Lichtblick and Volkswagen To Build 'Swarm' Power Plants

Dr. Hok writes "As more and more renewable energy enters the grid, it gets increasingly difficult to match supply and demand 24/7. The answer of German power company Lichtblick and Volkswagen is a swarm of 100,000 flexible base-load generators. These fridge-sized CHP (Combined Heat and Power) generators that will be installed in people's basements in Hamburg starting early next year will feed electricity into the grid and the waste heat into their home's water/heating. The "ZuhauseKraftwerk" (HomePowerPlant) features a vanilla VW Golf natural-gas engine that generates 20kW electrical and 34 kW heat with an efficiency of 92%. The units are remotely controlled via a mobile network or DSL; they can ramp up in a minute if needed. A water tank ensures that heat is continuously available, while electricity is produced on demand. The swarm will replace two nuclear plants, they say. And your old oil heating needed replacement anyway."

Comments

Uh?

[0123456]

"The swarm will replace two nuclear plants, they say"

So when we're all supposed to be scared to death of EVIL GLOBAL WARMING, the 'green' Germans want to replace two nuclear plants that emit no CO2 with... car engines... running on natural gas which will probably have to be purchased from the Commies?

Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Germany and Spain allow nice allowances for those that produce the power at home. For example, the price paid for residences in grid-tie solar systems is $.60 per KWH in Germany ("Solar is only economic for installation on rooftops because of the feed-in tariffs for solar electricity of 60 cents per kWh". http://www.edn.com/article/CA6432171.html )

Note that Germany is doing this even though solar is much less efficient there. Germany is located at ~ 51' N latitude . For reference, Great Falls, MT is at ~ 47' N Latitude.

If the US tariffed-in rates were set at even $.38 per KWH, solar would be a no-brainer investment for majority of homes in the US and coal and natural gas generation would die a natural death with no power infrastructure upgrade needed.

As a side note, the price of natural gas sets the world price for Ammonium nitrate - a product which uses natural gas as a major catalyst to produce. Therefore the price of Natural Gas has a great impact on the cost of food for most of the world. ( http://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/icm/2003/4-14-2003/natgasn.html ).

That is to say: the electricity we use that is generated by natural gas, increases the price we pay for food-stuffs here and in the rest of the world.

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

And Japan and South Korea subsidize home-installed fuel cells (an 80% subsidy in S. Korea's case). I'd like to see a comparison of costs and benefits (including greenhouse gases) of these fuel-cell units vs. the German approach.

Re:Uh?

[gmthor]

The point is that nuclear plants can't be shut of in a few minutes (coal plants neither) and waters storing plants are not flexible enough. Because of that many windmills and water dams are shut of even thou they could produce green energy. So what it really means is that this technology will allow real green technology to run when ever it can.
Just a statistics i remember (i can not cite it anymore thou) is that about 40% of green energy is wasted because the electric grid couldn't handle it.

Re:Uh?

[nbert]

The quote is a little misleading. They are not planning to shut down 2 power plants when the swarm comes online. They are simply stating that it will generate power equivalent to two average nuclear power plants.

Different story: Technically it might actually replace those plants, because the government decided in 2000 that all nuclear power plants will be shut down until ~2019. But we have elections coming up and it's possible that this decision gets revoked.

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

In case you didn't get the memo, Russians stopped being "Commies" almost twenty years ago and are now a good capitalist dictatorship. Plus, there's a second pipeline project on the way (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabucco_pipeline) that'll provide access to more suppliers.

Also, in contrast to a nuclear plant, this swarm can react almost instantly to changes in supply or demand, thus complementing the fluctuating levels of power generated by wind and solar (try achieveing that with a centralized mega-plant). Also, this move will help to break up the cartel the four large energy providers have held for decades, so yes, it makes perfect sense indeed

Re:Uh?

[polar red]

nuclear plants that emit no CO2

That's just plain WRONG see here : http://www.peakoil.org.au/news/index.php?does_nuclear_energy_produce_no_co2.htm

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a side note, the price of natural gas sets the world price for Ammonium nitrate - a product which uses natural gas as a major catalyst to produce.

A catalyst by definition isn't used up, so you're full of shit.

Re:Uh?

[Dr. Hok]

So when we're all supposed to be scared to death of EVIL GLOBAL WARMING, the 'green' Germans want to replace two nuclear plants that emit no CO2 with... car engines... running on natural gas which will probably have to be purchased from the Commies?

Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

There is one thing that nucular plants can't do, namely ramp up in a minute. But that's is a prerequisite if you want to use wind and solar power when it's produced. AFAIK only water and gas plants can do that. So the CHP swarm is green because it enables the massive use of green energy. Nuclear plants take a few hours to get going, which is just not fast enough. Plus, I live close enough to Chernobyl to know that nuclear power is simply not acceptable. Unless you just love thyroid cancer.

I'll grant you that being dependent on Russia is dangerous. Germany currently buys 32% of their natural gas from Russia (who are not exactly commies any more BTW). The German government plans to replace 10% of the natural gas by biogas in 2030, so the amount of gas we need to buy from them decreases. And biogas is CO2 neutral, i.e. green.

Re:Uh?

[orzetto]

Ammonium nitrate [is] a product which uses natural gas as a major catalyst to produce.

Here come the chemistry Nazis: natural gas is a reactant, not a catalyst, and not to produce ammonium nitrate. It is used to produce hydrogen, which is then combined with nitrogen to get ammonia, with which you actually get the ammonium nitrate when you combine it with nitric acid.

Though you're right that the price of NG has a large influence on that of ammonium nitrate.

Re:Uh?

[FireFury03]

The point is that nuclear plants can't be shut of in a few minutes (coal plants neither) and waters storing plants are not flexible enough. Because of that many windmills and water dams are shut of even thou they could produce green energy. So what it really means is that this technology will allow real green technology to run when ever it can.

Alternatively, instead of having hundreds of thousands of CO2 producing generators with the ability to rapidly ramp up and down production, you could have a few nice green nuclear power plants and ramp up and down the load instead (e.g. by using the excess power to do useful stuff like cracking water).

Re:Uh?

[codeButcher]

This is secondhand info, since it comes from a relative in Germany, but - consider that most German homes are heated by burning natural gas or "heating oil" (diesel fuel that is sold at a much cheaper rate than the fuel used for cars - and marked with a dye so that it can be detected if some clever guy fills up his car with it) in any case, then burning the same stuff and getting some electricity out at the same time does not seem such a bad idea.

I was quite interested when visiting, since where I live we use very little heating and only 2-3 months of the year, but this relative had a huge storage tank for the fuel in his basement, and the apparatus for burning it and heating the water in the heating system that circulates through his house.

Various units are available on the market that consist of an internal combustion engine running on either of the fuels, turning an electricity generator, and with a heat exchanger to capture the heat from the engine's exhaust. You'll also be amazed how quiet those units can be made in operation - in short, not noticeable that there's an engine running.

Re:Uh?

[Nef]

Normally I wouldn't feed the trolls, but OP is RIGHT. Nuclear plants themselves emit NO gases (unless there's a serious problem.)
Your link stacks up all the carbon emissions produced to mine, process, refine, enrich, clad (and the emissions from mining, processing, smelting, casting and welding the cladding), assemble, ship and swap a nuclear plants fuel source.
Fair enough, just let me in on the fossil fuels refill fairy and your secret's safe with me!

Re:Uh?

[bickerdyke]

Alternatively, instead of having hundreds of thousands of CO2 producing generators with the ability to rapidly ramp up and down production, you could have a few nice green nuclear power plants and ramp up and down the load instead (e.g. by using the excess power to do useful stuff like cracking water).

I guess I should buy stocks of every major paint company, just in case if someone really wanted to start building 'green nuclear power plants'. Wouldn't know of any other way to turn them 'green'

Re:Uh?

[FireFury03]

I live close enough to Chernobyl to know that nuclear power is simply not acceptable. Unless you just love thyroid cancer.

Massively flawed reactor designs being run by complete idiots is simply not acceptable. Modern reactors are extremely safe and (in the West) well regulated. If you're going to ban the modern nuclear industry on public safety grounds, you'd better ban the whole chemical industry too since that deals with chemicals that are way more harmful and is far less well regulated. Replacing all the coal fired power plants with nuclear plants would massively cut pollution (coal plants put up a *lot* of particulate pollution into the atmosphere, much of which is radioactive and/or highly toxic, not to mention the environmental concerns of the toxic and radioactive fly ash which has to be disposed of - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_ash_slurry_spill for why this is bad).

Re:Uh?

[CRCulver]

Plus, I live close enough to Chernobyl to know that nuclear power is simply not acceptable. Unless you just love thyroid cancer.

So just because some incompetent bureaucracts intentionally push one power plant beyond its intended use, all nuclear plants everywhere must shut down?

Re:Uh?

[Eunuchswear]

Also, in contrast to a nuclear plant, this swarm can react almost instantly to changes in supply or demand, thus complementing the fluctuating levels of power generated by wind and solar (try achieveing that with a centralized mega-plant).

Talk to the French.

France currently produces 1/10 of the C02 per kWh that Germany does.

Re:Uh?

[The_mad_linguist]

Plus, I live close enough to Chernobyl to know that nuclear power is simply not acceptable. Unless you just love thyroid cancer.
Plus, I live close enough to the Hudson Bay to know that air travel is simply not acceptable. Unless you just love getting crushed to death.

Re:Uh?

[Eunuchswear]

There is one thing that nucular[sic] plants can't do, namely ramp up in a minute.

So, I've got one of these thingies, it's high summer, everyone turns on the aircond - bam! My house heating system turns on. WTF!

As for "Nuclear plants take a few hours to get going", like I said elsewhere - talk to the French. The EDF run some of their plants in load following mode, they have just so damn many of them.

Re:Uh?

[hairyfeet]

Is that why we here in AR have wildcatters coming out our wazoos? In less than 2 years we have had more than a half dozen natural gas wildcatters popping up all over town, and we are just a little speck on the map so they must be all over the place. I figured the price of natural gas wasn't high enough to explain all the rigs popping up everywhere, but if it is as you say and the natural gas is required for food production that makes a lot more sense.

Because everyone here has known for decades there was natural gas all over the place, just nobody bothered because the price of gas was so cheap. hell in the days of family wells out local fire dept was getting called out all the time because somebodies pump kicked on and the natural gas blew the well house sky high. I was wondering why all of a sudden we have natural gas companies building like mad here, and can't hardly move for all the semis carrying gas production equipment. A tie in with food production makes a lot more sense as to why we have suddenly become a boom town. Thanks for the info.

Re:Uh?

[Eunuchswear]

That's just plain WRONG see here : http://www.peakoil.org.au/news/index.php?does_nuclear_energy_produce_no_co2.htm

I just love this quote on that scaremongering site:

If you ignore the vehicles that the workers use to get to work, the reactor does not produce any CO2. But it does use electricity, as well as produce it, and to the extent that electricity is largely produced by fossil fuels, this needs to be counted in the energy balance.

So, since the plant needs electricity to keep the lights on, and so much electricity is generated by fossil fuels, you should count the CO2 emitted by a fossil fuel plant to generate the electricity used to keep the lights on in a nuke plant as if it were emitted by the nuke plant. WTF!

Every single argument(*) on that site is an argument for increasing nuclear power generation so we can use nuke's to replace the non-nuke powered steps.

(* except for the CO2 emitted by the concrete in the plant. And we all know that no other power generation technology uses concrete, so nukes are uniquely bad. Not.)

Re:Uh?

[zblack_eagle]

Seriously, reading that 'article', while they make a decent point, pretty much every human activity as it stands results in CO2 emissions. Extracting and refining the materials to build equipment to harvest renewable sources of energy? CO2 emissions. Transporting and installing equipment? CO2 emissions. From the 'article':

If you ignore the vehicles that the workers use to get to work, the reactor does not produce any CO2

I guess we're also ignoring the fact that the workers breathe and engage in other activities in living that emit CO2.

Nuclear energy couldn't possibly be made less carbon intensive, making solar panels involves toxic chemicals, wind turbines kill rare birds/bats, etc. Some people seriously won't ever be happy unless we rid the world of humanity.

Re:Uh?

[timmarhy]

the term "green" has lost all meaning through over use.

if you mean "less impact on the environment" then nuclear power is almost as good as it get for anything that produces the kind of load needed to run a nation.

it has one by product which is easy to contain. coal emits tons of radiation and toxic gases into the air, geo thermal is limited to certain locations.

solar, wind and wave can't maintain a consistent load 24/7, so i'm curious as to what alternative you propose.

Re:Uh?

[gmthor]

The article didn't say that they want to shut off nuclear plants instead.
This relates to a different debate in germany where there are 3 nuclear plants that need to be shut down next year because of age. And one party (CSU) tries to pressure the other parties to allow the plants to run a few years longer. (last year, one of the plants was shut off for 100 days of thear year because of failures)

Re:Uh?

[Eunuchswear]

Well, it's not green, but the mural on the cooling tower at the Cruas plant near Montélimar took 4,000 litres of paint, so you should be able to make a bit of dosh.

(Most paint production is one of the least "green" activities you could imagine - petrochemical shit all over the place).

Re:Uh?

[gmthor]

Nuclear plants do have an impact on the environment too. What do you do with the toxic waste? The problem here is that you need to store it somewhere safe for thousand of years. This is almost impossible to foretold. And don't reply that you can just use old salt stocks because they have been dry for millions of years already. The best example for this is Asse 2 which is already starting to flood.
Another option are fusion power plant. The research did alot of improvement during the last few years and the radio active waste has got a half-life of only a few years not really worth mentioning.

Re:Uh?

[Vintermann]

Germany is pretty cold compared to most of the US, and it has more of a coastal climate (warmer winters, colder summers) than inland (warmer summers, colder winters). Few people have AC.

Re:Uh?

[Eunuchswear]

I guess we're also ignoring the fact that the workers breathe and engage in other activities in living that emit CO2.

The same argument is made in a stupid car ad - some loonies are living a "frugal" life trying to emit not CO2, and being interviewed - the guru of the loonies claims they've achieved zero CO2 emissions and the interviewer ripostes - "but you're emitting CO2 by breathing". The interviewer, and you, are only right if the food the breather ate was made from fossil fuels.

(Of course most of the food we eat these days is made from fossil fuels(*) - that's why we're all going to die when we run out of 'em, and that's why we're mad to be using them to generate electricity and heat our homes).

((*) Ammonia based fertilizers are made from natural gas).

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you a troll, or are you just gullible? Either way, shame on you.

That link is one of the stupidest things I have read, and I am now a little stupider for having suffered through reading it.

Uranium ore comes from mines carried on trucks -- trucks emit CO2! And truck tires hurt Mother Earth also!!! And so on and so on. And then, just to take a turn for the bizarre, it starts to have pictures of scary military people and vehicles; I think the idea was that since nuclear waste is dangerous, it needs to be guarded, oh no nuclear stuff is scary.

Well, we could also look at solar panel production, and I'll bet it involves a few trucks as well. (Solar panels are made in factories. Factories are staffed by humans! Humans eat food that is carried on trucks -- trucks emit CO2! And truck tires hurt Mother Earth also!!!)

It's stupid to worry about the CO2 emitted by trucks with respect to either solar panels or nuclear power. A solar panel produces no greenhouse gases while it is operating -- and neither does the nuclear power plant.

So, I just did a couple of Google searches. The average power produced by a nuclear power plant is about 12.4 billion kilowatt-hours in a year. The amount of CO2 emitted by a coal power plant is 1.341 pounds of CO2 per kilowatthour. That means that using a nuclear power plant instead of a coal plant saves, on average, 16.6 billion pounds of CO2 per year.

But wait! Coal gets hauled on trucks, too! Then it gets put on trains! And you need billions of pounds of coal to burn to make those billions of pounds of CO2, so that's a lot of trucks and trains! But wait! Burned coal makes ashes, and the ashes need to be hauled off and disposed of! Millions of pounds of ashes! Hauled on trucks!! With tires!!!

I may not be a scientist, but it sure looks to me like a nuclear power plant has a tremendously smaller CO2 footprint than a coal plant. If you are serious about reducing CO2, you had better plan on building lots of nuclear power plants.

Just to be crystal clear: the GP post said nuclear power plants produce no CO2 as a side effect of operating. This is completely correct. The link you cited shows that the total CO2 footprint cannot be said to be zero. This is true, but stupid.

Re:Uh?

[orzetto]

How is that addressing the point of the GP?

France delivers a lot of cheap electricity to its neighbours because, having a mainly nuclear-based power system, they can only provide the base load. This means they have to produce more than what they need and sell the excess, even if the prices are not advantageous and would not justify the sale economically.

Nuclear plants are difficult to control. The reaction's dynamics are nonlinear and unstable, and you have only a 0.7% margin in which they respond with a 10-second lag (and are controllable). Should you get out of that zone, the reaction starts moving with a time constant in the range of milliseconds. Add to the mix that neutron radiation sensors (which are essential in feedback control) are slower at low reaction rates, and you get why nobody likes to run a nuclear power plant at part load. Yes, running a nuclear plant at low power is actually more dangerous than at full power. That's why starting up a plant is such a critical operation.

All this means you cannot have a 100%-nuclear power system unless you can sell your excess power to/buy your peak power from someone (like France does), or are willing to produce peak power at all times and burn any excess. If Germany were to go 100% nuclear, who's left in Europe to buy their power?

Re:Uh?

[trickyb]

So just because some incompetent bureaucracts intentionally push one power plant beyond its intended use, all nuclear plants everywhere must shut down?

Well, over the lifetime of a power plant (40+ years) it's a certainty that there will be at least one deep economic recession - during which time there will be extreme cost cutting, attempts to push the plant's output, and savage headcount culls. A perfect environment for breeding 'incompetent bureaucrats'.
A reminder from history - Chernobyl happened when the Soviet Union's economy was dying.

Re:Uh?

[bickerdyke]

the term "green" has lost all meaning through over use.

solar, wind and wave can't maintain a consistent load 24/7, so i'm curious as to what alternative you propose.

Simple. Dont call anything that produces CO2 or other toxic waste (liquid, solid or gaseous) green

Then take that "green cant provide sonstant load 24/7" strawman-argument and put it where the sun never shines. Ignoring that almost free energie sources, just because they won't satisfy 100% of your needs is plain stupid. Grab as much as you can get from that free energy pool and then throw in less-green power until you get 100% 24/7.

Diversity is the way to success here.

Re:Uh?

[smoker2]

So you don't use hot water at all in the summer then ? Explains a lot.

Pro-tip - central heating uses radiators which can be turned off !

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

there is one important tidbit of information missing: they run on natural gas now - but they can run on biogas too (as in cowfarts). the engine is not an ordinary golf engine but rather *based* on one. it's ment to run on a wide variety of gaseous fuels. i wouldn't be surprised if it can run on pure hydrogen too.

the idea behind it is to use allready existant infrastructure to introduce the technology and then phase in other fuels when they are avaiable or the market is big enough to *make* them avaible.

Re:Uh?

[polar red]

Nuclear plants themselves emit NO gases

so you're saying that we only need to compare costs and wastes of the completed power plant ?
If I use that same reasonning for wind turbines and solar panels, I can conclude that those deliver completely FREE energy ...

