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Molten Salt-Based Solar Power Plant
rcastro0 writes "Hamilton Sundstrand, a division of United Technologies, announced today that it will start to commercialize a new type of solar power plant. A new company called SolarReserve will be created to provide heat-resistant pumps and other equipment, as well as the expertise in handling and storing salt that has been heated to more than 1,050 degrees Fahrenheit. According to venture capitalist Vinod Khosla 'Three percent of the land area of Morocco could support all of the electricity for Western Europe.' Molten Salt storage is already used in Nevada's Solar One power plant. Is this the post-hydrocarbon world finally knocking?"
So Gene Wolfe was right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_the_new_sun/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Urth_of_the_New_Sun/
Don't current adsorption chillers use solar heat/ molten salt? A pretty week summary but perhaps someone out there knows how this works . . .
Even more offtopic...
Right now, there are three posts and yet from the score, nine moderation points have been given, all of them negative. Is that the admins? Hrrmm.
While I would love to believe some form of solar power would meet the world's needs, it simply isn't feasible with current technology.
We'll probably have wormholes, sexbots and universal prosperity before solar can meet the demand.
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
" Is this be the post-hydrocarbon world finally knocking?".....
It was here 50 years ago with nuclear power. Thankfully, it's finally getting attention again.
I hope they don't start dumping waste salt in the oceans...
Only available in locations where ebonics be the #1 language suckah!
On a more serious note, 3% of Moroccos land mass could provide power for ALL of Western Europe? Can I ask what possible reason there could be beyond corruption and greed for this NOT to be used? Somehow I think that this kind of technology, no matter the initial cost, would be an absolute boon and can see no reason why it shouldn't be adopted.
Pollution form fossil fuels will be significantly reduced. We can finally move, at least on the consumer side, to mainly electric (no hybrid BS) vehicles, and overall be far better off than we are now. The health benefits are enormous, not to mention the economic and political benefit of nations no longer frothing at the mouth for oil.
Yea, I should probably wake up now.
Slashdot editors are be the worst ever...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Yes, hot salty, um, fluid is real solution to the world's energy problems. There is an excellent article in Scientific American about it in the latest issue.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan
Unfortunately, it will take massive investments to make this stuff really viable. Fortunately, some European governments are stepping up with real money. Unfortunately, America hasn't for about a decade.
Japanese scientist: Technically, sir, tomatoes are fags. Military scientist: He means fruits.
There are a number of companies doing this. One is looking to work in conjunction with POwer plants esp Nukes. The waste heat can actually kick the salts up a bit, and then solar pushes is that much higher. The nice thing is that this can be used on really hot days as a means of cooling off the waste heat from the nuke prior to putting in streams. Where this might get really interesting is to combine with geo-thermal power. The same sets of solar concentrators can be used to kick up heated water/steam from the ground and make the generators more efficient. During the daytime, the generators can run at full tilt, while at night, when it is just geo-thermal, then generators run at less efficient speeds.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
But the US Navy refused to build any sodium-cooled submarine reactors. Finally a Congressional committee hauled Admiral Rickover in to a hearing to testify as to why he wasn't making better use of taxpayer's money.
To which he replied "This is what happens when sodium gets wet," and he threw a chunk of sodium into some water.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Are we going to get interesting comments about the technology in use here? Is it practical? Why is molten salt used instead of something else? Isn't that dangerous? Can't birds get zapped if they fly too close to the collector where thousands of mirrors are pointing? Do we even care? Why is it so expensive to build an array of a bunch of mirrors and a collector? Is it dangerous to be near this thing, where I suppose you could be blinded if you glanced in the wrong direction?
Or are we going to just get more boring re-hashes of the same useless arguments about gas prices, global warming, the uselessness of alternative energies, etc etc ad nauseum?
>>> The technology was developed by Rocketdyne, which was acquired by United Technologies Corp., Hamilton's parent company, in 2005. Rocketdyne is the prime contractor for electric power systems on the International Space Station.
This sounds suspiciously close to YoYoDyne. You know, the ones who diverted funds from the vital U.S. Truncheon Bomber program into a private project back in the '80's.
We need to send a crack Congressional investigator to look into this immediately!
If 'the people' in Amendment 2 are 'the state' then Amendments 1, 2, 4, 9, and 10 benefit the state, not you.
If you're more interested in the technology, try looking at this. It doesn't work "like a hydroelectric plant." (spinning a turbine doesn't = "hydroelectric") It simply uses an array of mirrors to aim sunlight at salt and heat it. The molten salt can then be used to steam water and turn a turbine, or saved for later.
Sendou Wave Kick!!
Any system that does a thermal -> mechanical conversion is limited by the Carnot efficiency. This system would be limited by the temperatures of the hot side (sun's heating of the salt, balanced with losses from the pipes) and the cold side (presumably atmosphere or a cold river). In contrast, a solar cell directly rectifies electromagnetic field energy (light), so it doesn't obey the Carnot limit. That's why for a system like the one in this article, there's a need to push the operating hot-side temperature up as much as possible.
--
Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation.
The concept of storing the energy as thermal is fine, but reducing the amount of energy swaps is going to be the more efficient way to use the power. The efficiency that they can store energy and re-convert it is going to determine how low a cheap power block can sell for.
Anyway, just a crazy rant.. enjoy,
Storm
is that if vinod is going to build the equipment to handle the salts, he might be making these not just large, but also small ones. By building small ones, it will enable distributed storage. That may not sound that useful, but it is just parallelism for storage; Makes it much more resilient; can be used to power the local area, useful for disaster times, such as 9/11, katrina, snow falls, etc. it allows for small start-ups to be created that store the power at night (say at 1 penny, but put it back k on the line during the day at 5 cents). That alone would encourage small coops and business ventures. Energy storage might be the next big rush.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"Is this be the post-hydrocarbon world finally knocking?" No.
