar as "visual pollution" because they reflect light, and because they represent politics to them that they don't like. Some don't like power lines. Some don't like roads because they are noisy. Some don't like airports because they are even noisier and they feel the planes could fall on them. Some don't like municipal water because the government is putting flouride in it to pollute their bodily fluids. Some don't like schools because those damn kids run on their lawn all the time. Some don't like vaccines because they cause autism, and there is much debate over that.
Fortunately, we have gotten pretty good at ignoring/placating people with the more unreasonable dislikes.
Very true. You just do the best you can.
Solar growth:
2014 178GW 28% growth
2015 229GW 29% growth
2016 306GW 32% growth
2017 400GW 31% growth
2018 (est) 508GW 27% growth
That's the equivalent of a large coal power plant a week displaced by solar.
Hillhater
100 TW
No it is not bill .billvon said:
You are forgetting Capacity Factors !