Re:Uh?

[polar red]

Every single argument(*) on that site is an argument for increasing nuclear power generation so we can use nuke's to replace the non-nuke powered steps.

Yes, let's magically produce uranium,plutonium,concrete,steel,copper out of thin air then, shall we ? and let the waste products used also vanish into thin air ...

Re:Uh?

[smoker2]

You must also take into account the massive mechanisation of farming since WW2. We simply do not have enough trained people to farm manually anymore. Can you imagine farming massive corn fields using only horses for ploughing and harvesting ? A lot of farmland can only be made useful by machines due to heavy soils and/or poor drainage.

As for your first point - he IS emitting CO2. Whether it is a net addition to the atmosphere is not mentioned, so you cannot deny the fact.

Re:Uh?

[Eunuchswear]

How is that addressing the point of the GP?

Follow the link. The (G)GP said:

Also, in contrast to a nuclear plant, this swarm can react almost instantly to changes in supply or demand, thus complementing the fluctuating levels of power generated by wind and solar (try achieveing that with a centralized mega-plant).

but he's wrong. EDF does actually run some it's nuke plants in load following mode - it's not as efficient, but when you have a lot of plants why the hell not.

If Germany were to go 100% nuclear, who's left in Europe to buy their power?

All the other idiots who got rid of their nukes and now do nice green things like burn lignite to make power (yes Denmark I'm looking at you).

Re:Uh?

[wvmarle]

This kind of power is really not a replacement for nuclear. The thing about nuclear is that it is great for baseline power: a nuclear plant is very hard to start or stop, or even to reduce output. Coal or gas fired plants can be started and stopped relatively fast and easily.

These generators can also start up and shut down fast, and way faster than a gas/coal plant. They are great for substituting wind and solar. When there is a cloud in the way, solar production drops suddenly and quickly, then these guys can kick in. Same issue with wind which can come and go in a matter of minutes. So it is no surprise they start in northern Germany where there is really a lot of wind power online. So that is where you need this kind of solutions to handle the sudden changes in output.

Re:Uh?

[iamhassi]

" They are simply stating that it will generate power equivalent to two average nuclear power plants."

That's good, so if I'm helping them pay for two nuclear power plants, I'm getting paid for the use of my basement, or at least getting it for free, right?

FTFA: "Households would pay around $7,250 to have the generators set up along with an appropriate heating system."

W...T....F.... so, I save them the billions it costs to build a nuclear power plant, and they want me to pay them to save them money? How stupid does that sound "Hi, I want you to save me money, and I want you to pay me for the privilege to save me money". That's like your boss laying you off and asking you to pay him to do it.

Someone explain how this works, why would anyone sign-up for this?

Re:Uh?

[polar red]

The link you cited shows that the total CO2 footprint cannot be said to be zero.

indeed. but solar panels, and especially windturbines have a MUCH MUCH better CO2-footprint than nukes. I NEVER EVER EVER EVER ever ever would suggest coal power, nukes are 10 times better than those, but solar and wind is even 10 times better than THOSE.

Re:Uh?

[Eunuchswear]

So you don't use hot water at all in the summer then ? Explains a lot.

I don't use much of it for heating the house. I have a children so insane amounts of it get used in the shower every morning while they try to wake up before school.

Pro-tip - central heating uses radiators which can be turned off !

So what happens when your hot water tank hits 100 and all your radiators are turned off?

This system cannot be used for load following - you can't pump unplanned amounts of heat into peoples houses, they have to decide how much heat they want, so they decide how much electricity goes into the grid - lots on cold days in winter, not so much in summer.

(P.S. I don't turn my radiators off because I have an intelligent central heating system that doesn't heat the water if it notices that the house is already warm).

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

The point isn't about the time to shut them (off), its about the time to bring them *online* - I suspect these will only be on briefly to cover demand spikes - basically, they are to avoid a blackout. Not much different than people in the US midwest having backup generators for when ice storms knock down power lines. And heck, if thr power co is paying for it, and you get credit for power generated using gas from your meter that at least coveres the cost of the gas, sounds like a win to me. I'd be tickled pink if the local power utility wanted to put a natgas generator in my (basement/garage/shed/etc) as long as it didn't cost me more in gas than the power/credit.

Re:Uh?

[Eunuchswear]

Yes, let's magically produce uranium,plutonium,concrete,steel,copper out of thin air then, shall we ? and let the waste products used also vanish into thin air ...

And no other electricity generation method uses concrete, steel or copper?

Claiming that production of uranium(*), concrete, steel and copper necessarily uses fossil fuels is stupid. At the moment it does because we don't have enough nukes.

(* in fact, as the scaremongering aussies admit uranium enrichment can be (read is already) done using electricity generated from nuclear power, see Tricastin - "The site houses 4 Pressurized water reactors [...] These reactors produce about 25 TWh/year, or 6% of France's electricity, but about 2/3rds of that goes right back into the Eurodif Uranium enrichment factory.)

Re:Uh?

[dkf]

The problem here is that you need to store [nuclear waste] somewhere safe for thousand of years.

No you don't. You can reprocess the fuel and there's been quite a bit of research on how to make the rest less hazardous (IIRC it's typically by exposing it to a high neutron flux; that tends to make it more radioactive so everything cools down more rapidly).

Re:Uh?

[Eunuchswear]

Sorry, forgot about the "deadly" "waste".

and let the waste products used also vanish into thin air ...

Because the waste products are so voluminous they need thousands of trucks a year to transport? Or maybe, for the little there is, one could have a railway line? You know, maybe it could be electrified? Using maybe nuclear power to produce the electricity?

(And those wacky Americans don't even transport the stuff, they just leave it on site).

Re:Uh?

[codeguy007]

There are designs for Nuclear power plants that can be buried and run for 50 years. The waste material is contained until it is decayed and then it can be dug up if necessary.

Re:Uh?

[Dr_Barnowl]

You should buy stocks in the ones that make white paint. Painting roofs white to increase their albedo is a perfectly valid geoengineering technique.

Re:Uh?

[polar red]

apparantly, you won't accept the fact that nuclear power produces any waste. I'll ignore you.

Re:Uh?

[thechanklybore]

Oh please. 1975 called and they want they uneducated bigotry back.

Re:Uh?

[fforw]

Because a new heating system alone wouldn't be significantly cheaper?

Re:Uh?

[M8e]

"Simple. Dont call anything that produces CO2 or other toxic waste (liquid, solid or gaseous) green"

Cogenerators that is fueled with wood byproducts produce both CO2 and solid waste(ash) that contains heavy metals etc.

Or did you mean CO2 from fossil fuels?

Re:Uh?

[polar red]

solar, wind and wave can't maintain a consistent load 24/7

wind CAN: geographic dispersion can completely elliminate that drawback.

Re:Uh?

[Kavafy]

Nuclear power is inherently dangerous, we do not know how to deal with the waste, the nuclear fossil fuel will last only a couple of decades, and huge power plants are as inefficient as it gets because of the long distances electricity is transported. By contrast, distributed generation of electricity as proposed by the article is much more efficient, because it happens very close to the consumer.

There are already passively safe reactor designs available to be built, most of the waste that will ever be produced has already been produced as modern reactors produce far less, and where did you get the idea that there are only a couple of decades of fuel left? More like a hundred years with current technologies and billions of years if breeder reactors are used: http://www.nea.fr/html/general/press/2008/2008-02.html

Re:Uh?

[Eunuchswear]

I put "waste" in scare quotes because, with recycling, what comes out of a reactor isn't waste, it's partially burned fuel. Some of what comes out of the recycling plant is waste.

Still has nothing to do with CO2 emissions though.

Re:Uh?

[bhima]

Don't sweat it. Y'all can always do what we're doing in Austria: Buy power from another, poorer, country which has a Nuclear Power plant on our border. See we don't have nuclear power in our country!

Re:Uh?

[Gassy]

Buy the GAS from Australia. We just sold $41billion dollars worth to China and at the moment are negotiating to sell even more to Japan. We are charging the Chinese 27.9cents AU a litre. The Australian $ is approx 20% lower than the US$. We just can't wait to give away our natural resources because our thinking is short term gratification! Australians pay just over 50 cents a litre at the pump for GAS (petroleum is about $1.30 a litre) $1.22 for Diesel. I was recently in New Zealand and they were charging a ridiculously high charge for GAS I think $1.79 a litre but then again their $ is worth about 20% less than the Australian $. Yes, buy from us while our polititicians sell us out. GOING CHEAP! 10th Sept 09

Re:Uh?

[bickerdyke]

all of the above.

Any energy sources that relies on burning something produces residues I'd sum up as "bad stuff". So do Nucelar plants.

I see them rather as various shades of brown than 'green'

Re:Uh?

[timmarhy]

i think until you learn even a little about how a power grid works, you'll continue to hear, and be frustrated by, the base load arguement against solar,wind and wave.

"Had we invested a fraction of the research funding that we have given to nuclear power industries into renewable energy research, we would probably already have most of our energy from renewalbe sources. "

the fact is we HAVEN'T invested in nuclear at all for about 20 years,beyond keeping existing reactors going. and how do you come to the conslusion we could make solar/wind/wave able to provide a constant load?!?! is any amount of research going to make the sun shine and the wind blow on queue?!

"Nuclear power is inherently dangerous, we do not know how to deal with the waste, the nuclear fossil fuel will last only a couple of decades" - bull-fucking-shit! the nuclear industry has a saftey record 2nd to none for a start. then consider modern reactors have passive saftey masures making a meltdown impossible.

and i've also heard this argument that uranium fuel will run out in 50 years. yes, present STOCKS will run out if we don't dig up anymore, or look for/develope new deposits. i know for a fact (i work in resources) australia has MASSIVE reserves of uranium, which could provide fuel to the world for easily 500 years at present rates. then there are breeder reactors, which can extend the life of fuel rods 50x, at which point you end up with either a low rad material which isn't dangerous or a highly active material which has a 1/2 life of 200 years - easily containable.

but i know you won't listen to reason, you've been spoon fed this nonsense for years. i'll just wait for your lights to go out.

Re:Uh?

[lxs]

And one party (CSU) tries to pressure the other parties to allow the plants to run a few years longer.

Which illustrates nicely why I'm opposed to nuclear plants. Politicians will always try to run equipment beyond the specified safe limits to save money. The Chernobyl reactor was a perfectly safe design when operated within specifications, but people being who they are tend to want to go beyond petty things like safety regulations. Note that Japan has had a major leak nearly every year in recent history, and there have been mostly unsuccessful attempts to cover up all of them.

Re:Uh?

[Rogerborg]

"Free" energy? Tell me, oh wise one, what is the payback time on unsubsidised renewable generation?

Hydro, geothermal and wave, fine. Wind and solar? You still have to keep fossil and nuclear plants running 24/7, or eat the brownouts. Power generation figures for wind and solar are bullshit - show me the figures for reductions in fossil and nuclear generation in areas where wind and solar are "contributing" to the load.

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

The main problem with nuclear plants is the disposal of nuclear waste in a safe way that one is sure that it can't get into the environment for thousands of years.
Here in Germany they stored lots of radioactive waste in a salt mine 'Asse' that was originally only meant as a deposit for research, where they tried to find out how well salt mines are suited for it. Now there are rotten barrels and contaminated water in it after only a few decades and the tax payer probably has to pay hundreds of billions to clean that place up again to avoid ground water contamination. But it was supposed to be safe for thousands of years ...

Re:Uh?

[lxs]

No because all bureaucrats (who are by definition incompetent) will intentionally try to push the power plants under their control beyond their intended use. It saves money.

Re:Uh?

[jonadab]

> If the US tariffed-in rates were set at even $.38 per KWH, solar
> would be a no-brainer investment for majority of homes in the US

Maybe it would be out west, where the sky is usually not overcast. I don't think solar power could ever seriously catch on over here in the midwest, where I grew up (in Northeastern Ohio) thinking of the idea that the sky is blue as a very strange cultural phenomenon, because as everybody knows the sky is actually a dull gray color in the daytime, black at night, and a weird yellow-orange color for a few minutes around sunrise and sunset. When I was in seventh grade we went to western Michigan, and the first day we were there I got out my camera and took pictures of the sky, because it actually *was* blue that day, and I wanted photographic evidence of the fact. I didn't think anyone would understand what I meant or believe me if I just told them about it.

Re:Uh?

[Hubbell]

The waste only lasts for ~2-6 years, 10 tops, with a Fast Breeder Reactor. Oh, and they burn 90% of their waste to begin with.

Re:Uh?

[M8e]

"So what happens when your hot water tank hits 100 and all your radiators are turned off?"
"your" cogenerator shuts down, but in the same time other peolpe with cogenerators takes showers, wash their diches etc, production from solarcell roofs overlap with ac-demand and those slow big powerplats starts to catching up and lower the demand from the cogenerator so the tanks have time to cool until the next sudden change.

Re:Uh?

[nbert]

That's good, so if I'm helping them pay for two nuclear power plants, I'm getting paid for the use of my basement, or at least getting it for free, right?

Like I said they are not actually replacing two nuclear power plants. The company providing the generators doesn't own any nuclear power plants (would be strange since Lichtblick is a "green" electricity provider)
The generator provides warm water to the house and electricity to the grid. Of course the homeowner gets paid for the electricity. I don't know any details, but this deal could be pretty attractive if your replacing you'r heating system anyways.

Re:Uh?

[Hal_Porter]

EVERY DAY IS ANGRY GERMAN DAY, SCHWEINEHUND!

Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

Re:Uh?

[delt0r]

Thats not right. Don't know were you came up with that figure but its wrong. It more like 100 years, some say more like 200-300. However thats pretty short and the waste is very dense. A large room attached to the power station can hold all of that easy, cus once its full, the stuff you put in 100 years ago can be taken out. And yes I am in favor of that kind of long term planing.

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

It has 92% efficiency (when you combine electricity generation and simultaneous hot water generation), and of the fossil-fuel-burning options, natural gas has the lowest CO2 emissions per unit energy.

i.e. yes, it is an improvement, as CO2-generating options go.

I want one.

Re:Uh?

[peragrin]

You should have just thanked Detroit for that. Since your downwind you get all the crap they put up into the air. Since clouds form from dust and detriot puts all sorts of stuff in the air you get their smog.

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporations might not have invested, but the governments are still putting massive amounts of money in this. (Last I looked 5 years ago, Germany put more money in researching nuclear stuff than renewable).

Granted a large part of the money goes to projects perhaps best summarized as "hm, what would actually happen if after all the water evaporated and the nuclear reaction stopped, a very hot very large lump of ver heavy metal thinks it could follow gravity and hit the water under the concrete floors?" and the gigantic amounts of money going to "Where do we put the rubbish? And why is there suddenly so many water in the salt mine we wanted to put it?"

And then there is something going into fusion of course (nice technology to have once mankind reaches to the stars, but no solution for clean energy on earth).

Not to speak of all the problems of nuclear energy:

It's best in very large power plants. You have problems with cooling everywhere (many had to be switched off in Europe the last but one summer, because the rivers were too hot or had not enough water).

It's not usable to react to changes in need. Heck it even has problems the usual change of need in day and nighttime. (In Germany they tried to make everyone buy heating systems for their homes that would use the electricity of the night so they could facilitate more nuclear reactors).

But the biggest question is still: If nuclear energy is such a safe and clean solution, why don't you want to allow Iran to use it?

Re:Uh?

[jonadab]

You're looking at it from a purely ideological standpoint, and you're missing the pragmatic side of the issue.

The fact is, nuclear power plants, today, in practice, in the real world, *can* and *do* deliver the kind of energy required to run the power grid. They can completely replace the burning of fossil fuels if necessary, and the fuel they run on is in fact VERY plentiful, particularly modern reactors that can run on U-238. This is partly because it goes so far. A pound of uranium generates a WHOLE lot more power than a pound of coal or oil. But uranium is fairly abundant anyway. There's more uranium in the earth's crust than there is tin, for instance. Enough to meet the world's power needs for *centuries* (and by then hopefully we'll have more cost-effective solar -- but I'm getting ahead of myself).

It is likely that no amount of research or investment will ever make wind and wave deliver enough power to meet the world's needs at the current power consumption rate. Falling-water power plants are very cost-effective where you have a generous amount of water at significant potential, e.g., at a dam or large waterfall, but there are relatively few such sites. We do use them where they are available, but there's a limit to how many of them we can build. We can't replace all the coal and oil plants with hoover-dam-style plants, because quite simply there just plain aren't that many large rivers.

Solar power can, in the long term, deliver the power we need, but at present it still needs decades of development to get to a point where it will be economically viable. I'm very much in favor of continuing that research, but it's not going to happen overnight. Today, the most cost-effective method we have for harnessing solar power involves using acres and acres of green plants to turn it into carbohydrates, which we can then burn as fuel. If we want to replace fossil-fuel and nuclear power generation with solar, we're going to have to do better than that. Further research and development is required.

Re:Uh?

[KillerBob]

Hydro, geothermal and wave, fine. Wind and solar? You still have to keep fossil and nuclear plants running 24/7, or eat the brownouts. Power generation figures for wind and solar are bullshit - show me the figures for reductions in fossil and nuclear generation in areas where wind and solar are "contributing" to the load.

Actually, I have a friend who's got a cabin up in the hills that's completely off the grid. Septic system, well water, solar power, electric everything (including stove and bbq). The in-house lines have a natural 16V system which powers major appliances and lights, and there's an up-converted 120V power supply for things like TV or computer.

He uses these things called "batteries" to store extra energy that's generated during the day in order to power things at night. Coupled with turning things off at night, his system generates more than enough electricity to keep things going, and can go for about 2 weeks if the weather's overcast before he has to switch to the gasoline generator to charge the batteries.

Now while it's unusual to have 2 weeks' straight overcast weather, it's not unheard of. But you can get past that by building a distributed network that covers a large land area. We may have about 60% cloud cover in our atmosphere, up to 80% on some days, but it's always sunny somewhere, and you can use generation from places where it is sunny to help supplement the needs/generation where it's not.

If we were to get serious about conservation and turning stuff off when we don't need it, then we could switch to solar tomorrow. more practically, as the GP said, we should be using solar as much as we can, and use something that's not clean to make up the deficit.

And before you start talking about how dirty solar panels are, and how much energy is required to produce them, I'll draw your attention to this. There's other ways to use solar energy to generate power. This one uses nothing more dirty than concrete and mirrors, coupled with a large water tank and a turbine. It's so efficient that on a bright day as much as 40% of the mirrors are directed *away* from the focal point, as it produces far more energy than the system can use.

Re:Uh?

[teuluPaul]

Lets see - Nuclear Power - no CO2. I understand that for each tonne of nuclear fuel, 100000 tonnes of rock have to be dug up and refined. That requires some big oil powered machines, and significant amounts of energy. To feed a reactor, you need 100 tonnes of refined fuel. I am not a physicist, and don't know the balance of energy required to mine 10000000 tonnes of rock compared with the energy released from 100 tonnes of refined fuel, but it doesn't look to environmentally friendly to me! Anyone here know the figures?

Re:Uh?

[Dr. Hok]

So what happens when your hot water tank hits 100 and all your radiators are turned off?