What it may be is a good start at ending the use of hydrocarbons for electrical power generation. Throw in some Wind, nuclear, some photovoltaics, some hydro, and maybe some biomass and you could reduce our use of coal, oil, and natural gas for power generation a lot.
This is one of the first good energy storage systems I have heard about. Yes it could really help with making solar thermal power a lot more practical.
For transportation I think we will be using hydrocarbons for a long time. The good thing is that you can make them from water, air, and electricity if you have too and you have enough cheap electricity.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I thought it was sodium heated to a liquid state. Not "Molten Salt".
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Let's do the math, folks.
Presuming you want to melt salt, you probably need a whole lot of mirrors. Compute the cost of a square meter of mirror, one that will last for twenty years. Now add the cost of a mirror support, one that will keep it aimed at the collector. The sun moves, so you'll need a aiming device. Estimate the cost of an aiming device that can last for say twenty years and survive typical weather conditions over twenty years. Don't forget wind gusts!
I suspect you'll have trouble getting the cost down to an economical level. By about a factor of thirty. Even assuming economies of scale. Good luck selling your idea to the bankers.
"It was here 50 years ago with nuclear power. Thankfully, it's finally getting attention again."
A chicken in every pot and a nuclear plant in every basement.
2. Do they have a flag? No? Then they can't have a country.
3. Profit.
The only difference is that this time, we British will fight to the death to defend anyone who can also help make our chips* a little saltier.
*Note: No, "Chips" are not "Fries" for Americans. What Americans call "Chips", the English call "Crisps", certainly. However, what the English call "Chips", Americans call "What the hell is that greasy thing? It's going to kill me! Can I have some avocado and a side salad instead?!" And the English call those people "Poofters". A subtle but very important point.
Aren't we nerds? If we don't use the proper units, who will?
"Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
Three percent of the land area of Morocco could support all of the electricity for Western Europe.'
Great from an environmental perspective, unless you are a Moroccan. However it sounds even worse with respect to foreign dependence on energy. At least there are multiple countries/regions to buy oil from. If you out source your solar farm you are in a crisis as fast as someone can throw a switch.
How about each EU member commits 1% of its own territory (roofs count), to the EU power grid. The EU has 10x the area of Morocco, 1/3 the solar power given cloudy days and higher latitudes would seem to be indicate 1% of its land area.
What kinds of pipes could be used for such a hot substance? If the pipes aren't designed properly, they could melt, or conversely lose too much heat and the salt could just solidify... what happens then? This seems like a control nightmare to me.
After reading the oh so informative article, using some google-fu, and digging deep into my childhood memories I'm pretty sure that this isn't a "new type of solar plant". I remember driving by Solar One on a family trip when I was a younger. I'm guessing that the reference to Nevada's Solar One in the story is a typo. Solar One (not to be confused with Nevada's Solar One as linked in the story) used molten salt (NaNO3 and KNO3 mix) which is similar to this "new technology" (actually it was Solar Two, which was an upgrade of Solar One that used salt, but I guess you could still call it the Solar One complex or something). So the takeaways from this story are: not new technology that's not like the technology linked, but is like some technology that sounds similar to the technology linked is being commercialized. Story at 11.
Still our transportation sector still relies too heavily on imported oil and this technology too would not do much to alleviate it, by itself.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The vast majority of the RD that has been done in alterantive has been in America. EU is simply stepping up to bring the RD to production. Even now, the top Solar Cell work is still from silicon valley, silicon mountain, even new york. The concept of using salts was RD by boeing in 2001, with about a dozen companie here already working with it. What is NOT happening is that W. is not pushing Alternative or even Nukes to any large degree. But all the VC is abuzz here. And there is LOADS of money flowing there.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
``Is this be the post-hydrocarbon world finally knocking?''
I think it already was a matter of will, not technical ability.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I can has bad grammar??
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
Articles on massive scale solar power systems almost inevitably include some sort of a comparison showing that solar power generation is not cost-competitive with systems which burn oil or natural gas as fuel. The implication is that solar systems will force consumers to pay more for electricity, thereby discouraging their construction.
There are two critical issues that such cost comparisons ignore:
1) They never account for the long-term costs of pumping more carbon dioxide (plus various pollutants) into the atmosphere and,
2) They never tell us the price of crude oil used for the cost justification.
It is extremely unlikely that any such comparison will give oil quite so much of an advantage if computed at $100+ per barrel (today's price) for imported crude. Or at $200 per barrel. Or if imported crude isn't available at any price.
Yes, I know that I ignored coal as a fuel. I live in California and every fuel-burning power plant around here runs on oil or natural gas depending on weather conditions. Coal isn't an option for pollution reasons. And we do have thousands of square miles of desert that are ideal for solar power plants.
I will just dump a mess of links from an old E-mail I did on this some time ago. It's all good stuff, Solar two in Mojave was also molten salt based. I knew someone who bought it after it failed and got to explore it before it was partly dismantled.
---------
Solar two was a flat mirror array.