This system cannot be used for load following - you can't pump unplanned amounts of heat into peoples houses, they have to decide how much heat they want, so they decide how much electricity goes into the grid - lots on cold days in winter, not so much in summer.

IMHO this is all about short-term load following: take the spikes out of supply/demand mismatch.

I don't have the full specs, but the system can only run like this: As soon as your plant recognizes that its heat tank goes below a certain temperature, it signals the control center that it is ready to generate a certain amount of electrical power anytime soon. The center notes it down, so when the time comes (may right now, maybe in a few hours) it tells the plant to do it, until the temperature reaches an upper limit. So it's your heat demand that determines the amount of power output, while the elcetricity demand determines the exact moment when it runs.

Concerning summer and winter: I looked up the heat consumption in our house (15 persons). We consume about 90 MWh diesel per year, of which are roughly 70 MWH heating and 20 MWh for warm water. The heating is on approx 6 months per year (Oct-Mar), while warm water is distributed evenly. In other words, we need on average [compute, compute...] 20 kW in winter and 2.5 kW in summer. In yet other words, the CHP engine runs 60% of the time in winter and 7% of the time in summer in order to produce the heat.

This means that the swarm generates approx. 10 times as much energy in the winter than in the summer (probably a good match for the higher need of artificial lighting and electrical heating elsewhere), but in both seasons it can even out the spikes in the grid's power curve whenever they occur.

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

It certainly does! Any type of power plant is nothing but a giant water boiler. They produce much more heat than electricity, which is blown into the atmosphere — ever wondered about these giant cooling towers next to a power plant? Having a small generator in your basement that heats your water and produces electricity as a side-effect means a vast increase in efficiency.

Besides... guess where Europe gets their uranium from!

Re:Uh?

[Rogerborg]

So, you're saying that if we all live in log cabins and drink from the same hole in the ground that we're crapping in, then there's no problem with relying on solar?

Heck, why not just live in caves and burn our own dung, like the Goddamn Belgians.

Re:Uh?

[Dr. Hok]

...the CHP engine runs...

Er, it would run; I don't have one (yet).

Re:Uh?

[linuxpyro]

Which illustrates nicely why I'm opposed to nuclear plants. Politicians will always try to run equipment beyond the specified safe limits to save money. The Chernobyl reactor was a perfectly safe design when operated within specifications, but people being who they are tend to want to go beyond petty things like safety regulations. Note that Japan has had a major leak nearly every year in recent history, and there have been mostly unsuccessful attempts to cover up all of them.

So what you're saying is that nuclear plants shouldn't be managed the way I manage my Gentoo install?

Re:Uh?

[bickerdyke]

"Free" energy? Tell me, oh wise one, what is the payback time on unsubsidised renewable generation?

Not free? Oh even wiser one, if you're actually paying someone so that you can enjoy the warmth of the sun, then you're rather not-so-wise. Paybacktime would be much shorter if it hadn't to compete with subsidized energy. (Or rather energy industries that are able to externalize some of their costs.)

Hydro, geothermal and wave, fine. Wind and solar? You still have to keep fossil and nuclear plants running 24/7, or eat the brownouts.

Not if you have a backup system that can be brought up within seconds. Then still might be a fossil system, but it wouldnt have to run 24/7. I think there is a company that wants to start such a backup-system. Read about it on slashdot. I think it was here

Power generation figures for wind and solar are bullshit - show me the figures for reductions in fossil and nuclear generation in areas where wind and solar are "contributing" to the load.

You're completly right why wind and solar rarely manage to contribute to the load. But you also completly missed What this news was about.

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

But the biggest question is still: If nuclear energy is such a safe and clean solution, why don't you want to allow Iran to use it?

But I want Iran to have a lot of nuclear energy. Released all at once over Tehran, Bushehr, Tabas, Chalus, Shiraz and Tabriz. Let's spread nuclear energy over the entire country!

Re:Uh?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

He made an error in wording(said catalyst, should have said feedstock); but his intended point stands. Ammonium nitrate is typically made from ammonia and nitric acid; and ammonia is, these days, typically made from natural gas or petroleum gases.

Re:Uh?

[mcgrew]

Here come the chemistry Nazis

Education is in a bad way when teachers are considered Nazis. Although come to think of it, my public school teachers all seemed like Nazis to me.

But haven't most slashdotters been to college? No nazis there, at least not at the school I attended. And I, for one, am glad to learn a little something once in a while. Thank you for the lesson, professor!

Re:Uh?

[M8e]

I see them as green as you get less heavymetals and other crap in the forests.

Wood fueled powerplants don't produce toxic waste, the waste is already in the envoriment!. It collects it in a consentrated form that could be handeled, treated and disposed in a safe way. So you would get a net loss of "bad stuff" in the envoriment

Re:Uh?

[TheRaven64]

There is no such thing as radioactive waste. If it is sufficiently radioactive to be dangerous, it is sufficiently radioactive to be used in betavoltaic, radiothermal, or pebble bed reactors. Complaining about radioactive waste is like using charcoal mounds as a fuel source and then complaining that you have to store all of that waste charcoal.

Re:Uh?

[Wastl]

Since you are working in resources, your interest in and lobbying for fossil/nuclear fuel and FUD on alternative energy sources seems obvious, doesn't it? ;-)

Have you looked at the DESERTEC concept at all? It answers a lot of the issues you are raising with solar energy. True, it is visionary, but it is also backed by several studies and major institutions.

but i know you won't listen to reason, you've been spoon fed this nonsense for years. i'll just wait for your lights to go out.

Where is the "reason" you are offering? I could argue the same "spoon feeding" for your argumentation ("nuclear power is save"). Maybe we Europeans are more careful with such statements, being closer to Chernobyl. Even though I am thousands of kilometers away, it is still recommended to not eat mushrooms more than a couple of times a year, and I want a better future for my own children.

Regarding research spendings I could quickly find this resource, which has a really amazing chart: http://www.solarpowerrocks.com/solar-trends/a-sick-graph-iraq-war-spending-vs-spending-on-renewable-energy/, showing that US research spendings on solar energy are still only half of those on nuclear energy despite the fact that you claim that there is essentially no research on nuclear energy! ; figures are from National Council for Science and the Environment.

Re:Uh?

[TheRaven64]

If Germany were to go 100% nuclear, who's left in Europe to buy their power?

Well, we would over here in Wales where we have at least one storage system that pumps water up to the top of a mountain using cheap power and generates electricity via a hydroelectric dam when the demand is high. This kind of system smooths out demand spikes because it can be turned on and off very quickly. Given the amount that it rains in Wales, the same system also generates some power for free by impeding the rainfall on its way to the sea.

Re:Uh?

[Rising Ape]

They don't want to operate them beyond safe limits. They're trying to reverse a decision to prematurely shut down the reactors.

The Chernobyl design was *not* perfectly safe in any sense. Any design which is only safe under a fairly narrow set of conditions is not safe, as faults and mistakes can always happen, and a design must take this into account. Typical nuclear plants do, with lots of redundancy and defence in depth so that even severe failures don't lead to a large release.

Re:Uh?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Nuclear plants are difficult to control. The reaction's dynamics are nonlinear and unstable, and you have only a 0.7% margin in which they respond with a 10-second lag (and are controllable).

Oddly enough, nuclear power plants used by the US Navy work just fine when the power demand spikes (or is reduced suddenly) without becoming uncontrollable.

Proper design ftw.

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

hear, hear!

Re:Uh?

[bickerdyke]

Oh, I liked the carbon much more as it was already collected in a substance called "wood".

Re:Uh?

[khallow]

And don't reply that you can just use old salt stocks because they have been dry for millions of years already.

You can just use old salt stocks because they have been dry for millions of years already. Why do people bother to argue when they completely undermine their argument in the first few breaths? Second, according to Wikipedia, the inflow rate of water to Asse 2 is something like 12 cubic meters per day. Sure that would add up to a lot of water in 10,000 years, but even then, it's water entering not leaving. They still don't have a mechanism for how radioactivity would leave the salt dome. I imagine it'd be a lot better if they had started with a pristine salt dome and took some care in keeping human operations from introducing leaks into the dome.

Re:Uh?

[gmthor]

I really think Fast Breeder Reactors are one of the worst reactors.
On thing is that they use and produce plutonium witch will always be used for weapons too.
The other thing is the half-life of the wast witch is alot longer than 2-6 years (and half-life doesn't mean that afterwards all is gone)

Re:Uh?

[The_Wilschon]

Huh. I'm sitting in Columbus right now, looking out my window. Looks pretty blue to me. When I lived in Chicago (also part of the Midwest), the sky was generally blue. During the time I've spent in Indianapolis, Dayton, St. Louis, Tulsa, and on the road between, the sky has generally been blue. I was in Sandusky last Saturday and Sunday, and the sky was blue. Seems to me that you had a weird special case.

Re:Uh?

[EriktheGreen]

You know, it's a red flag to me and many people when someone quotes numbers like this. "you have only a 0.7% margin in which they respond with a 10-second lag".

Other than the fact that there's not enough information here to be meaningful, this is like saying about cars that "You have a 2 second lag between gas pedal control and acceleration, enough to be dangerous, and top speed is only 70 kph".

Apart from the fact there's no way to verify the numbers given, this ignores the fact obvious to even amateur engineers that NOT ALL NUCLEAR PLANTS ARE ENGINEERED THE SAME.

ONE plant might have the numbers given for reaction control. Who knows?

But really what quoting exact numbers that spell doom and gloom and then claiming they apply across all instances of something as complex as power plants says to anyone reading it: "I don't know what I'm talking about, but I memorized these numbers because they agree with my beliefs and I can use them as 'proof' that I'm right."

Meh

Re:Uh?

[hesaigo999ca]

I am sure the families of Chernobyl victims are with you on that one.
The problem is your thinking (as most Americans always do) about yourself, and your country, and not the global picture. Yes American run and owned nuclear plants (without Homer Simpson in them) are run nicely, but other countries have their own "guidelines" for running things, and do not always comply with "American" standards.

So as much as you think its safe to unleash more nuclear reactors, there is a reason why there are so few allowed to have that technology to begin with.

The other problem with your theory that Australia would have this "store" of energy, is how much would it cost the government to dig it up vs. how much profit they would make, ...and could you even force them to sell it to you...
what if they already promised their reserve to another country like China....
you would be sh*t out of luck if that happened...not like you could do the American dance like you did with Iraq, and just go over there and claim the oil yours....

Re:Uh?

[rytier]

Also, for bonus political points, periodically asking neighboring countries to shut down their nuclear power plants or stop building new ones :-)

Re:Uh?

[Firethorn]

What do you do with the toxic waste?

Store it, reprocess it, burn it in a breeder, use alternative methods to get it so it degrades faster, like other posters have mentioned.

Besides, radioactive waste isn't having a real effect on the environment because it's contained, unlike the chemical and radiological pollution coal plants release.

Going after salt flats is missing our point, because I haven't ever heard of a pro-nuclear power slashdotter propose using them for long term storage. The proposals are almost universally reprocess/breeder/netron flux with diversions into burying it in subduction zones.

Another option are fusion power plant. The research did alot of improvement during the last few years and the radio active waste has got a half-life of only a few years not really worth mentioning.

We have functioning fission plants now, the biggest fusion test reactor being built/proposed is going to cost a couple times that of a good sized fission plant and still has absolutely no provisions for actually producing electricity.

Re:Uh?

[MartinSchou]

All the other idiots who got rid of their nukes and now do nice green things like burn lignite to make power (yes Denmark I'm looking at you).

I don't see why you're looking at Denmark. They've never had any commercial nuclear reactors and the only experimental one in Risø was shut down a few years ago.

Now, is it stupid that they are using that much coal power? Yes, that it is, but on the other hand they are also one of the leading nations when it comes to adopting renewable energy sources, like wind power, although the growth of windmill farms pretty much died when the current government came into office.

Re:Uh?

[leavinit]

whats safer than a solar panel? theres your question. Can't make a "dirty" bomb from spent solar waste. No ones planning to build a underground storage facility for the hazardous waste caused by wind turbines. Etc. Nuclear power will never be the safest option. And why depend on more mineral extraction anyways? Nuclear only looks good in the short term.

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

See, gas is cheap as hell right now; so rights to drill for gas are cheaper than hell. It costs so little to get into a gas producing position right now as a wildcatter (~$10k for a 90ft spec well in KS, last I checked) that the eventual rise in gas prices when the economy recovers will make a three-well wildcatter a squillionaire.

Re:Uh?

[KDR_11k]

Fuel cells are energy storages, can those really be combined meaningfully with generators?

Re:Uh?

[KDR_11k]

Er, sorry, I meant to write compared, not combined.

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is intended to migrate onto other/renewable energy sources away from nuclear power (at least, it's one of the goals). CHP has nothing to do with lowering CO2 directly.

You are putting this in a wrong context.

Re:Uh?

[QuantumRiff]

Isn't this the exact reason that using clustered, smaller nuclear reactors is gaining so much favor lately? instead of a single 2GW reactor, you run 8x250MW reactors. You can take one down for maintenance, and lose about 12% of your output, instead of 100%. or you can take a few down when they are not needed, and better control power flow.

Then the small ones can be built modularly, offsite, and transported whole to the site, drastically shortening construction time. Basically, it would make an assembly line for nukes. And do the reprocessing and storage offsite. All nice and modular.

Re:Uh?

[Will.Woodhull]

Yes, actually, it does. Appropriate technology trumps green technology that is not as appropriate every time.

Only one product of these micro-generators is electricity; the other product is home heating. The carbon footprint of the entire process might well be less than that of centralized nuclear power, even with the use of fossil fuel. There is a lot coal and diesel burned in constructing a nuclear power plant, so even disregarding the waste problem, those things still have a massive carbon footprint.

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

The worst problem I see is that Germany is not just stepping back to a carbon-positive technology, but their oil and gas will be coming from a country who will not hesitate to shut off the pipes, even in the middle of winter, to prove a point.

Germany is mortgating their national security on this one.

Re:Uh?

[Katalyst23]

This is most certainly not insightful - having a well is fairly common in rural areas where the nearby town doesn't pipe water in. It is certainly *not* drinking from where you crap - wells are drilled down to a much lower water table than where your septic is.

Now, a more valid argument would be that many places in the world cannot dig wells because they do not have the water table to sustain too many of them. Or perhaps an even better one would be that the majority of people are unwilling to give up what they perceive as needs in order to conserve energy, and so this approach isn't applicable to everyone.

Re:Uh?

[moosesocks]

Here come the chemistry Nazis

That comparison's actually kind of painful, given the context of the article.

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

"queue" and "cue" are different words. They're homophones. Learn the difference.

Re:Uh?

[PitaBred]

We don't allow Iran to use it because Iran has given us no reason to trust that they will use it for energy and not weapons. As soon as Iran starts being as open as the rest of the world in communication and human rights, then we can talk.

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew there was something Detroit should be thanked for!

Re:Uh?

[argStyopa]

...which then suggests that the problem isn't the generation of green energy, it's in the storage and efficient lossless TRANSMISSION of same.

Arguably, the primary research efforts of 'green' activists should be in that direction, not in begging governments to subsidize otherwise inefficient or uneconomic 'sustainable' generation technologies.

Re:Uh?

[hairyfeet]

Well, that would explain why they are setting up the wells, but NOT why they are actually bottling and shipping the stuff off. There is an NG compression and bottling site just down the road from me, and from the looks of things they are running tanks and lines like crazy to bottle and ship the stuff as fast as they can. Plus at noon you can't move down the main drag for all the gas trucks hauling it out to the freeway, so somebody has to be paying good money for this stuff RIGHT NOW, or they wouldn't be bottling and hauling it, just drilling and capping.

I'm not gonna complain though, as while we weren't really nailed hard by the recession, now we are starting to boom, thanks to all the wildcatter cash flowing in. My engineer buddy down the hall has been swamped making scale models of their production facilities, and if I cared to advertise more I would be buried alive, but I already have more work than I can handle now. So they had to have found something profitable to do with all that gas, because they certainly are moving it.

Re:Uh?

[Locke2005]

If you had a hydrogen economy, excess power wouldn't be a problem. As someone else suggested, you could divert all the excess power into cracking H20 into hydrogen and oxygen, store it, and use it instead of fossil fuel to power automobiles and/or to run hydrogen power plants in times of peak demand. That would certainly be a lot better for the environment (at least in terms of C02 production) then these frickin' natural gas generators.

As far as using more natural gas driving up the cost of nitrate in fertilizer, doesn't a huge amount of natural gas just get wasted in the production and refining of oil anyway? The El Segundo refinery always had a huge flame coming out the end of a tower, which I assumed was burning off natural gas and other by-products of oil refining, because wasn't economically profitable to capture it.

Re:Uh?

[avandesande]

--and nitric acid is made from ammonia

Re:Uh?

[MrSteve007]

Washington State now has a production credit of $.15 per kWh for solar/wind (max of $5,000 annually) and if the products are made in-state, it becomes a $.56 kWh production credit. The production credit is guaranteed until 2020 and is funded by taking 1% of utilities net profits.

With installation costs, that works out to be roughly 20% annual return.

Re:Uh?

[dwinks616]

No, fuel cells are in no way energy storage. Perhaps you should read about what they are before randomly talking out of your ass: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell

Re:Uh?

[drinkypoo]

Hydro, geothermal and wave, fine. Wind and solar?

Solar could pay back the energy cost of the production of the panels back in the 1970s. If you are going to try to tell me that we can't build solar plants that will pay back the energy cost of their entire production in less than a decade today, I am going to tell you that you are a liar and/or an idiot.

Wind farms to date have not been all that effective, but we haven't been really applying ourselves to making them work for very long, either. So they're not a fit for all our power generation needs, so what? Installing them where they make sense still... makes sense. I assure you that using wind power to do actual work is a worthwhile endeavor; humans have been moving water by such means for an absurdly long time. You use the right solution for the situation.

Incidentally, if you think hydro, geothermal, or wave power production are greener than wind or solar, you have no clue what you are talking about. Dams are the only way to effectively institute hydroelectric power, although there IS some room in the world for small-scale hydro. Dams are some of the most ecologically devastating things humans have built. I live near The Geysers, where the world's largest geothermal complex is installed. It produces about 1/4 of the projected power output and has so far produced one SuperFund site (leakage from which was causing two-headed cattle to be born nearby) and on-site, there are several concrete pools filled with Arsenic and other heavy toxics. Every so often they fill up a pool, then they cover it over and build the wall higher , and start filling it up again. Wave power so far mostly is being done using hydraulics, using traditional hydraulic fluid which is not a nice thing to use near the ocean which is likely to wipe out your installation.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Seems to me that you had a weird special case.

Yes, it sounds very much like a form of color-blindness.

Or, forgetting to take off a pair of colored glasses.

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[Rei]

There are some serious problems with this home generation concept.

1) When is extra peaking most in demand? In the middle of the day in July, when everyone's AC comes on. How much home heating is generally needed in the middle of the day in July when everyone's AC comes on? Not bloody much. But you're going to have the full heat output of a car engine pumping into your house; there's no way water heating alone will justify that.