Search google image search with
"solar two" Mojave
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=yermo,+ca&ie=UTF8&ll=34.871919,-116.83416&spn=0.005915,0.010042&t=h&z=17&om=1
Take the link above and zoom out, just below and to the right is a Parabolic glass mirrors plant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Two
http://www.powerfromthesun.net/Chapter10/Chapter10new.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Solar_Two_2003.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Solar_Two_Heliostat.jpg
http://theothersolar.com/?m=200702
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1101-10.htm
http://www.global-greenhouse-warming.com/solar-central-power-towers.html
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/edu/dees/U4735/projections/pitman/solar.elec.jpg
http://fixedreference.org/2006-Wikipedia-CD-Selection/wp/s/Solar_power.htm
(search for "Solar two")
http://www.reia-nm.org/HTML_Docs/Solar_Thermal_Electrical.html
http://greatgreengadgets.com/gadgets/category/solar/
http://www.answers.com/topic/solar-thermal-energy
http://blogs.business2.com/greenwombat/2006/week44/index.html
Excellent page on many technologies - Sorry it's in Spanish.
http://g3nergy.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_archive.html
Search for "Australia to Build 154 MW Solar Energy Plant"
This one is identical in design to the one in the Mojave Dessert here.
http://ludb.clui.org/ex/i/CA4965/ Abandoned Solar Power Plant
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
Few details in the link indicate how the plant will produce power. The Nevada plant uses a steam turbine so I assume that this plant does the same. But what about using a heat engine in place of a turbine? There was a story on /. a while back about using sterling engines in a solar plant. They talked of placing a small sterling engine at the center of a large parabolic dish - sounded interesting.
I like the idea of sterling engines and wonder if they could be used in conjunction with a steam turbine. The steam turbine operates as expected but a sterling engine is present where the stream in turned back into water. In essence, the waste heat from the turbine could be harvested instead of being discarded. Probably more practical in cooler climates where cooling sources are easy to find.
Just thought I would put this idea out there as I have no experience with heat engines but imagine that there is a good reason why this is not currently done.
I'm more more surprised that no one has yet made a grammar comment with a mocking pirate theme, like,
"Arrr, I think this be post-hydriecarba world knockin on 'r door, matey! It be a danger too, since less global waaaarmin means less 'f us!"
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Yeah, I'm sure the engineers forgot about the pipes.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Molten salt heat exchange technology isn't new, and has been tried in various forms of electric generating plant for at least 25 years to my memory (and probably a lot longer - they tried a lot of odd stuff in the 1920s and 1950s). The think to keep an eye on is projected operating and maintenance expenses over the long term. Molten salt is nasty stuff and does a lot of damage to everything it touches. Major components such as pumps have to be considered replacement rather than repair items for example. So the O&M cost projections are critical.
sPh
If this is project is feasible and is what can be achieved without subsidies I wonder what solar energy projects (and indeed other alternative energy projects) can be created with funding.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
The energy cost with refining, processing, storing and disposing of nuclear materials makes solar look like a bargain. Nuclear fanatics seem to forget the process it takes from digging up something that is one of the rarest elements on our planet and then disposing of such elements when we are done.
1. Nuclear power is not carbon neutral. Uranium is mined, and nobody is running mining equipment on biodiesel, nor are they transporting it to power plants using biodiesel, ethanol, or even renewable generated electricity on electric locomotives. To be sure, the amount of carbon is extremely low per kWh of electricity generated, but very small > 0, even for very small cases of very small.
2. As you know, nuclear proponents continually ignore the major immediate problem with nuclear power -- waste storage. Nobody wants more glass-encased nuclear waste in their neighborhood, and presently nobody wants some other neighborhood's nuclear waste being transported through their neighborhood. The nuclear industry has got to find technical and political solutions to these problems before society will embrace nuclear as a green solution. I'm not arguing that burning coal or oil is safer or cleaner than nuclear, just that any change to a status quo requires more than a slight or obscured imbalance, which is how the public currently perceives the status quo.
3. What is Hubbart's Peak for uranium? I have no idea, but it surely must have one.
4. Which nations have substantial amounts of useful uranium? What would the balance of power be if those nations became the new Saudi Arabia of energy?
5. Solar off-peak is simply not a problem, not for a long time. Peak demand is highly correlated with sunshine in most of the world -- solar could serve quite effectively as the peaking plant, relying on other types of generation for base load. Electric storage is just not a major issue for solar -- it might become one for wind but it wouldn't be that hard to operate other green energy plants in a negative correlation to wind, ie burn woodchips when the wind isn't blowing, but not when the wind is blowing.
6. That said, plug in cars might change that formulation substantially, since most people would plug in their cars at night thereby adding demand off-peak [and off-sun]. If/when that happens, much of (5) becomes moot and there'd be some shifting of nighttime use [industrial, it's cheaper] to daytime and there'd be encouragement for folks to charge during the day [plug in jacks at car parks] to help keep demand during the day higher, when production due to solar is higher.
7. Ultimately, this doesn't matter. Solar production in the US is well less than 1%. Even at 10% there won't be a necessary substantial change in infrastructures or demand shaping. So, until then, more of every kind of renewable electricity generation is better, and none of it will create challenges. And, of course, nuclear may or may not be greenish, but it is not renewable.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
According to Wikipedia, Morocco has a land mass of 446,550 km^2. 3% of that is 13,396 km^2. That's approximately the size of Montenegro (13,812 km^2). It's more than five times as big as Luxembourg. Of course, if you point out that you'll have to dedicate five Luxembourgs to power generation, it becomes much less appealing.
According to http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table64.xls , Europe has 803 gigawatts of installed generation capacity.
Going to http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/reactors/nuke1.html, and picking 5 reactors at random (Brunswick, Diablo Canyon*, Pilgrim, Surry, and Susquehanna), I see that 7.5 GW of generating capacity takes up 5,465 acres... or 22 square kilometers.
So, the land usage to supply all of Europe's electric usage (day and night) via nuclear power would be 2,354 km^2... potentially less, as it seems that it's possible to group reactors together to minimize land usage. That's less than one Luxembourg.
* Chosen less randomly than the others, since it had a cool-sounding name.
Here is a shorter, and in my opinion, more informative summary. They're heating up sodium chloride salt, then using that to produce steam from water, which drives turbines. That's nice, because molten salt is fairly nasty stuff to work with.