2) Instead of spending the capital costs to build a couple really big peakers, they're going be building millions of tiny individual peakers, each with their own pollution controls? I can't imagine that would be even *remotely* cost-competitive. Or as clean.

I just don't buy it.

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[iamhassi]

"Like I said they are not actually replacing two nuclear power plants"

I should hope not, after spending billions on building them they better not turn around and decide they really don't need them. Still they're asking customers to pay $7,000+ each so they don't have to build the power plants eventually.

"I don't know any details, but this deal could be pretty attractive if your replacing you'r heating system anyways."

well let's hope they can find 100,000 homes that are all willing to spend $7,000+ on new heating systems.

Why 100,000? Couldn't they start with what they really think is necessary in the next 2-3 yrs and go from there? Because two nuclear power plants would take many years to build so obviously they didn't just wake up one day and think "gee, we're low on power, we need the equivalent of two nuclear power plants ASAP!"

the article makes it sound like they will put these in customers homes, and the customers will pay for it regardless: "In the coming year the program will install 100,000 of the mini plants...Households would pay around $7,250 to have the generators set up along with an appropriate heating system."

Here's to hoping they give customers a choice.

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heck, why not just live in caves and burn our own dung, like the Goddamn Belgians.

It seems like us Belgians still have some sort of image problem to work out...

Re:Uh?

[Ephemeriis]

I cannot here this boring argument about solar, wind and wave being no alternative repeated again and again. The argument does not get better over time.

The problem with solar and wind is the base load. An industrialized nation needs to have a certain amount of power available almost 24/7. What do you do on a cloudy day? Or when the wind doesn't blow?

Had we invested a fraction of the research funding that we have given to nuclear power industries into renewable energy research, we would probably already have most of our energy from renewalbe sources.

Unlikely. Nuclear power has been unpopular in the US for quite some time now. There's very little R&D spending going into it these days... Most R&D spending over the last few years has been in coal, natural gas, oil, and like kinds of things.

Nuclear power is inherently dangerous

No it isn't. Or, at least, no more inherently dangerous than producing electricity from oil or coal or natural gas or anything else...

we do not know how to deal with the waste

Yes we do. We know how to contain it. We know how to re-use it to generate more power and less waste. We know what kinds of health risks it poses. We know how long it takes to decay. We know how to transport it.

the nuclear fossil fuel will last only a couple of decades

Wrong again. Current stockpiles will only last a couple of decades in the types of reactors we currently have running in the US. But there's hundreds of years worth of fuel out there, waiting to be dug up. And if we were to start running breeder reactors we'd not only extend the life of our current stockpiles by several orders of magnitude, but we'd also have less waste to dispose of.

huge power plants are as inefficient as it gets because of the long distances electricity is transported

That's why we should be using "nuclear batteries". Drop a couple of those into a city and you don't need to transmit power more than a couple dozen miles. Much less transmission loss.

Re:Uh?

[Ephemeriis]

He uses these things called "batteries" to store extra energy that's generated during the day in order to power things at night. Coupled with turning things off at night, his system generates more than enough electricity to keep things going, and can go for about 2 weeks if the weather's overcast before he has to switch to the gasoline generator to charge the batteries.

Fair enough. But you're talking about a single log cabin. If you're going to run an entire industrialized nation off this thing you're going to need a crapton of batteries. You're going to have to factor in the manufacturing cost of the batteries, the power lost charging them, the power lost discharging them... Maybe it's viable, maybe it's not - I don't know. But just saying "batteries, duh!" isn't an answer.

Now while it's unusual to have 2 weeks' straight overcast weather, it's not unheard of. But you can get past that by building a distributed network that covers a large land area. We may have about 60% cloud cover in our atmosphere, up to 80% on some days, but it's always sunny somewhere, and you can use generation from places where it is sunny to help supplement the needs/generation where it's not.

But if you're transmitting power halfway across the nation to make up for cloudy weather, you've got the same transmission losses that you get rid of by going distributed. It's the worst of both worlds - unreliable power and transmission losses. Plus all those batteries thrown in...

Better Idea: Put the solar panels in orbit, well outside the reach of atmospheric affects, and beam the power down to distributed substations.

If we were to get serious about conservation and turning stuff off when we don't need it, then we could switch to solar tomorrow.

Right, like that's going to happen. How long did it take the US to switch over to digital TV? And all that required was either buying a new TV or plugging in a box. You really think convincing everyone in the US to conserve electricity is going to work?

we should be using solar as much as we can, and use something that's not clean to make up the deficit.

Lots of solar would be good. Or wind. Or hydro. Or geothermal. Or nuclear. They'd all be an improvement over the crap that's belched into our atmosphere by coal and oil power generation.

And before you start talking about how dirty solar panels are, and how much energy is required to produce them, I'll draw your attention to this [power-technology.com]. There's other ways to use solar energy to generate power. This one uses nothing more dirty than concrete and mirrors, coupled with a large water tank and a turbine. It's so efficient that on a bright day as much as 40% of the mirrors are directed *away* from the focal point, as it produces far more energy than the system can use.

And at night it produces far less energy than the system needs.

Re:Uh?

[Doctor O]

Someone explain how this works, why would anyone sign-up for this?

Because $ 7.250 already is significantly cheaper than a regular heating system with condensing boiler technology (nothing else makes sense from an efficiency point of view), plus you get money for the electricity you produce. So you save on two fronts. You know, there's a law here in Germany which says that the grid *must* take the electricity I produce, and at a fixed price, which conveniently is higher than the price I pay at the moment.

So, it's pretty much a no-brainer. The only thing that makes me a bit uncomfortable is having a fscking power plant in my basement that is connected to the Internet.

I am actually evaluating this at the moment, but I'm not in Northern Germany where they'll launch the pilot systems. So I'll have to wait - OTOH, my heating system probably will be okay for another two or three years.

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[Ephemeriis]

Nuclear plants do have an impact on the environment too. What do you do with the toxic waste? The problem here is that you need to store it somewhere safe for thousand of years.

Wrong.

You only need to store the waste for a couple hundred years.

If the waste is reactive enough to be a real threat, it is reactive enough to be used as fuel. When it isn't reactive enough to be used as fuel anymore, it isn't reactive enough to be a real threat. Just throw it in a bunker for a couple decades and call it done.

We should be using pebble bed and breeder reactors. Better use of fuel, less production of waste, safer all-around.

Another option are fusion power plant. The research did alot of improvement during the last few years and the radio active waste has got a half-life of only a few years not really worth mentioning.

Fusion power generation is nowhere near becoming a reality.

Re:Uh?

[syphax]

1) These peaks are significant (at least in the U.S.), in terms of the size of the peak, but the duration isn't all that long (assuming that these things are used as the peakiest of the peakers). And I presume they have a mode that sheds the heat outside- this loses the CHP part of the equation, but this should be a small part of the work cycle (these things should run most of the winter and a few 10's of hours in the summer). You could even do trigeneration (where you generate electricity plus cooling), but I suspect the thermodynamics won't work for these units.

2) It's burning natural gas, so it's easy to be clean. The cost-competitive part comes from CHP: traditional electricity generation wastes 2/3 of the input energy as "waste" heat; these don't (as long as they put in 80+% of their hours during heating season).

I have a system in my basement that's 1/2 way to CHP now (it's an integrated engine plus boiler; I just have the boiler part so far). See Freewatt. The pure economics of adding the generator are kind of blah, but it is more energy efficient, and that has value to me.

Re:Uh?

[syphax]

The following paragraph is vague, but it looks like homeowners get a cut of the value of electricity generated.

I know that for my Freewatt system, I paid for the system, but I get credit for the electricity generated under net metering laws (or at least I would if I had the generator part; so far I only installed the boiler and am saving funds for the generator piece). I pay for the gas, too, but I'm using that gas very efficiently, so I make a profit on the electricity.

The economics aren't great, in terms of ROI (the capital costs yield energy savings), but they're not bad, either.

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[Rei]

And I presume they have a mode that sheds the heat outside- this loses the CHP part of the equation

My argument is that, given when peaking is needed, this will be the primary mode of operation. Meaning the heat side -- the only advantage to putting it in homes -- turns from a benefit to a cost.

It's burning natural gas, so it's easy to be clean.

So are standard peakers, but they benefit from much greater efficiencies of scale.

raditional electricity generation wastes 2/3 of the input energy as "waste" heat; these don't (as long as they put in 80+% of their hours during heating season).

Which they won't.

The pure economics of adding the generator are kind of blah

As with my point #2.

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[COMON$]

Ya,Ohio isn't the Midwest, Midwest is usually the Mississippi to the Western part of the range,with the bordering states of the Mississippi being granted leeway. The rest is west, West coast, East, Eastcoast, south, northwest, northeast...etc. The Census bureau is wrong, of course this is all subjective :)

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Yes, running a nuclear plant at low power is actually more dangerous than at full power."

No kidding!!

Re:Uh?

[Wastl]

If there is no such thing as radioactive waste, why are we then building very expensive and very complex ways of storing that waste for the next 10.000s of years?

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[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you can't sell the gas right out of the well, you've gotta move it into a pipeline so it can be sold at Henry Hub; or into a pipeline so that you can draw off gas from the pipeline and store it.

Storage is even cheaper than gas rights right now - nobody stores when prices are high, everybody sells, lots of capacity was available until last month when the winter stockpiling started.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Politicians Cowards in Deutschland decided to phase out nuclear plant by 2030 because they scared the hell out of public to get reelected on anti-nuclear platform.
This stupidity clearly shows how retarded politicians are and that democracy and need to be re-elected every few years works poorly for the long-term decisions

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[gmthor]

Actually, the problem is that the big companies like RWE don't want to invest in modernizing the electrical grid because all investments would benefit competitors like small green energy producers. It's similar to the US where the grid is so bad that it can happen that the shutdown of one power plant can cut of large regions and all that just because investing in a better energy grid gives room for competitors.

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[gmthor]

Nuclear plants do have an impact on the environment too. What do you do with the toxic waste? The problem here is that you need to store it somewhere safe for thousand of years.

Wrong.

You only need to store the waste for a couple hundred years.

If the waste is reactive enough to be a real threat, it is reactive enough to be used as fuel. When it isn't reactive enough to be used as fuel anymore, it isn't reactive enough to be a real threat. Just throw it in a bunker for a couple decades and call it done.

We should be using pebble bed and breeder reactors. Better use of fuel, less production of waste, safer all-around.

The problem with breeders is that you get plutonium from them too witch i really don't like to be produced in any country.
The second thing is that failure of a nuclear power plant can produce a huge impact to the environment. I know that they have en insane number of redundancy build into the reactor but still it is operated by humans and the chance is not 0 that it might explode. I believe that the CANDU reactor is the only nuclear reactor that if anything happens is not able to explode because of it design ( no need to pull out the nuclear roods to stop the reaction) but on the other hand its efficiency is worse and it has got more waste afterwards.

Another option are fusion power plant. The research did alot of improvement during the last few years and the radio active waste has got a half-life of only a few years not really worth mentioning.

Fusion power generation is nowhere near becoming a reality.

You are right, but i have been at a research institute for fusion reactors before and what you realize there is that they have very limited funding mainly because politicians call it a non renewable energy. Which is true but fuel will run out after our sun will be exploded.

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[TheRaven64]

Because a lot of the ways of using it have byproducts or even intended products that can be used to make nuclear weapons, and it's cheaper to bury it in the ground than to reprocess it with sufficient security to make sure that small children and / or terrorists don't become nuclear capable.

Re:Uh?

[Patch86]

"Batteries" (as in the chemical variety) aren't the only way of storing power. While they're the best way of doing it small-scale, they're generally way down the bottom of the charts for national-scale power storage.

Any system where you put power in, to do anything, and then can get power out at a later date is a way of storing power. I won't bore you by reeling off every possible or proposed way of doing this (thats what Wikipedia is for), but one example used regularly right this very moment is water storage. You simply construct a large reservoir or basin near a body of water. You use the surplus energy from your off-peak or high-generation times to power pumps, pumping water into the reservoir. When you reach peak power, or your power source goes down (as renewables do), you let the water flow out of the reservoir powering a turbine. One huge battery, not high-tech in the slightest, relatively cheap to do.

All sorts of others are mooted, from giant mechanical fly-wheels, to superheated rock-salt, to hydrogen production and burning. But like I said, look it up if you're interested.

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

The argument does not get better ....(cut).... because of the long distances electricity is transported

Please update your information about the energy technologies and stop repeating this age old political argument.

By contrast, distributed generation of electricity as proposed by the article is much more efficient, because it happens very close to the consumer.

The efficiency of transport is not the goal of the method. The purpose is to balance the fluctuations of the load because of the volatility of most of the renewable energy sources. Although the ideas of the "Desertec" might provide a constant source of solar energy, the issues are basically the same as the issues with the Russian oil and gas. Energy safety and self-sufficiency are very important aspects of a security policy of a modern country, let alone an entire Union with increasingly connected energy networks in the future. Any kind of "nuclear winter" during a new Little Ice Age should not guarantee deep frozen citizens.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Ever heard of a composting toilet? Or are you completely retarded?

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[Anonymous Coward]

on queue

On cue, idiot. Jesus, don't they make people read written words anymore?

Re:Uh?

[shentino]

That's the trouble.

It's more cost effective in the short run to rape and pillage our fossil fuel reserves right now and reap the rewards, while the costs in shortages and damaged environments is eaten by later generations.

Green energy isn't sustainable right now, simply because we have to compete with people having less scruples than we. In the dog eat dog world of energy economics, there is no such thing as a referee, so Big Oil and the like have nothing to stop them from milking the earth's resources for all they're worth and then laughing all the way to the bank.

I see green energy like complex carbohydrates that digest slowly but give you an immense payoff down the line in terms of better health, while dirty energy is like a big fat greasy burger with cake for buns that gives you a big high right away.

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

... making a meltdown impossible.

I have one Titanic counter-argument to your position.

Ever seen the cartoon of the guy sailing away from the dock in a boat with "Unsinkable III" emblazoned on its stern?

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Alright, i'm looking for some scientists to chime in on this one:

awhile ago i was involve in a project involving some high temp (sodium salt?) fuel cell, and they were then going to wire that to a 'sterling engine', and a heat exchanger to utilize the heat in some sort of combined heating system ...

anyways, that lead to me thinking, why don't we use sterling engines upstream of steam generators? I assume someone looked into it and its not 'worth' it ... but can someone humour me?

Re:Uh?

[Eclipse-now]

The fact is we may not HAVE to make the sun shine 'on queue' because solar thermal is now 'nearly' baseload (with thermal storage). CETO wave is baseload. OTEC ocean thermal technology, baseload. HDR Geothermal power in Australia, baseload. Solar PV? Peak demand 'top up'. Biogas tanks? Top up the solar thermal baseload plants after a FEW days cloud. Solar updraft towers? Baseload even IF it is cloudy. Also, wind doesn't HAVE to be baseload if it is mainly used to 'top up' the grid and charge our new fleet of "Better Place" electric cars (coming to a town near you real soon!). Check out how it will work.

Better Place V2G
So, car has 160km range.
Car drives to work in the morning.
Car plugs in & charges on peak solar output.
Car drives home 40km and plugs in.
Car sells maybe 100km worth of electrons back to the grid during afternoon/evening hours of peak demand when everyone is watching TV, cooking, etc.
Car will not sell below the charge necessary to get to the nearest "Better Place" battery swap, in case an urgent trip is suddenly required. (The Battery Swap not only means you are guaranteed an instant 'range extension' on the rare occasions you need it, but you don't have to keep buying new batteries every 4 years or so. "Better Place" sell you the car, but they own the batteries!)
Car charges later that evening after 12pm when industries and other demand on the grid starts to wean and there is more power available.
Car is fully charged by morning.
50 thousand cars = 1 gigawatt of "grid smoothing" potential. Australia has 15 million cars.
If powerlines come down in a storm, the cars can help power the grid locally for service men to have access to power.

Re:Uh?

[Ephemeriis]

"Batteries" (as in the chemical variety) aren't the only way of storing power. While they're the best way of doing it small-scale, they're generally way down the bottom of the charts for national-scale power storage.

No, they aren't the only way of storing power.

I was thinking more along the lines of a ginormous capacitor or a mechanical flywheel when I wrote my original comment actually... But you'll still lose some of the original power by storing it. And you'll still lose some of the stored power when you discharge it. Nothing is 100% - regardless of how that power is being stored.

And you've still got to build your batteries, no matter what form they take. If you go with one or two ginormous ones then you've got to transmit that power and you've got the same transmission losses that you get rid of by going distributed... If you do lots of little batteries you've got less transmission loss, but now you've got to find room for your solar panels and batteries all over the place.

Again, I'm no expert. Maybe it's all viable, maybe it isn't. But any time this discussion comes up and somebody mentions the fact that you need to even out the irregular performance inherent in something like solar power, somebody else comes along and says batteries, duh! as if that answers the question. It does not. It simply creates more questions.

I still think the better solution, if you're going to do solar, is to put the collector in orbit.

Re:Uh?

[Ephemeriis]

The problem with breeders is that you get plutonium from them too witch i really don't like to be produced in any country.

What's wrong with plutonium?

If it's sufficiently reactive to be a problem, use it as fuel. Once it isn't sufficiently reactive to be used as fuel, just toss it in a bunker for a couple decades.

Is it just because it can be used to make a bomb? You know you can make a bomb from plenty of other materials much easier, right? I mean, yeah, a nuclear bomb is pretty scary... But it's also a little bit impractical.

The second thing is that failure of a nuclear power plant can produce a huge impact to the environment. I know that they have en insane number of redundancy build into the reactor but still it is operated by humans and the chance is not 0 that it might explode. I believe that the CANDU reactor is the only nuclear reactor that if anything happens is not able to explode because of it design ( no need to pull out the nuclear roods to stop the reaction) but on the other hand its efficiency is worse and it has got more waste afterwards.

There are tons of reactor designs that are passively safe - pebble bed reactors, for example. They basically can't explode/meltdown like Chernobyl did. You can walk away from them and they just kind of putter out.

You are right, but i have been at a research institute for fusion reactors before and what you realize there is that they have very limited funding mainly because politicians call it a non renewable energy. Which is true but fuel will run out after our sun will be exploded.

I'm sure fusion would be great, but it still isn't anywhere near being a viable way to generate power. Politics and funding and whatnot aside, we just don't have the technology yet.

Maybe with proper R&D funding we could get there... But it isn't the answer to today's power needs.

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody I've ever met over here has an A/C at his house/appartment.

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

As you might or might not know, Germany stated that they will not build new nuclear engines. So replacing two nuclear power plants, with hundreds of small power plant with an efficiency of 92% ( best conventional power plants get about 40% efficiency) makes totally sense.

that is not a discussion about the usefulness of nuclear power plants, but how to replace them.

Re:Uh?

[Rogerborg]

What's with your pro-Belgian bias? You're either with us, or with the Belgians.... Comrade Katalyst.

Re:Uh?

[TheKidWho]

No... It IS an energy storage device...

Re:Uh?

[LWATCDR]

Actually I have read that in the EU that a lot of home heating is electric vs natural gas in the US. Also Germany is a lot farther north than most of the US so they probably don't have a lot of AC even in summer. I would bet Germany's power use per season is closer to Maine than say Southern California.

Re:Uh?

[EXrider]

WTF would someone mod that troll for!? Anyways, however dumb his claim about the sky color in Ohio may be. He's pretty much right about solar energy in the Midwest for the most part, I live in SE Indiana: have a look for yourself. Wind power doesn't look much better for us either.

Re:Uh?

[LWATCDR]

"I am sure the families of Chernobyl victims are with you on that one."
Yes and I am sure the families of the Titanic still think that cruise ships are unsafe as well.....
"The problem is your thinking (as most Americans always do) about yourself, and your country, and not the global picture. Yes American run and owned nuclear plants (without Homer Simpson in them) are run nicely, but other countries have their own "guidelines" for running things, and do not always comply with "American" standards."

Wow so we Americans are wrong to think that Germany is capable of running a nuclear power plant as well as we can. How closed minded of us to think of other nations as being our equal! Please we are talking about Germany here. I could be wrong but I do think that Germany is democratic enough and educated enough that they could run a nuclear power plant just as safely as we do in the US.

Actually the US and Canada have large reserves of Uranium and Thorium. And the US has not claimed that the oil in Iraq is ours.

So you sprinkle your post with a Chernobyl reference that is nothing but a mindless emotional ploy.
You make an anti US rant about how people in the US shouldn't assume that people in other nations are capable of running a nuclear power plant as the US is.
And sprinkle the end with an "Evil US warmonger" ploy.
Nice and silly, thanks for the amusement.

Re:Uh?

[COMON$]

this map would beg to differ http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/wind_maps.asp, but of course you guys over east think you're midwest so I can see how you would think that wind isnt that great of an option...but for us in NE, SD, ND Michigan (along the lakes), it is fantastic.

Re:Uh?

[EXrider]

this map would beg to differ http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/wind_maps.asp, but of course you guys over east think you're midwest so I can see how you would think that wind isnt that great of an option...but for us in NE, SD, ND Michigan (along the lakes), it is fantastic.

That's the same map I linked to, and both southern halves of Indiana and Ohio are white, aka 0, aka not ideal.

Re:Uh?

[Patch86]

But you'll still lose some of the original power by storing it. And you'll still lose some of the stored power when you discharge it. Nothing is 100% - regardless of how that power is being stored.

And you've still got to build your batteries, no matter what form they take.

Very true. But there are losses all throughout power generation processes- coal power doesn't extract 100% of the energy from burnt coal, but it's still viable.

You just have to absorb these losses into the process. If building an eff-off massive power storage system is integral to having a working wind farm, say, then that's just how it is. The trick is ensuring the wind-power technology is good enough to absorb these extra costs and still be competitive.

Re:Uh?

[RockDoctor]

the 'green' Germans want to replace two nuclear plants that emit no CO2

Running emissions of CO2 from a nuclear power plant are low, but the building and demolition costs (in terms of CO2 emitted making concrete and generating power to make steel, and other sundries) are non-trivial. Not as bad as the emissions from a coal-fires or oil-fired plant, which also has building and demolition costs, but non-trivial costs nonetheless.

with... car engines... running on natural gas

Volkswagen make car engines? Hah, next thing you'll be telling me is that the well-known maker of marine engines, Volvo-Penta are going to start a car and truck division too. Who'd-a-thunk that engineering companies casn make more than one type of engineering product?
Natural gas - true. And so? "Natural gas" does not necessarily have to mean "fossil fuel". Any source of methane would do, including potentially, bio-mass, methane pumped from landfill.

which will probably have to be purchased from the Commies?

So? I thought that you Septics were into the ideas of trade, economic integration, etc. Or were you planning to sell us the natural gas from the US state of Iraq once you've finished your conquest?

Re:Uh?

[orzetto]

You know, it's a red flag to me and many people when someone quotes numbers like this. "you have only a 0.7% margin in which they respond with a 10-second lag".

I actually happen to have a PhD in applied control, and before my defence, as customary in the country I was working, I had to deliver a "trial lecture", i.e. I was given two weeks' time to scramble, research and present the state of the art in (in my case) control of nuclear power plants.

You can verify my claims in "Nuclear Physics—Principles and Applications", by John Lilley, Wiley 2001, ISBN 0-471-97936-8, section 10.5.2; look especially close at equation 10.41 and subsequent commentary. This issue is nothing new and appeared even in the first book about control of nuclear power plants, "Control of Nuclear Reactors and Power Plants", by M. A. Schultz, McGraw Hill 1955.

Apart from the fact there's no way to verify the numbers given, this ignores the fact obvious to even amateur engineers that NOT ALL NUCLEAR PLANTS ARE ENGINEERED THE SAME.

And you are ignoring the fact obvious to more experienced engineers that physics cannot be changed by how you design the reactor. The numbers I gave have nothing to do with engineering and all to do with the neutron-driven fission of U-235.

[W]hat quoting exact numbers that spell doom and gloom and then claiming they apply across all instances of something as complex as power plants says to anyone reading it: "I don't know what I'm talking about, but I memorized these numbers because they agree with my beliefs and I can use them as 'proof' that I'm right."

It feels like I'm hearing a ID proponent claiming that "life is too complex to be understood". FYI not only I do know what I am talking about, I also memorised those numbers because they are actually fundamental to understanding the control issues of a nuclear power plant. I happen to be a scientist and I form my opinions from my data, not the other way around.

Re:Uh?

[Eunuchswear]

As soon as your plant recognizes that its heat tank goes below a certain temperature, it signals the control center that it is ready to generate a certain amount of electrical power anytime soon. The center notes it down, so when the time comes (may right now, maybe in a few hours) it tells the plant to do it

But when everyone in your house is taking their morning shower ready to go to work/school you don't want to have to wait a few hours for the hot water to be ready - you want it now.

Anyway, since you can turn gas into heat at about the same efficiency as this thing turns gas into electricity + heat this is just a scam to offset the price of your (increased) gas consumption by the difference between the price of gas and electricity.

Re:Uh?

[Eunuchswear]

they are also one of the leading nations when it comes to adopting renewable energy sources, like wind power

Denmark is funny. The country is split in two, eastern Denmark and western Denmark, with no grid interconnection. Each part is connected to the grids of neighboring countries.

In 2008 the figures look like this:

Source _ _ _ _ _ East _ _ _ _ _ _ West
Wind _ _ _ _ _ _ 1 786 (11%)_ _ _ 5 192 (17%)
Biofuel_ _ _ _ _ 1 549 (9%) _ _ _ 1 708 (6%)
Fossil _ _ _ _ _ 8 666 (51%) _ _ 15 721 (52%)
Hydro, PV_ _ _ _ _ _ 0 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 27
Imports_ _ _ _ _ 4 949 (29%)_ _ _ 7 769 (26%)
Total:_ _ _ _ _ 16 950 _ _ _ _ _ 30 417

Exports_ _ _ _ _ 2 467_ _ _ _ _ _ 8 797
Loss _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 359_ _ _ _ _ _ _ 518
Consumption _ _ 14 124 _ _ _ _ _ 21 102
Total:_ _ _ _ _ 16 950 _ _ _ _ _ 30 417 (hey, the numbers add up!)

(Sorry about the horrible table, the fault of idiot slashdot coders who don't let me use <table> like god intended. Source: http://www.energinet.dk/en/menu/Climate+and+the+environment/Environmental+key+figures+for+electricity/Environmental+key+figures+for+electricity+generation+2008.htm).

So Eastern Denmark generates 51% of it's electricity from fossil fuel and imports 29% from Germany and Sweden. Western Denmark generates 52% of its electricity from fossil fuels and imports 26% from Germany, Norway and Sweden, The power imported from Germany is largely nuclear and brown coal, The power imported from Sweden is about half hydro and half nuclear, the power from Norway is almost all hydro. (Source: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf99.html

So one of the "leading nations when it comes to adopting renewable energy sources, like wind power" generates more than 50% of its electricity from fossil fuels, and has to import electricity that it's neighbors are generating from nukes or even horrible brown coal (lignite).

Amusingly both East and West Denmark export more power than they generate from wind - they effectively export all the green energy they produce, running Denmark itself mostly on fossil fuels and imported nukes!

Re:Uh?

[Dr. Hok]

But when everyone in your house is taking their morning shower ready to go to work/school you don't want to have to wait a few hours for the hot water to be ready - you want it now.

C'mon, nobody said the system would have to be stupid. The parameters of the swarm leave plenty of room for sensible optimization. E.g. if the temperature falls below an even lower threshold, it will heat even though there is no demand for electricity. This won't even show in the noise of the grid if it happens for a couple thousand of them every now and then.

Anyway, since you can turn gas into heat at about the same efficiency as this thing turns gas into electricity + heat this is just a scam to offset the price of your (increased) gas consumption by the difference between the price of gas and electricity.

Nope. No scam at all. The pricing model is quite attractive: You don't pay for the gas, only for the heat that is fed into your home; the price per kWh is the same as you'd pay for a kWh ( ~= 0.1 m^3) of gas (currently around 9c/kWh). As a bonus you get 0.5 c per kWh electricity, so it's even a bit cheaper than regular gas heating. They even take care of hardware maintenance, because it's their plant.

Re:Uh?

[Eunuchswear]

No the scam is not on you, you get cheaper heating. The scam is on everyone else, who pay more for the electricity than you pay for the gas you use to generate it. This is a way of stealing the reusable energy subsidies while increasing CO2 output.

Re:Uh?

[hesaigo999ca]

Double posting, you could be a little less conspicuous when using different
login names...
I wonder if its something that CmdrTaco would like to hear about.

Re:Uh?

[Dr. Hok]

No the scam is not on you, you get cheaper heating. The scam is on everyone else, who pay more for the electricity than you pay for the gas you use to generate it.

OK, let's go back to start: These things are needed to provide short-term (in the order of minutes) backup for the highly volatile production of PV and wind energy, which currently make up around 7% of the total production and rising. We're talking physics here, not business.

Germany doesn't have many alternatives: Almost all suitable lakes already have dams. Gas plants produce CO2. Nuclear energy is too slow and not wanted (whether you like it or not) and even if it were it couldn't be increased in a few years anyway.

BTW: Nuclear fuel isn't unlimited; the Desertec Consortium speaks of 100 years of proven resouces (and four times more "expected" resources). If we increase the use of nuclear energy fourfold, Uranium is possibly gone or too expensive in 30 years.

So, if you compare a swarm of CHPs with the only viable alternative for short-term backup, namely a gas plant, they have a couple of advantages: they produce less CO2; they generate electricity well within the grid, i.e. they don't need any new high-voltage lines; they don't even need a single additional square meter of land; they help the car industry through the crisis.

This is a way of stealing the reusable energy subsidies while increasing CO2 output.

The subsidy on CHP in Germany is not terribly high: 0.23 c/kWh for small plants below 100MWh/y and 0.05 c/kWh above, which is funded by raising the price of each kWh consumed in Germany. If 1% (guessed) of the electricity comes from CHP country-wide it increases the price per kWh for everyone else by less than 0.0023 c. That's bearable.

Re:Uh?

[LWATCDR]

I only have a single log in. Maybe you shouldn't accuse people without any proof. The far more likely cause is this is so obvious that more than one person posted it.

Re:Uh?

[hesaigo999ca]

Of course you would say that, who wouldn't if they got caught
I really don't care, it just goes to show some people need
to really boost their egos, by making themselves look
more acceptable, even though the only ones really accepting them ...
are themselves.

Re:Uh?

[COMON$]

Ya I just went for the parent map. But I quatified by saying that I dont agree that the definition of Midwest is correct. Most of the states north of texas, south of ND west of the Mississippi and east of the rockies fit pretty well into the wind power is feasible group.

Re:Uh?

[LWATCDR]

Of all the the idiotic posts on Slashdot yours has managed to really tick me off.
Take a look at yourself in the mirror. You don't refute a single thing in my post and then claim I have a second log in!
Your post had not facts and a lot of emotional baiting.
Simple solution. You think I have two accounts then report me to CmdrTaco or shut up. Put up or shut up as they say. Heck I can not even find this mythical post that you claim I have made.
As too caring if people agree with me? I really don't life is too short and I am too old to care about what the kiddies on Slashdot think.

Re:Uh?

[hesaigo999ca]

Your lips move, but I can not hear what your saying....

"The best way to predict the future, is to invent it." Darwin

Re:Uh?

[Nef]

And this is why I don't feed the trolls...

As long as you compare ALL life-cycle costs of EACH type of power plant, I could give a shit less how you stack them up. But coal, oil and natural gas, just don't magically show up at conventional power plants. They arrive there by the grace of OTHER FUCKING CARBON GENERATING PROCESSES, JUST LIKE NUCLEAR FUEL.

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Germany were to go 100% nuclear, who's left in Europe to buy their power?

Around 20 other european countries, including big ones like Italy, Spain, Poland.
Most of EU runs on fossil, which is not much more flexible anyway.

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I NEVER EVER EVER EVER ever ever would suggest coal power, nukes are 10 times better than those, but solar and wind is even 10 times better than THOSE.

The problem is that the USA has energy needs that are currently being satisfied by coal plants (especially in the northeast). Solar and wind cannot replace those coal plants. Only nuclear can generate enough power to actually let you shut down coal plants.

I calculated that a nuclear power plant saves over 16 billion tons of CO2 per year compared to a coal plant of equivalent power generating capacity. So, every year that we don't build nuclear plants (and shut down coal plants) is another year where billions and billions of tons of CO2 go up coal power plant smoke stacks. Which is why I said that if you are serious about CO2 reduction, you had better plan on building lots of nuclear power plants.

I would love to see more solar. For example, I would love to see every house and every building get a solar panel roof. This would not be enough, in itself, to replace all the coal-burning plants; but it would help a lot. (And it would help the most on hot summer days with lots of direct sunlight, when lots of people run air conditioning.) And selling that many solar panels would jump-start the solar panels industry; it would cause massive solar panel production capacity to be built, and would drive solar panel costs down lower, which in turn would make solar power more attractive. But even if we put solar panels on every roof, we would still need nuclear power to be able to shut down all the coal plants.

92% efficiency??

[goombah99]

"generates 20kW electrical and 34 kW heat with an efficiency of 92%. "

since when is heat generation anything but 100% efficient. Now delivery to where you want it perhaps not. ANd it might go up the stack. but citing a 92% efficiency does not tell me much about the electrical generation efficiency.

Re:92% efficiency??

[gedw99]

The idea od generating everything you need at home is great - no doubt about that. Some aspects to considr though: 1. Noise. Its a generator and last time i ran a genset, it was still pretty noisy. 2. Using Natural Gas instead of nuclear or coal. Are we not just substituting another non sustainable fule here ? 3. Reliablility. You electricity and hot water are pretty important ? i applaud the fact that they are using the ecconomoy of scale principle by partnering with an automotive manufacturer so the system can be scaled and affordable.

Re:92% efficiency??

[Anonymous Coward]

its around 30-35% efficient for electricity cuz its basically a car engine.

Re:92% efficiency??

[norpy]

I think the other 60% efficiency is because you arent' just cooling away the hot water in a radiator but storing it in a tank for your radiators/showers/washingup

Re:92% efficiency??

[Anonymous Coward]

They'd burn the gas anyway, to heat their house. If they burn it to generate electricity, 92% of that energy will go into electricity instead of heat (since electrical energy is more valuable than heat energy). However, since 92% efficiency is probably impossible, it's likely bullshit.

Re:92% efficiency??

[Anonymous Coward]

Well,

you could use math...

If 20kW+34kW is 92%, then the total input energy is 58.7kW, therefore the electric efficiency is approximately 34%.

However, natural gas boilers for heating and warm water are very common in Germany, so replacing some (and 100000 is "some") of them with units that can also generate electricity is not such a bad idea.

Cheers,
Sirius

Re:92% efficiency??

[gmthor]

Yes it can be that efficient.
You are right about the electric efficiency which is of cause bad. But what happens to the waste energy? All the rest is heat is stored in a big water tank for your home warm water. Only 8% of the energy escapes that system and will leave your chimney.

Re:92% efficiency??

[Arlet]

However, since 92% efficiency is probably impossible, it's likely bullshit.

For heat generation only, 92% efficiency can be achieved using a secondary heat exchanger which extracts heat from the flue gas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condensing_boiler

Re:92% efficiency??

[dwye]

> But what happens to the waste energy? All the rest is heat is stored in a big water tank for your home warm water.

What about during summer? Or are German summers much cooler than they are in the Mid-Atlantic states of the USA?

How efficient will it be to run the gas generator, using the waste heat on your hot water heater, then crank up the air conditioner when it gets too hot?

Not quite an epic fail, but close.

Re:92% efficiency??

[M8e]

When you don't burn the fuel to 100%, or when you get losses in other ways(Vibration/sound, light, electricity etc).

20kW+34kW=53kW
20kW/57,6Kw=0,347
34kW/57,6Kw=0,59

Electrical generation efficiency=34,7%
Heat generation efficiency=59%

Re:92% efficiency??

[tancque]

I live nextdoor to Germany, in the Netherlands, and here airconditioning in homes is not very common. I assume it's the same in Germany.
It can be hot, of course, but never for very long. "Airco" is considered to be a luxery. And hot water is still needed in the summer.

Just be sure not to install such a system near your carefully stored wines in the cellar.

Re:92% efficiency??

[Halo1]

Very few homes in (North-)Western Europe have air conditioning, and the warm water tank would obviously not be placed in your living room. Average summer temperatures are between 20 and 30 degrees Celcius. And while the system would probably be overall less efficient in summer than in winter, you will still need some warm water anyway to do the dishes, to clean, to take showers, etc. There are also washing machines and dish washers nowadays that can take warm water as "input" rather than cold water that is subsequently heated using electricity.

Re:92% efficiency??

[gmthor]

The system is actually just as efficient in the summer.
What they do is sore all that energy in a water tank and as soon es it is full they obviously won't use your generator until you used some warm water.
It is a grid technology and this only works out if you have got enough households with that generator. And you can calculate quite simply how many generators you need at least and how big the tank size needs to be, so that this can work out.

Re:92% efficiency??

[Plunky]

20kW+34kW=53kW

hmm, surely 20+34=54?

20kW/57,6Kw=0,347
34kW/57,6Kw=0,59

perhaps you should show your workings because I'm not sure where you got the 57.6 from?

Electrical generation efficiency=34,7%
Heat generation efficiency=59%

don't forget to mention that electricity and heat generation are happening concurrently so you need to add those two figures together to get an efficiency figure relating to the actual amount of energy that we are extracting from the fuel..

finally, it would be useful to compare this against figures from other devices that produce either heat or electricity or both.

Re:92% efficiency??

[Vintermann]

"Or are German summers much cooler than they are in the Mid-Atlantic states of the USA?"

Yes.

Re:92% efficiency??

[dkf]

What about during summer? Or are German summers much cooler than they are in the Mid-Atlantic states of the USA?

How efficient will it be to run the gas generator, using the waste heat on your hot water heater, then crank up the air conditioner when it gets too hot?