Anything has its chemical activity rise exponentially with temperature (the Arrhenius equation) so as things get hotter, they get more chemically aggressive. Molten glass will dissolve bricks and mortar. Molten sodium and chlorine ions are even nastier -- a sodium ion is a very small object, only a little larger than hydrogen -- and can diffuse into metals, weakening them and creating leaks.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
You are right about the mirrors. I am about 2 hours away from a solar generation plant here in California and when you drive by the plant you notice that a good 10% of the mirrors are broken or have peices missing. I'm sure this will go up with time so it will cost money to keep it in good working order.
Thank god we don't have to cover 3% of morocco with sperm anymore.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
The first US nuclear power reactor (EBR-1) was a liquid-metal cooled breeder reactor, as was the Fermi 1 reactor near Detroit, Michigan. The Fermi reactor had a minor meltdown accident in 1963. Overall, the safety record of liquid-metal reactors hasn't been particularly impressive, at least in the power-generation arena.
when the sun is out, and Wind is great when the Wind is blowing, but they are not viable for providing base load power needs.
Nuclear is ideal for providing base-load power (30-40% of peak capacity), suplemented by Solar, Wind and Tidal power.
The future world will have to depend on a mix of energy sources, most renewable, some probably not.
This kind of thing will work great for Las Vegas, and a number of Moroccan arrays would be great for Western Europe with submarine cables across the Mediterranean. Hell, there's lots of great possible sites for this kind of thing in Australia too - even more, if we look at things like using the peak to do things like pump salt water up hill, or store pressurised air, where a couple of days of cloud cover and peak demand won't result in solidification of your thermal reservoir.
But what about Galena, Alaska? With places like that, the options are probably need to either continue shipping in hydrocarbons (either fossil or renewable)or ship in a micro nuclear plant.
I know this is going to sound like some bizarro socialist mish-mash, but what just might be needed is a pricing structure for energy that's in part based on actual costs, in part based on environmental impact, and in part based on the practicalities involved in providing power in a particular location. Under such a scheme, Las Vegas might pay an absolute fortune for electricity generated from natural gas fuelled turbines (a.k.a. ex-airliner jet engines) but very little for solar - enough to make solar the far more attractive option, but allow the gas turbines to be kept available for peak demand (e.g. aircon load on the hottest days, because a couple of arrays are down for maintenance). Galena, however, would probably pay cost of production + shipping + reasonable profit margins for the biodiesel used to fuel its generators, plus maybe a very small surcharge for any mineral diesel purchased and cycled through as reserve stocks (due to biodiesel's shorter storage life). What this would involve is some proper resource planning, above and beyond just what's going to provide the biggest return to investors over the next three to five, and that's why I don't hold much hope for it happening. If we're smart as a species, though, we'll look carefully at how we can reduce our dependance on fossil fuels while still holding them in reserve for emergency power uses or using them for specialised purposes - feedstocks for manufacturing, for example, rather than as a general source of power.
...and if you knew how much we drank you'd move into a fallout shelter.
A good BUTTress...
(I thought I saw "With apologies to The TRICK")
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
AS a working fluid in submarine nuclear reactors. I thought that the whole problem was, that when the system stopped, well, you would have just a big hunk of salt. SO, you couldn't ever really turn it off, or you would have to buy a new reactor.
This is my sig.
Liquid Sodium heating systems require two things: First is a heat source that keeps the working fluid, fluid. If it solidifies in the lines, it would damage vital components. The Sovs learned this lesson the hard way with a production reactor. The second, extreme corrosiveness equals extreme cost to prevent the plumbing from falling apart. Iconel, Hastelloy-N and similar "super" alloys are used to contain sodium in the primary heating loop, certain grades of stainless steel would need to be used in fabrication of this type of setup.
Bottom line it would take a very long time for a plant like this to pay itself off. It would be one of those pork barrel projects that the gov't would be feeding megamillions into.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
I submitted a story a while back about something very similar to this. It does however use water instead of molten salt to store the heat before it's used to turn the turbines:
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2006/2006-06-30-02.asp
The advantage of molten salt is its ability to hold a lot more energy in the same space when compared to water (especially when it's molten). There is the issue though of storing such stuff and then using it to turn a turbine or similar (which is why Spain's plant uses water, it was the easiest to get running). So whilst a few people here believe that it's not really feasible to get it up and running there are already examples of this technology being used today.
The Refined Geek - Technology, Finance, Space and everything in between
This kind of thing has been suggested for use in high-power spacecraft, and it's not necessarily sodium salt that's the storage mechanism.
I don't see why you'd lose much efficiency. You'd chose a salt that was molten over the operating range, and no matter what, you cannot exceed the temperature limitations of the other materials you've built the thing from, so that's your design temp. Because of the T(t) smoothing effects, you'd be able to run the generator at maximum efficiency for most of the time. Thus, you can size your machinery to the average capacity rather than the peak available solar input. Not spooling the generator up and down as the sun waxes and wanes is great for efficiency.
For instance, you might pick a salt that has a liquid-solid transition just below your desired T_hot, ensuring even temperature until all the salt solidifies. This has the added benefit that, depending on the expansion characteristics of the salt in question, you have a number of ways to evaluate the remaining generating capacity.
With good insulation, and a fixed installation can be made arbitrarily well insulated, you would lose a lot less energy than storage in batteries, and it scales very well: the larger the installation, the thinner the needed insulation is relative to the total volume.
The main loss would be radiation from the absorption patch. Presumably you'd mitigate this by having some kind of louver or hatch that you could close to insulate that during the night and overcast days. You could also take advantage of the much lower-than-the-sun temperatures, and use a covering that is transparent to visible light, but reflective to lower frequency light. Although there would still be a fair bit of radiation in the visible at reasonably efficient temperatures.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I wish the admins would pay more attention and mod all posts from these fucking grammar Nazis offtopic, including this one. They're not insightful. They are simply pedantic pricks with nothing better to do from the dark of their parents' basement.