Summers are much cooler in NW Europe than in the Mid East Coast states. Like 30F cooler on average. Because of that difference of climate, AC is really not common in homes (those that have it probably do so for its dehumidifying properties FWIW) and peak power demand comes in the winter.

Re:92% efficiency??

[M8e]

ops sorry!

20kW+34kW=54kW
54kW/0,92=58,7kW

Electrical efficiency 20kW/58,7kW=0,3407 =34,07%
Heat efficiency 34/58,7kW=0,5792 =57,92%
Total efficiency 54/58,7kW=0,9199 =91,99%

Re:92% efficiency??

[dunkelfalke]

Yep, same here. Even hotels are seldom air conditioned.

Re:92% efficiency??

[Toshito]

There are also washing machines and dish washers nowadays that can take warm water as "input" rather than cold water that is subsequently heated using electricity.

"nowadays"? I don't know where you live but here in Canada the dishwashers have always been connected only to the hot water pipe...

Re:92% efficiency??

[Richard Kirk]

Generating heat and hot water using a small plant is not a new suggestion. These sort of things used to be called CHIPS (Central Heating Integrated Power). The new idea is that they can be started up by a remote request.

The typical CHIPs system was suited to hotels. Hotels use and store a lot of hot water. If they have a generator, they can export the power to the grid, and use the hot water, or store it in large insulated tanks until it is needed. The same approach is not really suited to factories that don't need so much hot water, or homes (which are generally too small to offset the expense of the installation, and don't have the scale to store the hot water).

I have no idea where the 92% efficiency figure comes from, though.

Re:92% efficiency??

[talcite]

Germany isn't some kind of arctic region. Their summer is pretty warm (25C). What happens to the efficiency numbers when you stop using the heat and you don't do your dishes?

Re:92% efficiency??

[daybot]

Very few homes in (North-)Western Europe have air conditioning

There are also washing machines and dish washers nowadays that can take warm water as "input" rather than cold water that is subsequently heated using electricity.

Our UK home has air conditioning, but it is ridiculously expensive to run. Electricity bills are US$8K/year and we use gas for heating. Electricity is just really expensive here, with natural gas being a much cheaper energy source, which is why warm-water-input devices are popular.

Re:92% efficiency??

[RobVB]

Yes, German summers are much cooler than in the Mid-Atlantic states of the USA. Berlin's average July temperature is around 18 degrees Celcius, while the low average temperature for Richmond, Virginia is 68.3 degrees Fahrenheit, which is around 20.2 degrees Celcius. It might also be worth mentioning that the southern tip of Germany is around 47 degrees North, which is roughly the same latitude as Seattle and Quebec. Richmond is about 10 degrees closer to the equator, which (at least in part) explains the temperature difference.

Re:92% efficiency??

[necro81]

Here is one source of loss: you can't emit your exhaust gasses at room temperature. At least, you can't emit them at room temperature and also expect them to be able to, ya know, go up the chimney. Flue gasses have to be hot enough to ensure that they draft up the chimney of their own accord, and that takes some useful, though low-quality, heat away with it. The alternative is to lower your flue gas temperature way down to room temperature, but then use an electric fan to vent the gas away. Either way, it takes energy to remove the waste products from the (local) system.

Re:92% efficiency??

[Anonymous Coward]

Hot water can make some stuff really stick. For example egg. So a god dishwasher should start with an cold water rinse.

Only hotwater also waste energy as you can't controll the temperature and you have to run the whole program with that temperature.

Re:92% efficiency??

[evilviper]

since when is heat generation anything but 100% efficient.

Ever since the first guy died of smoke inhalation and Carbon Monoxide poisoning, and everyone else decided it was a good idea to put-in exhaust vents.

Re:92% efficiency??

[Anonymous Coward]

This all sounds like BS to me. Any heat engine is only going to be about 40% efficient (1-Tc/Th).
You could then combine that with another cycle to eek out another few points. Basically, the gas
engine is throwing heat out with the gas...and it is more than 8%.

Russia and natural gas

[seifried]

Natural gas is easy to deliver (the infrastructure already exists), and you can make extremely small power units (this is a perfect example, personally I was looking at a 5kw unit to power my house but power is reliable enough so why bother). The problem however is that most natural gas in Germany comes from Russia, and every time they are feeling tetchy they have this tendency to turn off the gas (literally). Hope it works out, personally I think the higher up front cost of nuclear is more than offset by the stability it provides (typically you have enough fuel on site for quite some time).

Re:Russia and natural gas

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

personally I think the higher up front cost of nuclear is more than offset by the stability it provides

Not sure about that. Uranium is a finite resource too, much more finite than fossil fuels in fact. If the world suddenly switched massively to nuclear power, there would be about a decade worth of uranium to extract. See this page.

So in short, yes you're right, nuclear is great *for you* (and inhabitants of a few other rich politically stable countries), provided (1) it stays fairly unpopular and (2) other countries don't have access to the technology, so that *you* keep enjoying it for a long time.

Re:Russia and natural gas

[Mr. Roadkill]

Uranium is a finite resource too, much more finite than fossil fuels in fact. If the world suddenly switched massively to nuclear power, there would be about a decade worth of uranium to extract. See this page

Not quite. That's assuming a "once-through" fuel cycle, and ignoring things like the newer generations of breeder reactors that burn waste from other reactors. Depending on a number of factors, estimates range between 80 and five BILLION year.

I quite like Bernard Cohen's take on things, cited in that same article, that effectively suggests that we can keep getting uranium from seawater at least as long as the time we have until the sun burns out. I don't quite know how realistic it is, but it's certainly interesting and worthy of further examination.

Re:Russia and natural gas

[The_mad_linguist]

Those are reserves. Not resources. Above and beyond seawater uranium, there are tons of locations that haven't been prospected yet, chiefly because uranium was so ridiculously easy to locate they stopped looking for it sometime in the '50s or '60s.

And given how little of the price for nuclear power is due to fuel, even a tenfold increase in uranium prices would hardly have a noticeable effect.

Re:Russia and natural gas

[FireFury03]

Uranium is a finite resource too, much more finite than fossil fuels in fact. If the world suddenly switched massively to nuclear power, there would be about a decade worth of uranium to extract. See this page.

*known reserves* of U235 are pretty limited, but we have stacks and stacks of U238. Maybe you missed the bit in the article you pointed at that states: "We thus conclude that all the worldâ(TM)s energy requirements for the remaining 5Ã--10^9 yr of existence of life on Earth could be provided by breeder reactors without the cost of electricity rising by as much as 1% due to fuel costs. This is consistent with the definition of a âoerenewableâ energy source in the sense in which that term is generally used."

Re:Russia and natural gas

[Libertarian001]

With all due respect, nothing on the wikipedia page you cite actually supports the argument that we're going to run out of uranium any time in the near future. Did you just put up a link and assume that no one would read it? "Uranium depletion is the result of extracting and consuming uranium, a finite resource. However, uranium resources may never be fully depleted as the economically-recoverable reserves (including those in seawater) may be effectively inexhaustible." (opening statement) And remember that the sky-is-falling crowd have, for the last 40 years, been claiming that we only have 40 years left of oil. IOW, knock it off with the FUD.

Re:Russia and natural gas

[Kjella]

I quite like Bernard Cohen's take on things, cited in that same article, that effectively suggests that we can keep getting uranium from seawater at least as long as the time we have until the sun burns out.

Sounds a lot like how we can replace fossil fuels with biodiesel. On a small scale yes, to supply the world with energy? Right. I don't know how few parts per million there is in sea water, but good luck on that.

Re:Russia and natural gas

[Anonymous Coward]

>The problem however is that most natural gas in Germany comes from Russia, and every time they are feeling tetchy they have this tendency to turn off the gas (literally).

This Russia-Does-Extort-Germany theme seems to be liked very much by some 'interested parties'. (Hint:Murdoch media, British North Sea oil producers, et al) Anyone remember OPEC in the 80s? Russian natural gas was seen as, and *is* in fact, a way to diversify from dependence on OPEC oil. They turned off gas delivery after Ukraine sipped off gas from the pipeline for years and neither the EU nor US or anyone else wanted to get involved in that dispute.

Re:Russia and natural gas

[dunkelfalke]

and every time they are feeling tetchy they have this tendency to turn off the gas (literally)

Not for paying customers. The problem is that those nonpaying customers tend to steal gas because they need it regardless of whether they can pay for it or not. That's why Gasprom is so hot about the Baltic sea pipeline.

Re:Russia and natural gas

[Anonymous Coward]

well I have a problem with any calculation about profitability of nuclear power as none of those actually includes government spending on security, basic research and disposal of waste is usually also subsidized. Add to it regular lies on side of government whether about security or costs and nobody trusts that anymore. It may be our main energy source in near future but the way things are done I say fuck the incompetence and waste and invest our (also tax) money elsewhere.

Re:Russia and natural gas

[Tweenk]

If the world suddenly switched massively to nuclear power, there would be about a decade worth of uranium to extract

How many times you "peak X" people need to be told that there is a difference between reserves and resources?

RESERVES: what we know we can dig up at *current* prices.
RESOURCES: what we can theoretically dig up at *some* price.

Therefore, reserves are dependent on the current market price of uranium (shock!). Resources are immutable. Now, we have about 50 years of uranium RESERVES (mostly because nobody was actively looking for it - there is plenty from decommissioned nuclear warheads and existing mines, and generally speaking uranium is very cheap, so looking for more doesn't make much sense). We have RESOURCES of uranium for at least thousands of years, but they are extractable only at somewhat higher prices (let's say 1.5x the current price). But even if the price of uranium rose 10x, which is totally unlikely even when we extract it from seawater, the cost of electricity from a nuclear plant wouldn't be affected much: the cost of fuel is a very small component of running a nuclear power plant (about 1-2%)

Re:Russia and natural gas

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, if nuclear really is mankind's energetic salvation, then surely, every nation state on earth wants to be part of that, right?

If you just do a quick calculation on the figures you find in the CIA world factbook, you will find that Iran's per-capita wattage produced from oil and gas alone is about 3400 Watts. At a population of almost 80 million people, Iran would have to operate something like 90 one-Gigawatt nuclear power stations to replace that. How does this idea make you feel?

The one issue with nuclear energy is that the energy densities are so way beyond everything chemistry or biology could ever give us that this seriously clouds our judgment. Numerically, Bernhard Cohen may be right, but in terms of practicability, I seriously doubt it would work with a species that behaves in the way homo sapiens does. Here, we run into some fundamental limits quite early on.

Re:Russia and natural gas

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, cite me one breeder reactor that is actively burning waste... surprise, the answer is zero! I wonder why...

Re:Russia and natural gas

[Anonymous Coward]

Uranium isn't the only nuclear fuel. Thorium has some great advantages for power generation: it's degradation path doesn't go through plutonium or other bomb materials, and it is more plentiful than uranium.

Future for gas engines ?

[moon3]

Fearing the EV revolution behind the door, the motor engineers are finding ways to stay relevant, but the idea of a Volkswagen gasoline engine running in every home is questionable, fossil fuels are not something people want to stay here forever (nor in their homes).

Re:Future for gas engines ?

[dbIII]

Here it is "gas" as in the stuff that is not a liquid and not gasoline. Other than that, good point, however a fixed speed and load lets the thing run better than it would in a vehicle.
It's not an entirely insane idea since peak loads are the problem and a lot of these may replace a base load station that isn't doing much 75% of the week anyway but is still burning some fuel over that time. That base load station it replaces is going to either be running fossil fuels or will be a very old nuclear installation that is going to be shut down soon anyway, so it's almost always going to be natural gas vs coal which is a bigger improvement in CO2 than you would expect. The new expensive base load plants are all going to be run until they have paid for themselves so the inevitable comparisons with upcoming nuclear not even in the prototype stage will be misleading bullshit.

Re:Future for gas engines ?

[moon3]

Good point with the "gas" thing, I agree it might provide the fix for today, but I doubt fossil fuels are politically or environmentally viable in the long term, also consider dependency on eastern "gas" powers, gas resources are something Germany is not very well known for.

Re:Future for gas engines ?

[necro81]

Given the energy density of chemical fuels (whether fossil-derived, renewably sourced from biomass, or synthesized from clean and stationary electricity), the pervasive need for the compact and reliable generation of mechanical and electrical energy, and the fact that electric vehicles are not a panacea for all transportation needs, I do believe that there will be a use for combustion engine makers for a very long time to come.

Re:Future for gas engines ?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's gas as in natural gas, not gasoline. You could replace that with biologically produced methane gas any time.

Re:Future for gas engines ?

[Anonymous Coward]

4 strokes spark-plug based internal combustion engines ("gasoline" engines) can run on many other fuels such as in this case: natural gas.

RTFA!

Swarm of CHP flexible base load generators

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

They sure have a great marketing team at Lichtblick and Volkswagen: so much rah-rah to describe a generator made out of recycled WV engines, that's pure genius.

Re:Swarm of CHP flexible base load generators

[morari]

Those old air-cooled Beetle engines can do anything if you put your mind to it.

Re:Swarm of CHP flexible base load generators

[Atario]

Not "a generator". A system of 100,000 generators, scattered throughout the country, centrally managed via data links. Which is the point.

Re:Swarm of CHP flexible base load generators

[twosat]

Whispergen in New Zealand has been making Stirling engines with a special "wobble yoke" for many years in my city that does something similar. I should think that their much-simpler engines would be more efficient. Their website http://www.whispertech.co.nz/ and a Flash animation showing its operation http://www.whispergen.com/content/library/whispergen.html

Re:Swarm of CHP flexible base load generators

[R2.0]

Not exactly. They are using new engines; it would cost more to re-manufacture old engines up to spec, not to mention reconfiguring them with modern fuel systems, etc. I'm a big fan of re-using VW engines, but some things don't make sense.

Although perhaps I missed the point - if the engines really do come from West Virginia, they'll run fine with duct tape and JB Weld.

Nothing new

[ctrl-alt-canc]

In 1973 FIAT (the italian car company) put on the market this device (sorry guys, but it is in italian). There are still some cogenerators working around there, but from a commercial point of view it was near a failure. It will be interesting to see what happens to WV generator.

Re:Nothing new

[orzetto]

I read they used the engine of a 127 in the early seventies. Those engines were awfully inefficient: I remember that only in the eighties car commercials started bragging "This car satisfies the American efficiency requirements, the strictest in the world!" (they don't say that anymore), so I assume that engine was way less efficient than any US gas guzzler. No surprise it did not pan out. Now, if you try that with a modern VW, the result may be better.

Re:Nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember the TOTEM being promoted around 1980 in North America. It was a very interesting idea then, but FIAT's reputation wasn't exactly encouraging. I've often wondered what happened to the idea and why it wasn't picked up by better organized engineering firms like Honda. Perhaps the concept has been tied down by patents and is just now resurfacing through Lichtblick & Volkswagen?

Re:Nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

Our landlord had invited an expert once and they showed us some presentations on the possible heating system options. Apparently such combidevices make perfectsense but only if two conditions are fulfilled :

• there is somebody that takes off the surplus electrical energy - a problem that is solved in germany most likely by the state forcing giant networks to buy electricity from you.
• demand for heat must be big enough so that unit is also big enough, this according to calculations presented few years back was defnitely not a single family house, nothing (except regulations) is stopping anybody from organizing heating/energy production on small scale in small settlements of course. In some countries (like Poland) you would probably need a license to produce and sell energy if at all possible difficult to obtain

And when it's all gone, then what?

[jack2000]

Natural gas isn't infinite.
For our life spans solar energy cand be considered infinite.
Let's save ourselves the pain and adopt solar energy FASTER.

Re:And when it's all gone, then what?

[bickerdyke]

Thats exactly what they want to do. "Lichtblick" is basicly a energy company selling renewable energy. They simply found out that if you want to sell lots of solar energy, you better should have a backup for ..say.. nighttime. Espescially nights that aren't windy...

Re:And when it's all gone, then what?

[Locke2005]

Ok, smartass... then what are we going to do in 10 billion years when our sun collapses? Damn your short-term thinking!

Nordstream

[piotru]

Oh, isn't that a coincidence that the former german cancellor, Gerhard Schroeder at his new job works with russian Gazprom to pull a very expensive and environmentally risky gaspipe under the Baltic Sea directly from Russia to Germany?
The cost of such gaspipe will be a multiple of one running through Belorussia or Ukraine and Poland, but the geopolitical windfall for Putin is priceless. Shouldn't Volkswagen try to help?
The Tzar won't forget a favour. Legends of "Global warming" will be put aside for a moment I guess for this important undertalikg.

Re:Nordstream

[qc_dk]

Well isn't it in Western Europe's interest? Why should we be dependent on Russia's relationship with Ukraine or Belarus etc. Why should we allow ourselves to be taken hostage and used as bargaining chips in former USSR political fights?

Re:Nordstream

[dunkelfalke]

The pipeline is still cheaper than paying contractual penalties when Ukraine again decides to steal gas from the land pipeline.

Re:Nordstream

[piotru]

Environmental risk is doubtless greater for underwater pipe because of the difficulty of fixing leaks and chances of hitting sunken chemical weapon arsenals from WW2.
Interestingly, Ukraine was transferring gas without problems for decades. The problem with Russia happened of course only by coincidence just at the time Nordstream tried to secure financing from EU...

Re:Nordstream

[dunkelfalke]

As far as I know chemical weapons practically weren't used in the second world war.
And as for Ukraine transferring gas without problems, that was only true as long as Ukraine was part of the USSR. First gas disputes between Russia and Ukraine began in 1992 already.

Re:Nordstream

[piotru]

Paraphrasing: why should we allow ourselvses to be taken hostage and used as bargaining chips in Third Reich and Great Britain fights?

Depends, how you define european interest. For me, this is foremost avoiding energy dependence on single supplying country, especially one known for using economical (Finland), energy (Ukraine) blackmail or straight military force against neighbouring states (Georgia) recently.

Re:Nordstream

[piotru]

Source [Polish]
"At the end of 1970s the beaches of Baltic "

http://www.environet.eu/pub/pubwis/rura/g.htm
"The total number of chemical weapons captured by Allied Forces was never revealed [...] The inventory for the Potsdam conference specifies ca. 70,000 tonnes of active substance in millions of ammunition units" the article says, that the western allies dumped their stocks of chemical weapons in concrete-filled ship hulls at the depth of 500m, near the coast of Norway. Soviets dumped the discarded ammunition without any protection preferrably near Bornholm or Gotland, or if the ship crew deemed necessary - at any place in Baltic.
Corroded ammunition has already poisoned Pucka Bay near Gdansk in 1970s (see the pictures). The fishing is not allowed there to this day.

As to your second argument, the disputes are normal and happen constantly. The last conflict undermining the reliability of Ukraine as transit country had a peculiar timing. That was my point.

Re:Nordstream

[qc_dk]

I am not saying that it would be a good idea to be totally dependent on the russian oligarchy. What i'm saying is that from a european perspective it is a good idea to have an independent supply line that is only controlled by the relationship of the countries involved.

Yes that means that if we become dependent on natural gas we will be at the mercy of Russia, but that's better than being at the mercy of Russia,Ukraine,Belarus etc. Each of them having the means to cut of Europe's gas supply for their own political gains.

Re:Nordstream

[piotru]

Following your argumentation, the pipe should enter the EU in the nearest member country and run by land (price, ecology) from there. Yet it is going to run around the Baltic States and Poland (or Finland and Sweden for an alternative path).

You seem to confuse the european interest with the german interest.

Re:Nordstream

[qc_dk]

Why shouldn't german interest be the most important if they are the ones who are going to buy most of the gas?

I can understand the baltic states, Poland and Finland might be difficult countries to go through. They would probably for historic reasons(and not without cause) be problematic to deal with.

The question is also whether Sweden would be interested in having the pipeline running through their country if they have no use for it themselves.
Or as a car analogy:
You wouldn't let your neighbour put his driveway through your garden, even if he saved money doing so.

I'm sorry but I haven't really understood why you are opposed to the pipeline. Could you explain?

Effectively 100% gas - electricity conversion

[nniillss]

You failed to consider that the target applicants are already using gas for heating purposes anyway. Now the heat production of the engine will be exactly matched to this need (same as before). All extra gas consumption is fully transformed into electricity (which is possible, even for only 40% raw conversion efficency, as long as the electrical output is much below the heat load).

So, overall, the extra gas consumption (compared to conventional heating) is transformed with 100% efficiency into electricity which is a vast improvement over all competing technologies with similar flexibility.

Re:Effectively 100% gas - electricity conversion

[FireFury03]

Now the heat production of the engine will be exactly matched to this need (same as before).

How do you "exactly match" the heat production when heating and power requirements fluctuate all the time? I'm sure that will be "exactly matched" really well in the height of summer when all the offices have their aircon on....

Re:Effectively 100% gas - electricity conversion

[Hurricane78]

There's not much air conditioning going on in Germany in the summer. Maybe for two weeks we use some fans, and in the rest it's not that warm to turn on any aircon or fans. It's also not that cold in winter anymore. A friend of mine basically uses no heating or cooling at all during the whole year, because his apartment is pretty well isolated by being on the first floor of a high-rise.

Re:Effectively 100% gas - electricity conversion

[FireFury03]

There's not much air conditioning going on in Germany in the summer. Maybe for two weeks we use some fans, and in the rest it's not that warm to turn on any aircon or fans.

Germany is slightly further south than the UK (where I live), and airconditioned offices are reasonably common here (which is why I specifically said _offices_, not homes).

It may not be blisteringly hot in the summer, but I seriously question the ability to "exactly match" the heat generated (up to 34KW per generator) with the heating requirements of homes during the summer (probably not far off 0KW - the amount of heating required for peoples' showers during the summer is pretty tiny compared to the amount of heating required for most homes in the winter).

Re:Effectively 100% gas - electricity conversion

[wvmarle]

They are talking about 92% overall efficiency which is not high for modern gas-fired heaters. Some even quote >100% efficiency, which is because they also recover heat by condensing the water that is produced by burning the gas. However the efficiency is likely far better overall when comparing separate power and heat production.

Re:Effectively 100% gas - electricity conversion

[codeguy007]

The reason England and Europe is as warm as it is has to do with the warm ocean currents flowing up from the Caribbean. These currents obviously effect England more than Germany. As such your argument that England which is farther north than Germany and needs AC so Germany must is as well is completely stupid.

Re:Effectively 100% gas - electricity conversion

[M8e]

How do you "exactly match" the heat production when heating and power requirements fluctuate all the time? I'm sure that will be "exactly matched" really well in the height of summer when all the offices have their aircon on....

They would be "exactly matched" by using the tanks as buffers for the heat and other "generators"* would change the total overall load on these plants.

*For example solarcells can match pretty well with ac use and lower the need for electricity from these in the summer.

Don't forget that these handle the sudden changes and other powerplants will still try to match the demand as they always have.

Re:Effectively 100% gas - electricity conversion

[xj]

100% +

You have a source of wast heat if it is a high enough temperature... you can either use it to heat your home directly or can use it to run a heat pump and still have wast heat (at a lower temp) that can be used to heat your home too.

You can use the same waste heat to run the heat pump in the summer for air conditioning.

Re:Effectively 100% gas - electricity conversion

[wvmarle]

You can use the same waste heat to run the heat pump in the summer for air conditioning.

Now how would that work? Airco working directly on waste heat? That would be fantastic as then you can use the heat from the sun to run your airco. I have never heard of a heat pump that can be powered directly by heat and heat alone.

efficient bu stupid

[biancmb]

Germans sometimes perplex and leave you breathless...

8% noise

[Anonymous Coward]

92% efficient at heat generation... Bet the left over 8% goes on generating noise. Can't wait to have one in my basement keeping me awake all night remotely controlled by my mostly broken ASDL connection

ZuhauseKraftwerk?

[Krupuk]

At least they use babelfish! I would translate HomePowerplant with 'HeimKraftwerk'.

Re:ZuhauseKraftwerk?

[Anonymous Coward]

"ZuhauseKraftwerk" isn't exactly regular german language. It's marketing speech, so raping german language was imperative.

Re:ZuhauseKraftwerk?

[TheRaven64]

My German is quite rusty, but I believe the literal translation would be 'at home power plant'. Given that it's a marketing-speak translation, HomePowerPlant is a fairly close approximation. Note that this is a German company; Zuhausekraftwerk is the original German marketing term, not the translation from the English.

Re:ZuhauseKraftwerk?

[Thuktun]

My German's equally rusty. The (idiomatic?) phrase "zu Hause" means approximately the same as "at home" in English. This ended up evolving into "zuhause", both as adverb and noun. I think I learned "Heim" at school, but the usage apparently depends on the dialect.

So now I can...

[Anonymous Coward]

Recharge my electric car from this amazing power source!

Uh?

[texpat]

And how is this insightful? Come ON... this is a troll if I ever saw one. Commies?. Dude, you should read a paper now and again, or watch the news on telly. Whereas I could possibly see a point in saying that they're not cutting down on carbon emissions by replacing nuclear with gas, you fail to understand that the Germans don't like nuclear. They think its a very bad idea and they have some pretty good points arguing so (mainly to do with waste disposal). And yes, they are probably making themselves more dependent on Russian gas supplies, which has its risks, but then again we're all dependent on fuel supplies from potentially risky 'partners' and Russia seems no worse than any of the others.

Why now?

[ShooterNeo]

What I am curious about is why this technology is being deployed on a wide scale now. Cogeneration, where a heat engine's waste heat is used to heat a structure has existed for a long time. There's no reason that natural gas generator/heater couldn't have been installed in your basement in 1970. It would have made your house more efficient then much as it would now. So what has changed over 40 years that make the arguments for/against shift in favor of doing it? The biggest change I can think of is maybe better communications makes it easier for the power company to remotely control the generator. (since it wouldn't do any good to only have a generator in your basement for supplying power to your own house, wouldn't get enough return on investment...that power needs to be sold/credited to other users as well)

Re:Why now?

[What the Frag]

What they are trying to do is very clever. The main target audience are large householders which have old, gas powered heaters. The replacement cost is relatively low.

The problem which the power suppliers see in the future: A rising amount of electricity is generated by wind and solar power. Some of Germany's nuclear power plants are getting old and may not get an approval to run further / or to build a new one in the future.

So, with rising amount of "natural" energy, there must be a solution to compensate if those solar/wind power plants are not generating power. Having lots of those small remote-controlled power plants on the network can easily and quickly compensate this.

Re:Why now?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no reason that natural gas generator/heater couldn't have been installed in your basement in 1970.

Cost? I imagine that small-scale cogen equipment has gotten a lot cheaper over the years. While you probably could have done it in the 1970's, a small, house-scale, natural gas turbine would have been rather expensive - you probably wouldn't have ever made it to the break-even costs given the dirt cheap electricity and dirt cheap natural gas which was available then.

Re:Why now?

[the eric conspiracy]

So what has changed over 40 years that make the arguments for/against shift in favor of doing it?

How about massive improvements in just about every field of technology combined with huge increases in energy consumption and fuel costs? In 1970 the only electrical consumption a typical home on a gas line had was lighting, a TV and maybe a couple of electric motors for appliances.

I live in a house built in 1968. The electrical service was sized for 30 amps. It has since been updated by me to 100 amps. New homes with the same square footage are being built with 200 amp panels.

Re:Why now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Among the answers we have political agendas and lots of profit in the new Nord-Stream AG (German-Russian/GazProm sister company) gas pipeline that is already being laid out straight across the baltic sea down to Germany.

I guess now is a good time to figure out what to do with all that gas...

Bummer on the name

[Anonymous Coward]

"ZuhauseKraftwerk" - I was hoping that it meant the band was coming to my house! :)

Well

[mx_mx_mx]

That really gives new meaning to word 'botnet'
Imagine a 'swarm of power plants' controlled via DSL

Ah, and imagine a Beowulf cluster of... skip it

Re:Well

[xous]

I can just imagine Joe idiot taking down half the grid because he decided it was a good idea to screw with the generator and cause failures. Remote administration gives me the chills.

Imagine...

[superlime]

Imagine a beowulf cluster of those!

MOD PARENT -1 WRONG

[Anonymous Coward]

This is simply not true. You have to reread the article. There is plenty of fuel, enough for millions of years.

Wrong assumption

[Moraelin]

Germans sometimes perplex and leave you breathless...

You seem to assume that this is something "the germans" as a whole have something to do with, or that it's inherently something that wouldn't happen elsewhere.

In reality, it's just capitalism finding a way to exploit a legislation loophole. There are some hefty subsidies for energy put back into the grid, on the assumption that (A) it would be some green energy like solar or wind, and (B) that it wouldn't happen otherwise, because, (C) there's not much you can put in that way.

Germany is way north, and in at least half of it there are plenty of cloudy days. The same gulf stream influence that makes us not have the climate of, say, Canada or Siberia, well, warm air coming from the direction of the ocean, you do the maths. In, say, Düsseldorf probably a vampire could probably get a day job because there aren't many days with direct sunlight ;)

So solar power isn't a very efficient way to generate energy. Wind is a bit better, but still takes a long time to pay for itself otherwise. So someone figured they'd subsidize people who nevertheless buy a turbine or solar pannels, to have _some_ green energy, even if expensive green energy. Debatable, but Idon't think it's downright stupid or perplexing by any reckoning.

It was not particularly designed for people running diesel or gas generators in that basement, because, well, there weren't any significant numbers of those.

So now two companies figured out they can use a loophole to sell more of their own crap.

Whop-de-do. If you think no American company would do the same abusing a loophole, you haven't been paying attention much. There have been even more stupid attempts, all the way to trying to sell a SMG without the trigger (it would start firing automatically when you chambered a round, and only stop when the magazine was empty) because some PHB thought it wouldn't qualify as an automatic weapon that way. Apparently the BATF thought it still did, though.

Re:Wrong assumption

[Lonewolf666]

The plan is not entirely stupid, if it replaces old oil or gas heatings that only created heat. Cogeneration gets more use out of the same amount of fossil fuels.

Of course, that can only be a temporary solution because these fossil fuels will run out some day.

Re:Wrong assumption

[Locke2005]

There are some hefty subsidies for energy put back into the grid If the price that the electric utility buys power at exceeds the price they sell it at, don't they risk customers just installing two meters, buying power with one and selling it back at a profit with the other? Seriously, I find it difficult to believe that they can generate power with a home natural gas generator for less cost than they can buy it from the electric company.

Re:Wrong assumption

[Anonymous Coward]

In, say, Düsseldorf probably a vampire could probably get a day job because there aren't many days with direct sunlight ;)

You mean as a dogcatcher?

"autobahm" is wrong spelling

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct was "autobahn". Greetings from good ol' Europe

Misleading summary on slashdot?

[argent]

Actual text in the article:

An ambitious project was unveiled in Germany on Wednesday to install mini gas-fired power plants in people's basements and produce as much electricity as two nuclear reactors within a year.

A misleading summary on slashdot? That never happens!

What a stupid idea

[WindBourne]

First, this is a Japanese idea and we covered it here already. Second, this is a waste. They are trying to combine heating and power to increase overall efficiency. Cool. Except that Germany does not have much in way of natural gas so imports it. Mostly from Russia who has already shown that they will use it as a weapon. Instead, they should be pushing the use of geo-thermal heat pumps. Or if in town, then do a steam exchange (Germany has high enough density in most of their towns to make it worthwhile). Once they move to a heat pump, their hvac can be used for AC as well and has much higher efficiency. From that point, they can focus on a variety of power generation; Wind, Solar PV/Thermal, Geo-thermal; Nukes; even natural gas backing up solar thermal or geo-thermal (increased efficiency during day to generate more power).

Once they add these expensive units, ppl will NOT want to change until the price of their natural gas goes up. That is the mistake that America has. We typically install Natural Gas/AC which together is about 6-10K. Nobody wants to put out 10K again.

Re:What a stupid idea

[TheRaven64]

First, this is a Japanese idea and we covered it here already

As I recall, the Japanese scheme we covered involved building small pebble-bed reactors into basements, so was deploying small nuclear reactors, rather than fossil fuel reactors. I rather liked the Japanese scheme and I wonder how much nuclear 'waste' could be used in something similar using radiothermal generators instead. Obviously, they wouldn't be able to power everything, but they could reduce the overall load on the grid a lot and not need refuelling for several decades.

Re:What a stupid idea

[WindBourne]

Nah. Check the Honda and IEEE articles. We also had it on /., but I have forgotten when and am not going to google it.

Oh, the approach will allow them to take the nukes and coal offline, but the problem is that it will make EU more dependant on other nations. Germany seems to forget what happened recently with Georgia. Germany was in an uproar over that. Now, they will have to keep VERY quiet and not express moral indignation, or it will cost them winter fuel. Worse, this is the MOST INEFFICIENT way to do this. It has 92% efficiency. OTH, there are 98% heaters, though it requires outside electricity to run the fan or pump. And if they go with geo-thermal, they gain even higher efficiency on BOTH heat and cooling. Of course, they need to quit trying to go to deep wells and just use the shallow trench approach (or do a district type approach). At this time, I am guessing Germans are getting nervous about geo-thermal. They tried deep geo-thermal on a faulty line than acted surprised by the tremors, just recently, they decided to do a shallow well geo-thermal heat pump where they pumped out the water, then injected when the city started sinking, which then swelled the clay. That was bad engineering, but at least they are trying.

Re:What a stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent -1, clueless.

This is not "Germany" doing anything, this is two German companies selling a system. Quite likely selling to people that use natural gas heaters anyway.

Btw, geothermal is difficult in Germany because of seismic and geological/water issues. Steam exchange is already in place for many cities but does not cover every house.

And what's that AC you are talking about? We do not need that, we have a reasonable climate (and build decently insulated houses contrary to the typical American cardboard shelter).

And regarding Russia: They are not the only option for natural gas. Why do you think we are taking a keen interest into the Turkish/Iranian problems (EU entry/...)?

Which is cheaper? Electricity or natural gas?

[erroneus]

I get the feeling that natural gas in my area is pretty darned inexpensive. I wonder what the cost of natural gas would be compared to electricity off the grid? Could I power my home more cheaply? I'm sure the question has been asked, but what is the answer?

Viva GazProm (GZPF)

[oleop]

Looks like Germans didnt have enough scare last winter when Russians flexed their pipes. Now they want to put 100.000 people in a mercy of their old friends. Good timing since natural gaz price is so low (now). 93% efficiency from an old engine? Sounds like a pipe dream. There are plenty of great initiatives in Europe regarding energy efficiency but this one sounds like total crap (or it is one of those hidden Buy German initiatives - no one buying cars anymore, so at least some folks will keep their jobs in engine plants).

Re:Viva GazProm (GZPF)

[Locke2005]

Now they want to put 100.000 people in a mercy of their old friends. What, are the Russians still sore about those 6 million Russians that the Germans killed? That was over 60 years ago... they need to just get over it! What's a few million casualties between friends?

Re:Viva GazProm (GZPF)

[oleop]

It is obvious that Russians are using gaz as a political instrument, so trying to get into any project that increases German dependency on natural gaz is stupid.

Re:Viva GazProm (GZPF)

[Locke2005]

No argument from me there. The point I was trying to make is that the Russians wouldn't have any problem whatsoever screwing over their German neighbors -- in fact, they would probably laugh while they were shutting off the valves. On the other hand, it is a two-edged sword, and Russia needs the foreign currency these natural gas exports provide, so I don't see them turning it off long term, just long enough to jack up the price.

Re:Viva GazProm (GZPF)

[oleop]

You can leave without currency when its -30 but tyr to do it without gaz (if this is the only meanof heating your home:) I guess for this sum (~$8000 per apartment and I guess there are sum government support) which make it 800 million they would better insulate homes and get all this electricity/oil/gaz saved on a first place.

What about the noise?

[PmaxII]

I use water cooling on my PC because air cooling is too noisy. So, installing a power generator in my basement... I'm not sure that's a great idea..

Nuclear power is safe

[Firethorn]

Nuclear power IS safe, at least by any reasonable use of the term. Thing is, if you scale up Nuclear power to the same electricity production as coal, even if you include a Chernobyl every year, it'd still kill fewer people than Coal does. The statistics DON'T point to a Chernobyl level event every year - at this point you're looking more at a greater than 50 year interval between them, and every year of safe operation without another disaster extends that.

Even though I am thousands of kilometers away, it is still recommended to not eat mushrooms more than a couple of times a year, and I want a better future for my own children.

Are you sure that recommendation is based on good science? Or is it like the Vaccine scare here in the USA about Thermisol? That has parents not vaccinating their kids even with thermisol free vaccines.

showing that US research spendings on solar energy are still only half of those on nuclear energy despite the fact that you claim that there is essentially no research on nuclear energy! ; figures are from National Council for Science and the Environment.

Given that Nuclear power provides ~20% of our power, sure, there's R&D with it, but most of that's gone to increasing power production capabilities at existing nuke plants, not for building new ones. I'd also note that wind isn't listed - which might put wind/solar over nuclear in research investments(might be why they don't list it), but still under the R&D investments for COAL.

While on this topic, I'll point out that I'm for a rough power production plan of 35% nuclear, 20% solar, 20% wind, 20% hydro, 5% other.

Given that I've considered installed a combined cycle generator in my basement*, I'm not hostile to Lichtblick's plan. I'd power it with propane though, as that's what I have access to. It can be very efficient as well - an electrical power only plant is lucky to reach 50%, most are closer to 30%. The rest is waste heat. If you're using the combined cycle to also utilize the heat that would otherwise be waste, bonus.

*Normally you don't want the generator in the house, but it is perfectly safe if you take the right steps and properly duct the exhaust to OUTSIDE the building, and in my case I'd be ducting the air in as well.

Re:Nuclear power is safe

[Wastl]

Even though I am thousands of kilometers away, it is still recommended to not eat mushrooms more than a couple of times a year, and I want a better future for my own children.

Are you sure that recommendation is based on good science? Or is it like the Vaccine scare here in the USA about Thermisol? That has parents not vaccinating their kids even with thermisol free vaccines.