By "this one" do you mean this post or this grammar Nazi? I guess you mean this grammar Nazi, since second person plural pronoun used subsequently apparently refers the the authors not the posts. It's nice of you to admit that you have nothing better to do from the dark of your parents' basement, don't you think the admins might be a little too busy to bother modding posts?
I mean, who gives a fuck? Really.
We care a lot!
Anyway back to melting salt ...
There are some promising possibilities (pebble bed is at an advanced stage now, and accelerated thorium shows potential) but TRY PAYING ATTENTION - Iran and North Korea's efforts have been headline news for some time and should highlight that what we have today is a dual use compromise that could be better. If the focus was primarily on electricity generation like some of the newer and UNTESTED concepts it would be more than using a bomb materials plant to boil water which is what most of our 1950's derived plants really come down to.
There are a lot of good uses for nuclear materials but we are not yet very good at using them to boil water, and the "nuclear batteries" while they rule their niche scale up no better than photovoltaics.
When the sun shines, you have electricity. When it doesn't, you don't.
It would be much simpler. More cost effective and better for the environment. Besides, if the real goal is "reduce" this has "reduce" implied - you will stop using electricity for things that can't go without power for long periods when it rains or is cloudy.
"Kazakhstan is the greatest country of the world..."
They say the mind is the first thing to
Nothing is carbon neutral. Everything requires expenditures of energy, generated by fossil fuels, to make, transport, install, maintain, etc.
Whining about carbon itself is an idiot's game.
So stop the stupid ass nit picking and get on with finding something will let us tell the middle east to go fuck itself.
OK, I'm sold! Now let's get to the bottom line before I sign. What does your firm charge for a small/modest home sized nuclear power plant? I am interested in purchasing one, as I would like to eliminate one more monthly bill eventually by building equity. I dislike renting my power from the majors, to me, that is like considering a lifetime contract from "rooms to go"-with no pricing information beyond one year- to be a "good deal" in acquiring furniture. Well, obviously that is just stupid, no one would really do that, I am sure you and I much prefer to own our furniture, so what do you charge and what are your terms, and when is my payback time after which I own your small nuclear fission electricity generator device?
> France had that political will, and now they have the cheapest power and the cleanest air in Europe.
And they were wise enough to stay out of trouble in Middle East.
Good luck with your nuke toys.
Obesity. Get us fat folks on treadmills, stairclimbers, rowing machines and anything else that will take a generator.
- We, if America (and even the world), uses IFR starting today, we would not mine any more uranium for well over 100 years. And that assumes that ALL of our power needs are covered by nothing but IFRs. But after that, yes. Of couse, I suspect that it would be using either batteries or capacitors to mine with.
- Waste is a NONE issue. The real problem is that we use the uranium INEFFICIENTLY. With our light water reactors, we only use 1-2 % of the power (which is why it is radioactive for SO long afterwards. If we continue to use it through the nuclear cycles, we can get more than 98% of the power out of it. That does leave a fraction of the waste, but it will be clean within 175 years. Yes, 175 years, not 100K years.
- Depends on prices. The truth is that our planet is LOADED with uranium. And after that time, we have thorium. But a clean number is larger than 20K years.
- Again, at what prices? At 40/kg, Australia is THE place to be. Of course, current price is 100/kg. With that said, USA, Canada, Russia, and a host of other countries join Australia with MAJOR reserves. And of course, the oceans have loads of it. But it does have to be up around 500/kg. But what is missing here, is that even if the fuel was at 1000/kg, it would not be reflected in your energy bill. A 1 GW of power at a typical inefficient LWB reactor, use about 20000kg. If we go to the IFR, then we use about 1-2% of that i.e. 200KG. Divide that out in 1GW of power and you realize that fuel is absolutely NOTHING (not even when it is inefficient).
- Storage adds costs to the electricity. There is no getting around it. And I am a big fan of Alternative. But you still need storage to make this work great.
I will note that all your issues with the solar pushing comes down to BASE plants. A base plant provides power nearly all the time (minus downtime). The peaks are handled by gas or coal plants. But solar can ONLY be used for peaks plants IFF they have some amount of storage. And you need a LOT of storage to turn it into a base plant. A better idea is to use geo-thermal power. In fact, MIT did a study that show with $1B, America could create 200GW of cheap geo-thermal power by 2050. Keep in mind that is 1/3 of our total current use. That is pretty impressive. And at 1B, it is a steal. Now the humorous part of this, is that geo-thermal IS nuclear power.Sorry, if I am bursting your bubble, but the simple fact is, that America NEEDS nuclear. Not this LWR, a full blown IFR that can provide CHEAP power for more than a century. That will give us plenty of time to switch to cheap alternative. As to nuclear being none renewable, well, that is not true. After all, exactly what drives nearly ALL of the alternative power (tidal is the ONLY exception). Solar, and wind is partially from a nuclear engine; sun. Wind, Ocean thermocline, and Geo-thermal from mantle heating caused by large amounts of diluted radioactive products. As to running out of radiactive products, well even if we converted to 100% nuclear world, it would take us more than 20K years to burn up ALL uranium, let alone something more plentiful like thorium. LONG before 20K years, we need to be in the solar system and can use products from saturn and everywhere (save europa
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
With *CURRENT* solar cells, not including what Nanosolar will be rolling out soon, we only need about 15% of our US desert to meet all of our energy needs and have a surplus. Do you even pay attention to how fast we're advancing in this field?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I just got the January '08 issue today and haven't read it yet. I like the cover though. Thanks for the link, though I have the print edition I saved the online article so I won't need to scan it.
FalconShould there be a Law?