There is still a warning of the German Federal Office for Radiation Protection here and here discouraging the consumption of certain very popular types of mushrooms that still have a CS-137 contamination of over 1000 Becquerel per kilogram more than 20 years after the catastrophe and thousands of kilometers away from the site. A single serving of 200g mushrooms will result in a contamination of 0.01 milisievert, equalling a typical long-distance flight. The maximum allowed exposure in Germany is 1 mS alltogether, including X-ray treatment and natural sources.

Re:Nuclear power is safe

[Firethorn]

Interesting article. Don't remember much German, much less scientific german, but given that contamination seems to depend more on species than location, I think it's an uptake issue.

With a halflife of 30 years, Cs-137 will only have degrated by about a 1/3rd since the accident.

On the other hand, do you want me to start posting links to various coal deaths, chemical accidents(such as Bhopal), etc...?

Life isn't safe; nuclear power comes close though.

Re:Nuclear power is safe

[Wastl]

No need to make me aware of other sources of death - dying from Chernobyl radiation in Germany is probably as likely as dying from a terrorist attack.;-) According to other sources (I think it was on Wikipedia), the radiation stemming from Chernobyl for the average European is about as high as the radiation stemming from nuclear bomb tests and as the radiation stemming from regular, non-accident nuclear plants. I am actually regularly buying mushrooms from White Russia, knowing that it has been affected most severely by the radiation after the meltdown. Everything from car accidents over smoking and household accidents is certainly much more likely. Radiation is just a bit more spooky, but there is certainly no reason to panic.

However, this does not change the issue that nuclear energy poses an additional danger to mankind that could be avoided if we instead invested more in other, more environment friendly ways to create energy. I am not in favour of immediately shutting down existing nuclear plants as one of my parent posts suggests ("lights going out ..."). I am however much in favour of treating all fossil energy sources as outdated and putting considerable research efforts in renewable energy sources instead of betting on nuclear energy as the solution to our environment issues (this is IMHO more than stupid). Instead, we are still investing twice as much money in nuclear energy research than in renewable energy research, and we are spending many many times as much in trying to stabilise our oil sources. This is what I am criticising.

Going back to the original article: the environment friendly aspect of this approach is that it actually is a good complement for the renewable energy sources that do not provide a reliable stream of energy. At least for the moment. And therefore it is a nice thing to experiment with it.

Re:Nuclear power is safe

[Firethorn]

I am however much in favour of treating all fossil energy sources as outdated and putting considerable research efforts in renewable energy sources instead of betting on nuclear energy as the solution to our environment issues (this is IMHO more than stupid).

I don't know if I've said it in this section of the thread, but I figure a power ratio that's roughly 35% nuclear, 20% solar, 20% wind, 20% hydro, 5% other would work well.

Some people keep going on conservation - which I think is great, but our electrical demands WILL go up if we start replacing IC engines with electric ones on a significant scale.

Prices change. . .

[JSBiff]

Naturual gas prices, like any commodity, fluctuate, based on supply, demand, and occasionally, market fixing (for a somewhat recent example, look up Enron).

I think, based on historical prices, Nat Gas might be competitive, but if a sufficiently large number of households and businesses started setting up Nat. Gas. generators in their basements, I can guarantee prices would rise. The same way that, if a sufficiently large number of people start using plug-in hybrid cars, the price of electricity will likely rise (unless there is a corresponding increase in generating capacity, for example, lots of new solar/wind farms, coal plants, nuke plants, etc, come online at about the same time).

Nuclear power plant load following...

[Firethorn]

Nucler power plant's power curves are a lot like the inverse of charging a battery.

Going from 0% to 10% takes a heck of a lot longer than going from 90% to 100%.

Going from 0 to 50% capacity might take a day for a nuclear plant, but 50% to 100% and vice versa can be done in under an hour, for a nuclear plant designed for it*.

So, rather than having a 1GW plant acting as 'standby' for peak power demands, you'd have 2-4 plants ready to go from 75% to 100% if necessary.

*Some in the USA are, some aren't. Note that most of our plants were built to be pure baseload, and are 20+ years old.

Boo.

[potscott]

1.8t > natural gas.

Look for 'Absorption chiller'

[Firethorn]

It's actually pretty neat - you can build a refridgerator that has no moving parts, mearly piping and a heat source. They're known as Absorbtion Chillers. Though after a certain point it is more efficient to have some pumps. Some RV's have these, the heat source is a propane burner. It's more efficient than trying to run a generator(~20% efficient at that size) all the time to keep your food(or medicine) cold when you're not otherwise using electricity. They take a 9V or some other configuration of standard batteries to run the thermostat and fridge light.

They've even done this to provide a building with AC.

The only problem with using solar is that you generally need steam, not mere hot water, for the chillers to work well. this can be done with solar - but you need more complicated solar collectors to concentrate the solar enough to actually boil the water. - rather than a simple panel that you drain water through, you need pipes with curved mirror surfaces(polished metal works well enough though) reflecting more sunlight onto the pipe.

Reduced employment?

[Firethorn]

I'd question, at this point in time, how much money would the power companies actually LOSE in such a recession? They're the cheapest source of electricity per KwH, unemployed people trying to save money might reduce their usage, so it's not like they need to push the plant beyond it's limits because the demand has gone down, but because electricity is still getting used the plant is still making money. It's stable.

Besides, there's still vigorous watchdogs making sure they maintain safe operations.

Re:Reduced employment?

[trickyb]

Fair point about electricity usage going down.
However the cynic in me suspects that the plant operators would choose to mothball one or more plants, and push production at the remaining plants.
And watchdogs are staffed by human beings - some of whom can be corrupted/subjected to political pressure, especially when money is tight :-(

Re:Reduced employment?

[Firethorn]

The watchdogs are government employees, presumably getting the same paycheck as before, so they're not hurting.

Why would they be being bribed to reduce safety, employment in the middle of a downturn? You WANT people hired in that case.

It's part of the reason I want to see new plants however - they're much more intrinsically safe, more difficult for humans to seriously screw one up than the old plants.

To the point that trying to shave pennies is more likely to cost the company dollars in downtime when safety systems shut the plant down and repairs have to be made. So the company going for maximum productivity also achieves maximum safety. Because at those levels they're more than willing to spend the pennies in order to ensure that the dollars keep coming in.

You are right

[Tweenk]

consider modern reactors have passive saftey masures making a meltdown impossible.

I'll add to this that passive security measures don't mean "nobody needs to take action to turn off the reactor", or even "no computer is needed to shut the reactor down". Passive safety means "this reactor cannot undergo a meltdown because it is physically impossible". Just like you can't walk through walls or damage tank armor by throwing eggs at it, passively safe reactors cannot melt because the laws of physics say so.

nuclear fossil fuel

This GP nugget is funny. What fossilized into uranium? Fire-breathing radioactive dragons?

Coal's scarier

[Firethorn]

It still beats the amount of coal you have to dig up by a couple orders of magnitude.

There's 6,150 kWh/ton of energy in coal, you generally get 2,460 kWh/ton of electricity - actual results depends on plant efficiency and grade of coal.

Uranium, on the other hand, gives you 360,000 kWh per Kilogram, Or 327 Million kWh per ton of Uranium(actual generation). Given that each ton of fuel provides 133k times the power, that you need to refine the stuff tends to become background noise.

And 100 tons of refined fuel isn't necessary for a reactor - A gigawatt plant will produce ~ 7.8 Billion kwh in a year. This will consume 21,900 kilograms of fuel, or 24 short tons.

For the 100k to 1 ratio:
The Economics of nuclear energy: In order to obtain(after refining) 150 tonnes of natural uranium, the requirement would involve mining, at most, some 300 000 tonnes of ore[5].

That's a 2,000 to 1 ratio - not a 100,000 to 1. Worst case. Some Uranium 'mining' techniques utilize leaching to essentially dissolve the uranium in the mine and collect the liquid Uranium at the bottom, without extensive extraction of ore.

It also says: Such a quantity of natural uranium burnt in a reactor for one year would generate as much electricity as would a coal-fired station burning over two million tonnes of coal.

Don't forget that construction costs for an equivalent amount of wind/solar stations is even higher for the nuclear fission plant, and they aren't maintenance free.

Cracking water

[swb]

Has anyone even begun to consider cracking water with the "excess" power produced by wind generation when the grid doesn't need the power?

A friend and I were driving past a large farm and noticed that almost none of the blades were turning; one or two were spinning well, so we knew there was good wind but assumed the grid didn't need the power.

With each of those big farm generators capable of quite a bit of power, I would think they would generate enough hydrogen in a year to do some kind of meaningful work.

Re:Cracking water

[apoc.famine]

It's been well considered. The issue is that we lack a hydrogen infrastructure. Last I knew, it would be a net loss to put in hydrogen cracking AND the infrastructure to make use of it. Far more useful is something like pumped hydro storage, where you use the excess to life water up. We're good at making electricity from falling water. We're not good at using hydrogen for anything.

So, do I have to change the oil every 3 months?

[jeffb (2.718)]

I love the notion of writing off most of the thermodynamic inefficiencies of an IC engine by using it to replace an existing furnace. But an IC engine requires considerably more maintenance than the typical furnace. Deploy 100 000 of these, and you're going to need an awful lot of mechanics.

Re:So, do I have to change the oil every 3 months?

[demonbug]

It's a VW. As long as you keep them away from anything to do with the electrical part of the system, it should run forever.

Seriously though, it does seem like this would greatly increase maintenance requirements. We us propane- and NG-powered IC generators (I think based on Ford or GM engines) at some remote sites, and they need pretty regular maintenance visits. Though come to think of it the generators themselves don't need a whole lot of maintenance, it is mostly the systems they are attached to that need checkups. Still, you need to check/change the oil, filters, plugs, belts, etc. from time to time - things that you don't need to do with a normal furnace.

Volkswagen. SchrÃder.

[Anonymous Coward]

But at least we can be sure that the gas comes from the empire of "flawless democrats". They haven't blown up any apartment buildings in Hamburg yet.

AT&T does this.

[Animats]

AT&T has "distributed generation", and not just in central offices. Some in-ground network nodes have a small engine fueled from a gas line. This provides backup power if commercial power goes out. In some areas, there's been grumbling about this; somebody in the subdivision gets stuck with the big green box in their yard.

It's mostly a problem in high-density suburban areas. In urban areas, there are underground vaults and commercial basements in which infrastructure equipment can be placed. In low-density suburban areas and rural areas, big metal boxes that make small amounts of noise aren't that bothersome. But in areas where everybody has their little patch of lawn and little else, there are complaints.

I have one of these nodes at the end of my driveway. I get landline phone and DSL through it. It's about 1m x 2m, projecting about 30cm above ground, with a big exhaust vent. I've seen the box open; it looks like a server rack. Normally, it just produces fan noise; the engine is only run for tests and power outages.

What a brilliant plan

[NSIM]

So they plan to replace to nuclear power plants that have no greenhouse emissions with thousands of car engines, what a brilliant plan.

New twist, old tech

[WoodstockJeff]

Before anyone thinks this is particularly innovative, the basic tech (integrated piston engine/generator, with cooling system tied in to domestic hot water and home heat) has been around since the 1970s. Grid tie-in of the units has been part of their design since the beginning; It's just the introduction of "network control" that makes this special. I remember reading about in school, back just after the dark ages ended...

Germans don't have home AC

[Doctor O]

Being German, I can tell you that I have yet to meet someone who has AC in his home. Public buildings *sometimes* have it, but AC isn't common here at all.

Re:Germans don't have home AC

[Anonymous Coward]

Being German, I can tell you that I have yet to meet someone who has AC in his home. Public buildings *sometimes* have it, but AC isn't common here at all.

Being German, too. I sign this post by Doctor O. AC is just not spread here in germany. Even bigger companies don't use them. It's expensive and creates sick employees caused by crazy climate changes no human body can cope with. Though we have black money receiving politicans, who claim to lower taxes during highest state debts ever, we have no wool, guys. Btw, 2nd world war is no more, too. Just in case...

Re:Germans don't have home AC

[ibsteve2u]

I figure American expats who don't want to be teased by their German neighbors will buy the generators to power their hidden refrigerators full of Budweiser, Coors, and Miller beer...

Re:Germans don't have home AC

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm German too and I have to yet find a house that needs AC at all. If you open the windows in the evening, night and early morning and close them and the shutters during the day when you're not there anyway you'll be very fine. I don't know about the US, but our houses have quite good insulation.

Lichtblick...

[beatbox32]

Any other dyslexics chuckle at this? No?... okay.

They DON'T leave it all on site

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's another one of those dirty little secrets the all pro nuke crowd forget (well, they just ignore it, it is an "inconvenient truth" to them.) They use *partially* spent fuel to make mass quantities of poisonous and still radioactive enough munitions and armor. Big chunks of the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan now are heavily poisoned with it after and during the wars there. No need to store it at home safely, just get rid of it by killing thousands of your enemies with it, while also not caring about your own guys, because eventually they'll croak too once exposed to the dust, so they can save on long term vet pensions (see gulf war 1 and the rate of sick and now dead vets they have now who were all exposed to DU dust and the smoke from burning then). When they get sick, they just tell them it is all in their head, give them some cheap tranqs or pain pills, then let them croak. Just like they did with the agent orange and agent blue victims in nam, and the first gulf war vets.

No need for safe burial or storage then, and people can enjoy their cheap electricity, and our all so very fucking important "stockholders" can make more profits.

And before any moron chimes in and says it is "depleted" and "safe"..just don't, that is so well and throughly debunked by various independent studies it ain't funny. Just the birth defect rates skyrocket in those areas where those munitions have been used, that's some fast confirmation and you can google for it, the pics of those poor babies. It's toxic, dangerous and still radioactive-enough to be a major hazard, and it lasts for tons of years, basically forever.

Heavy coalition armor that is protected with sheets of that stuff have radioactive warning signs on them when they are brought back for scrapping or repairs if they have been hit with an IED or something, so don't even try to claim it is "safe". Thousands of vets are sick from it, hundreds of thousands of iraqis and now afghanis are sick from it.

It's dangerous as all get out, but the pro nuke crowd doesn't care a bit, not a single stinking bit, because they want to always argue and strictly stay in some magical fairy theory land instead of REALITY land when it comes to nuke power and the waste, and refuse to admit or just plain ignore that this goes on and is where they dispose of a huge part of their "waste". As long as they get their little temper tantrum way with building these hideous and dangerous hot water devices, it doesn't matter how much they foul the environment or kill people, because they'll keep saying it doesn't happen, even if you slam the evidence in their face.. It's just as dangerous as coal because they will not admit this "depleted" stuff is used, nor will they even call it "merely partially depleted and still dangerous", which is what it is in reality. Coal burning spreads poisonous and radioactive waste, so does the PRACTICE of using tons of spent uranium fuel and spreading it around in warzones. The THEORY they push is, it is safe, the practice is, they use it for a weapon and spread it around vast huge areas. And have been doing this for a long time now.

These big nuke companies just shuffle a lot of the real waste to a munitions plant, then onto making armor, then go and shoot if off way over someplace where the humans involved are treated like untermenshcen and can be wasted in any fashion they want. Good for profits!

I hope they really enjoy their so called "clean and safe and peaceful and cheap nuclear power". That crap doesn't have to blow up in a fission device to be dangerous, it just has to *be there* to be dangerous. Thousands of tons have now been "properly disposed of and stored" in this "safe" manner, that's the reality to counter their fairy tale theory about how safe it is and how it is "stored on site", and I bet not a single one of the pro nuke folks here has ever gone and stood in front of those armaments plants where they make those cannon shells and armor plating out of used uranium fuel and demanded no

Re:They DON'T leave it all on site

[Eunuchswear]

A magnificent rant, spoiled by at least one major error of fact:

Here's another one of those dirty little secrets the all pro nuke crowd forget [...] They use *partially* spent fuel to make mass quantities of poisonous and still radioactive enough munitions and armor

No they don't. "Depleted Uranium" is made from waste from enrichment, not reactors. No civilian reactor waste is recycled in the US.

but my new(last year) heat pump costed 13k.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure of your numbers? I went to an off-peak system where the Electric co can turn off my heat-pump so I needed:

1 Standard propane furnace
1 Heat pump
1 Electric Plenum (30KW) furnace for those January nights when its COLD.

It only costed 13k.

Silly electric company didn't upgrade my transformer. Its new NOW 'tho

100% inefficiency.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, what's a "big water tank" go for in Germany these days? What are we talking here, 1000 liters? 2000?

Steel tanks aren't cheap, and they rust out -quickly- when you put warm water in them. Stainless steel tanks don't rust out for a long time, but they are very expensive.

Where are you going to put this tank? Inside? Outside? How are you going to plumb the connections?

How do you prevent the water from getting contaminated with bacteria? Bugs like warm water. You want to bath in chlorine water?

How about the fancy generator hook up to wire the thing into the house? How about the computer load sensor? How about the fancy new chimney?

Is it getting expensive yet? Do I want to pay for all this just so my house doesn't go dark when the wind isn't blowing?

Wouldn't it be cheaper just to have one -big- natural gas generator and skip the windmills?

That's a rhetorical question.

Missing the Point

[hipp5]

I had to register so that I could voice my disappointment in the Slashdot community for missing the point completely. The LARGE benefit of a system such as this that it provides stability to a grid that is comprised of a large percentage of renewables. Solar is the future of electric generation, but it's unreliable. A solar grid needs to be paired with a scalable backup. In the future this will be hydrogen generated by excess solar, but for now the technology is not there. Natural gas has a flexibility that no other fuel source currently has. Since the grid demands stability NOW, the grid needs natural gas NOW. As for nuclear: it's inflexible and TOO DAMN EXPENSIVE. I don't care if you're "ok with the cost", you still need to raise $20B to build the plant. Then you need to maintain it. Nuclear plants don't make money without government subsidies. This story proves to me, once again, that the Germans are a truly forward-thinking bunch.

Meltdown not impossible in some designs

[Mike_EE_U_of_I]

...and how do you come to the conslusion we could make solar/wind/wave able to provide a constant load?!?! is any amount of research going to make the sun shine and the wind blow on queue?! ....
then consider modern reactors have passive saftey masures making a meltdown impossible...

I've quoted two of your points here, and in order:

1) Power storage is the answer to the intermittent nature of wind and solar. My WAG is that it would add 5 to 10 cents per KwH. To those who don't think that is a great deal, consider it is more than most wholesale electricity costs right now. That's why almost no one stores electric power on a large scale. It can be done, and it wouldn't end civilization, but it would be d**n expensive.

2) Not all modern designs make meltdown impossible. You are correct that some absolutely do. Canada's CANDU, pebble bed, and the Argonne breader (http://www.anl.gov/Media_Center/logos20-1/passive01.htm) all are meltdown proof.

    There are probably more. That's outside the scope of my knowledge so I plead ignorance. I do believe it would help in public acceptance of nuclear power if only meltdown proof designs were allowed.

    I personally think the best long term answer to our energy needs is probably going to wind up being solar with battery storage. However, _enormous_ increases in cost effectiveness are needed in both solar and energy storage before it is ready to provide most of our power. In the meantime, safe nuclear seems, by far, to be the best answer to me.

Re:Uh? Remotely controlled??

[Anonymous Coward]

So the power company gets to turn on all these generators to provide power to the grid, and the home owners pay for the fuel with no input? Seems a might odd.