4. Which nations have substantial amounts of useful uranium? What would the balance of power be if those nations became the new Saudi Arabia of energy?
If we, the US, ever does start building more nuclear power plants at least we don't have to be concerned about where the fuel comes from. Both Canada and Australia have vast amounts of uranium.
FalconShould there be a Law?
When you do life cycle analyses, most of the answers come back with nuclear roughly comparable to renewables, often a little higher than wind but lower than solar photovoltaic. Much of the life cycle costs come from using gas diffusion enrichment to prepare the nuclear fuel, which should be shut down completely over the next few years and replaced with the orders of magnitude more efficient centrifuge technology.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
But the kicker is that unstable power sources can be considered a much more viable source of energy when you can sell the power as it comes. Rather than turning on natural gas turbines, you just reduce the amount of cheap power. Rather than opening spillgates on a hydroelectric dam, you offer cheap power, and every plug in hybrid car in town will suck it down, and all the Air conditioners will kick it down to 70.
The cheap power will always need to have some cap, aka 80% of normal. just so the demand can start in a matter of seconds.
I agree, one device (smartMeter)talks to the power company, the devices talk to the smartmeter.
Storm
just because the United States has an aversion to reprocessing fuel doesn't mean it's not a good idea. France seems to do just fine.
France doesn't seem to be doing so well with reprocessing as some think. Seems there may be a Nuclear Wasteland in France.
FalconShould there be a Law?
...a milk delivery truck back in the early 70s that utilized two saline solution tanks for (cold) thermal storage. It would maintain approx 38F for over two days in hot weather w/o being plugged into the grid.
...Lorenzo / I'm into kinky crustaceans. I just discovered internet praWn.
" Is this the post-hydrocarbon world finally knocking?" Looks more like the Post-English or post-grammar world is knocking. Who let you in?
is not pushing Alternative or even Nukes to any large degree. But all the VC is abuzz here. And there is LOADS of money flowing there.
Actually that's how it should be. If the government does anything it should be only to encourage private people, NGOs, and businesses to do the research. And a great way to do this is by allowing people to decide for themselves what they want to do with the money they work to earn, ie reduce if not eliminate income taxes.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I'm just saying, I doubt your straight linear math works, I bet it is a whole lot more than 22% of Cali to power the US because apparently this doesn't scale.
SciAm has a good article on this, in "A Solar Grand Plan" they say solar power could provide 69% of the electricity and 35% of the energy the US uses by 2050.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Actually TFA says they are using oil to heat the water not salt. The salt is only used as a means of storage.
FalconShould there be a Law?
that W. has played with the markets. In particular, he tried hard to take a big chunk of NREL money (100 M) and give it over to the oil companies. In addition, he put out a lot of money for the research on how to strip hydrogen from oil, but it was also just given to the oil companies. Oddly enough, just about as much money went into that issue as went into hydrogen fuel cell and storage research which is the much harder problem.
Finally, 2-3 years ago, he gave a lot of tax cuts to push for ethanol production. What that has done is cause our food stock to moved into energy production. IMHO, that was pretty foolish, for a number of reasons. But to compound the issue, that would have been the time to remove our very expensive crop support. It continues to this day. But nope. The pubs of that time, were afraid of the election, so were unwilling to remove it.
This gov ALREADY spends billions that throw the markets out of line. What is needed is for a couragous president who will set this right. Hopefully the next president will do that.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
What is it with intetnet sites (slashdot, news sites, digg etc) having fascinating articles but no cool pictures to back them up?
Did anyone else groan intensely last year when 'worlds largest squid has been caught!' articles came up with no pictures?
"Meteor smashes into datacentre"
"Worlds largest seal clubs man in Alaska"
"100ft tall hot woman with massive breasts seen naked crossing major highway"
"Worlds coolest event happens! No pictures here!"
Anyhow to get the rant over with,.........
http://ucdcms.ucdavis.edu/solar2/photos/
That site is an existing site with one of these fascinating reactors, I found the site some time last year (and had a hell of a time finding the damn link in my history too) check it out purely for the cool factor, good stuff.
Finally someone summing it up succinctly.
The difference in consumer voltage between Europe, Japan and the US is a non-issue - we transport electricity at a much higher voltage, and then transform it down close to the point of use. The same isn't quite true for frequency - it is synced at 50/60Hz in the grid - but there are production facilities in operation that produce it at a different frequency and convert it to the grid frequency using a frequency changer. You can read more about in Wikipedia's utility frequency article.
The main problem with interconnecting the continents is the power loss associated with long distance transmission. As far as I understand, this makes interconnection impractical at the moment - local storage (as in the reservoirs described above) being more economical. Superconductors may some day change this.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
Now I feel bad for making a fart noise...
In case you're curious that's called "scoffing."
The author admits that the plant in question was canceled as part of the political fallout from the Three Mile Island incident. The author even admits that there was no danger to the surrounding area from TMI, but concentrates on a 'there COULD have been' scenario. He seems to think that hydrogen is a radioactive element. He concentrates on that as the danger. Yes, there was steam, and maybe a little hydrogen in the containment building. The hydrogen recombined with the oxygen in the containment as it was designed to. No venting took place.The steam cooled and turned back into water. Nobody was hurt.
I started college in Physics, changed majors when I looked at the job market for folks with a bachelors degree. Spent one semester as a Nuclear Engineering major. Shifted out of that when we analyzed the cost of a nuclear power plant. First semester. No large system will ever be economical when the construction cost spends more on lawyers than on materials. That is the real problem with nuclear power in America. We may have to do what the French did. Get rid of the lawyers, and suddenly it's economical. There are still problems, always are. With everything. There is a reason why the environmental lobby lost it's love for hydro and wind after a few plants had been built. They started counting the species threatened by the installations.
For the argument that we can use the Southwest for these plants, I don't think you realize what these numbers mean. 15% of the US means roofing ALL of Arizona and half of Southern California. I wonder what the environmental impact of that would be? How many species are you willing to exterminate to realize your dream? By the way, that would also entail leveling several mountain ranges. It might look good on a map, but in practice, it'd never work. Nuclear on the other hand does work. There is just this meem that it is 'dangerous'. Dreams of bombs and 'big corporations' fill the mind. No facts, just stories.
Still, everything can be messed up. American nuclear plants were designed as plutonium generators from the beginning, That's where the US government got the plutonium for all those bombs. Russia did the same thing. A plant CAN be designed to burn it's own plutonium, but the two that were built in the US were both closed down by the feds. So the industry you are looking at was designed (50 years ago) to produce waste for other federal programs to use as feestock.
You should learn more about the subject. It'll be a real eye opener.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
Actually, it should be quite obvious that the number of pirates is inversely proportional to the severity of global warming. Thus a reduction in global warming would lead to a resurgence in pirate populations. But maybe the unintuitive X-axis on this graph threw you for a loop.
Of course, I'm talking about the "Arr, matey!" kind of pirates here. The other kind are indeed coming out of the goddamn walls.
3% of Morocco comes to 13,389 sq km, equivalent to a square 115.7 km on a side. What's the construction cost again?
And that scheme would make the EU completely dependent on Morocco for its energy, I'd think the recent experience with Russia would have taught people the folly of over-dependence.
In the early seventies a sodium cooled breeder reactor in Detroit (Enrico Fermi Nuclear Power Plant) melted down when the flow of sodium was blocked by a piece of zirconium which broke loose inside the reactor.
It was sheer luck that prevented Detroit (and a large portion of the central United States) from being irradiated by exploding radioactive sodium.
The story of this and other 'civilian' atomic accidents of the 50s and 60s is documented in the book "We Almost Lost Detroit".
I read this book as a teenager and it turned me away from science as a means of changing society for the better. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Ask Me About... The 80's!
Still offtopic, but in this case the really, really bad grammer was corrected. Not that I care, I just thought it was funny and I was waiting on a build so I had time to kill and luckily some karma to burn.
I just don't see why people are so quick to mod others down. There were only 2 other posts, both a step below goatsex (they didn't even have a link), when I made mine and yet some one decided to use their mod points to be the 'topic police'. At least nobody from the 'thought police' felt the urge to 'fix that' for me.
Perhaps the oddest thing about the article is the reference to a percentage of Morocco's land-mass for use as a solar concentrator. Granted, it's geographic location and weather probably make it ideal for solar-thermal power production. Still, we wouldn't need quite that level of efficiency if the plant were placed closer to where the demand for power is at it's highest.
Just taking a look at pictures of Solar Two (now C.A.C.T.U.S.) one can easily see this kind of tech being built *over* existing structures. Anyone who has cruised google maps has noticed how completely disused rooftops are. Plus-sized Shopping malls, and their adjacent parking lots come to mind:
Solar Two (thanks to John Sokol above for URL)
Potomac Mills Mall (VA) Zoom out for the surrounding satellite shopping malls.
King of Prussia Mall (PA) According to Wikipedia, this is the 14th largest mall in the world.
'enlightening' me...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Assuming better technology (as in your point 7), one should also allow for better photovoltaic and related technologies in the comparison.
;-)
1) Aside from the new solar plant in TFA, there is a company named Nanosolar that claims to have a new, very cost-efficient technology for producing photovoltaic cells. The cost per kWh is supposed to be lower than when producing from coal. http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/12/23/2919/8613.
While that news still lacks independent confirmation, it is less "science fiction" than assuming we can mine the rest of the solar system.
2) Batteries have greatly improved over the last years. In some places, large-capacity batteries are already used to buffer the grid: http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/19584/. Assume a further improvement of those technologies and you have a way to bridge phases of low production
3) According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_grid#Bulk_power_transmission), long range power transmission is already feasible at reasonable cost.
C - the footgun of programming languages
At the distances involved here, the preferred method would be High-voltage direct current (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current).
That implies rectifying at the source and inverting at the end anyway, and the output may have a different frequency from the input.
C - the footgun of programming languages
I for one welcome our new steam-based economy
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
These cheaper solar panels will almost certainly drive the need for energy storage. Correct me if I am wrong - Currently that niche is primarily filled by hydro-electric dams where the water is pumped back up during off peak hours.
Can anyone speak to making underground salt reservoirs for this purpose? They could be directly heated with solar collection on top per the article. The salt could also be efficiently heated with electricity from remote low cost solar fields.
Thanks for your reply. I really found it amusing. You illustrate so well the emotional verses rational response pattern that seems to govern politcs these days.
You don't like the hulk of a never used planned reactor that was half finished, then abandoned for political reasons in your area. I live in the area the origional article (and you, I think) wanted to roof over and thus destroy as a solution. My main problem with this is it just won't work.
I think I pointed out in the first response that existing nuclear options have problems because of political decisions made 50 years ago. No, I do not believe that Nuclear the current federal way is the right way to go. But, the French persued an alternative approach 40 years ago that is working for them. They now produce most of their electricity using nuclear power. We could, but don't. Solar power has many drawbacks that are not apparent at first. When I worked for the electric utility in Las Vegas in the late 1970's there was a solar power plant being built. It was never finished. This one is the third I am aware of in the Las Vegas area. The first to generate much power. 60 MW peak, probably 30 or 40 MW maintained, if it really works. Corrosion, mirror fogging, leaks, toxic salts, piping, there are a lot of issues. It's not a panacea. What I was trying to say is that there is no panacea. Power is dangerous. It always was. It always will be. To get the power levels we need, there will always be risks. The only alternative to risks is to let 3/4 of everybody die.
That is not an alternative I like.
They just need to become lower than what is absorbed/transformed by other means. BTW, if the span is 3-5 years, we're doomed already :) all this things will take a much longer span.
Already covered on Slashdot!
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=403744&cid=21885926
> Molten Salt-Based Solar Power Plant
Sounds like something retarded from a late '90s RTS.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The 2 that I like are Gore and Paul, but neither will make it (gore for not running, and paul for No chance in hell unless huckabee blunders).
Out of all the candidates, I think that Gore has the right combination of experience and intelligence. Like Bill Clinton, he will no doubt pay attention to the budget as well as economy as well the future (i.e. Global Warming). I am not going to like some of what he does as it will be simply shifting W's regulations/money (i.e. they both rule by regs). While I am not wild about big gov, if it is going to happen, I want it to benifit my kids and not a presidents cronies.
OTH, Paul WILL shrink the feds. He will pay attention to the budget, as well as the military. He is going to kill NASA (which I would rather not see), but within 2 years, the budget WILL be balanced. Likewise, the spending will flow to the military and taxes cut. IOW, he is pure libertarian. I love it. I am just concerned about paying off the monster deficits.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I laugh when I hear people argue about whether a power generation technology is "renewable." Hell, coal and oil and natural gas are "renewable." We seldom should care whether a fuel source is renewable or not, unless all else is equal, which is NEVER the case. Take nuclear energy. I've actually heard those who subscribe to the theory of carbon induced global warming actually argue that nuclear power shouldn't be used because "it isn't renewable." Well, just exactly how would that make any sense? Nuclear fuel will obviously be available for the next several hundred years (at the minimum) and I don't know of any nuclear plant design that yields a plant that would exist for that length of time. If the fuel source outlasts the plant, then renewability becomes a nonsensical criteria. People are amazing!
Continuous states, ie all states in the US except Alaska and Hawaii. Add all of the other good sites in the US for wind farms and there may be enough for those two states as well, but really long powerlines would be needed. It looks as though Alaska has good wind potential as well though. And Hawaii has it's own potential source of energy, Geothermal. This one plant makes 25% of the electricity on the Big Island.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The 2 that I like are Gore and Paul, but neither will make it (gore for not running, and paul for No chance in hell unless huckabee blunders).
While Paul is the only Republican running I can support at all, I don't know of any Democrats I could support.
OTH, Paul WILL shrink the feds. He will pay attention to the budget, as well as the military. He is going to kill NASA (which I would rather not see), but within 2 years, the budget WILL be balanced. Likewise, the spending will flow to the military and taxes cut.
I support Ron Pual because he would pay attention to the budget and shrink the federal government. As for NASA, it has become too politicized I think. I support space exploration, and oceanography, but I think private interests can do more for aerospace than NASA does. I can see NASA supporting basic research though.
IOW, he is pure libertarian.
I learned about the Libertarian Party because of Ron Paul. Back in 1988 I was deputized to register people to vote. We received a list of all the recognized political parties in the state. Then the LP chose Ron Paul as the LP candidate for president. Not knowing anything about it I checked into it and liked what I saw. Before then I had voted for the Democrat candidates for president, but I switched. I voted for Ron Paul then.
I love it.I am just concerned about paying off the monster deficits.
What really gets me about the deficit is that it was presidents from the so called party of small government that created the biggest deficits and a president from the party of big government that almost eliminated the national deficit. Yes, Reagan and Bush Sr created what was up until then the US's largest deficit, then by the tyme he left office Clinton almost wiped out the deficit, I think there was actually a surplus when he left. Now under another Republican, Bush Jr, the US has a humongous deficit, the largest so far, again.
FalconShould there be a Law?
A Thorium cycle molten salt reactor generates 0.1% of the waste of a once-through light-water uranium reactor. The trick is that it breeds thorium to U233. Add a neutron, and the U233 either splits, or becomes U234. Add a neutron, and the U234 usually becomes U235. Add a neutron, and the U235 either splits, or makes U236. Add a neutron, and the U236 usually becomes Neptunium 237, an unpleasant transuranic with a long half-life, but by then it's less than 1% of the starting fuel mass, and it can be finessed. In a molten salt thorium breeder, one can just leave the Neptunium impurity in the salt, and split it and its long-lived transuranic daughters with more neutrons. The fission waste products (things caused by splitting) all have short half-lives, most less than 30 years. So, after 300 years, the fission wastes are less radioactive than most uranium ores. In a molten salt reactor, one can remove the fission waste products from the fuel salt (one scheme is vapor distillation from an electrically-heated graphite pan), and then return the purified fuel salts to the reactor. The size of fission wastes are quite small. For a 1 gigawatt Thorium reactor, a year's worth of fission wastes is less than 800kg; That is, it will fit under a dinner table, and can be completely isolated from the biome. (mix it with Pyrex, put it in a copper cylinder and put the cylinder in a borehole in granite. The copper will last far more than 300 years. After that it's just strange metal ores far underground, and we already live with those. Compare that to coal, in which a 1gW plant emits millions of kg of non-decaying hazardous fossil fuel waste directly into human biomes. Do you know, in China, coal use causes 14% of all deaths? Even in the U.S., coal use causes 1.8% of deaths. Coal kills. Solar and wind are attractive technologies, but necessarily damage huge amounts of wildlands, compared to nuclear plants. Why would we harm the environment when there's a clearly less harmful alternative? Molten salt thorium reactors are even -cheaper- than light water reactors, maybe even cheaper than coal plants, but that's a complicated discussion. There's a lot more information, including U.S. government documents about successful molten salt thorium reactors, at the "Energy From Thorium" web log by Kirk Sorenson, and in the wikipedia.