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Should Nuclear and Renewable Energy Supporters Stop Fighting?
Lasrick writes "A debate is happening in the pages of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that started with their publication of 'Nuclear vs. Renewables: Divided They Fall,' an article by Dawn Stover that chides nuclear energy advocates and advocates of renewable energy for bickering over the deck chairs while climate change sinks the ship, and while the fossil fuel industry reaps the rewards of the clean energy camp's refusal to work together. Many of the clean energy folks took umbrage at the description of nuclear power as 'clean energy,' so the Civil Society Institute has responded with a detailed look at exactly why they believe nuclear power will not be needed as the world transitions to clean energy."
Wind and solar have variable output, so they need to be partnered with flexible power generation. Nuclear is fundamentally inflexible because you can't quickly ramp up or down electricity output from a nuclear power plant. See this short video for a nice explanation of the incompatibility: http://www.ilsr.org/coal-nucle...
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
In their own words,
We commissioned studies to show
That isn't science, that's paying for confirmation bias.
No, the problem is that we use way, way way too much fossil fuels, producing way, way, way too much carbon dioxide.
Nucelar power has problems and if we were to use it as much as we use fossil fuels, it would cause the same problem.
The same problem exists with ALL fuel sources, including so called "renewables". Solar power uses rare metals whose use could be just as bad as fossil fuels. Similarly, if we just used hydroelectric, then we could cause major problems with rivers.
Nuclear is very clearly part of our energy solution, and it is time that we, as green environmentalists, accept that.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Should we prevent the spread of headlines that end in a question mark?
Enigma
Then they would have to stop fund-raising and find productive jobs.
The rebuttal loses me with this line:
"Nuclear power plants (large or small) and renewables are not compatible technologies. A distributed grid design with high penetrations of variable renewables requires flexible technologies for balancing the system. Both nuclear and coal plants are inflexible. "
Maybe they don't get what people mean by "flexible" in regards to the grid?
When people say coal and nuclear are flexible, they don't mean you can move the plant, or install and remove plants at will. What they mean is that the energy production can ramp up quickly when 15,000 people all get home from work and cut their AC on at the same moment...
yes renewable sources are improving how they can scale and ramp up.
Nukes are already there. I'm also annoyed at how articles claim normal tax items (vehicle fleet depreciation, etc) as subsidies for one industry, but then say industry X doesn't get subsidies. EVERYONE gets some form of tax breaks when you fill out your taxes. If you don't claim them, well, then that's on you.
The original article is right. We SHOULD push for more nukes as well as more renewable sources. Getting off of coal / diesel should be the first priority. Eventually if we can wean from nuclear? cool...
I am 31337 or something.
Half the people arguing on behalf of anything should probably shut up about it. There are legitimate arguments for and against solar and nuclear, and I used to really enjoy debating them (hypothetically, what if the government spent the equivalent of R&D on anything besides nuclear?) But these days most "advocates" just bog down the dialectic.
Take for example the perfectly logical argument in favor of allowing the Keystone pipeline... If you don't build the pipeline, it gets built anyway, and you have 0% control or influence in the future (if it does turn out to be really really bad). Fairly intelligent analysis, drowned out by trolls with all cap megaphones. I used to belong to a solar energy activist group. Would still like to see it get the equivalent of the Oppenheimer subsidies. But couldn't stand the company, too many dolts agreeing with me.
Gently reply
Nuclear is far from clean, it's just a different kind of dirty.
Solar/wind/hydro/etc. are "relatively" clean and may be "literally" non-polluting once the plant is built, but they rarely have anything close to zero ecological impact.
One nearly-inherent aspect of renewables is that they won't "run out" like fossil fuels and uranium. Some carbon-based fuels, such as burning fast-growing plants, are "renewable" in this sense but are far from pollution-free.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I'd just like to know the world I hand down to my children and grandchildren doesn't include stories about "those funny switches on the wall which don't do anything." Because that's the road we are on.
See, that dystopian future just won't happen. We're not going to just wake up one day and find that there's no coal left in the ground, and whoopsie, we can't power the world anymore! It's an asymptote, not a brick wall. Coal reserves are going to disappear slowly, and new coal will be harder to find and more expensive to mine. So the price of coal will rise, gradually. And just as gradually, people will start getting power from sources that used to be more expensive than coal, but aren't anymore since the price of coal went up. We're watching that happen right now: coal prices are going up and natural gas prices are going down, and the big players are shifting from one to the other.
We'll all end up on renewable tech eventually, as fossil fuels become more expensive through dwindling supply. The point is that we should work so that "eventually" becomes "soon", for reasons of pollution and climate change. It's not because we're going to run out.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/why-solar-is-nuclears-best-friend/
Been obvious to everyone from the start.
If there has not been such huge pushback on nuclear reactors for decades, there would be far fewer coal fired plants now across the world.
Look at what France has done, the rest of the world could be just as clean. But we are not, and you can thank supposed "environmentalist" for direct harm for the very thing they claim to want to help.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They will, without a doubt, be effectively consumed (or prices will be so high as to make them unavailable for casual use) within the lifetimes of people who are alive today.
The only reason why that statement is actually true is because before too long I expect 500 year lifespans, which is the rough estimate to use up the KNOWN reserves at current rates.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The nuclear industry seems a lot like the American automotive industry, and maybe for good reasons. They've had to fight political battles and prove themselves against fossil fuels in and early on people were not concerned with global warming.
I know there are prototype "meltdown proof" reactors but why aren't they the norm? Anything to do with output and cost? Fukushima's best plan now is to freeze the ground for I don't know how many years? It's going to cost half a billion dollars to build the system but it might need to stay in operation for decades... maybe longer? The costs at Chernobyl are still in the billions and it's not making energy any more, that's just to keep the already ruined land from getting worse.. These things are pre-optimized for nearer term profits for the operators and the longer term clean up costs in the rare (but not so rare it never happens) even of a disaster and the longer term waste storage costs just aren't factored in, not on the correct scale at least.
I know we have thorium an there are some compelling options that seem like there could be abundant, affordable energy for ages to come without contributing to global warming but the downsides are staggering and more importantly, we actually experience the downsides, they aren't impossibly rare. I don't think the problems are such that solutions cannot be engineered but it seems like they're more focused on other things than building the best nuclear solutions..
Wind and solar have variable output, so they need to be partnered with flexible power generation.
Another option is to partner variable output with consumption that can tolerate the variation.
For example, a nitrogen fixation plant based on the Haber process. Fertilizer from this process is responsible for about 1/3 of Earth's food production, and uses 3-5% of our natural gas supply (some for raw Hydrogen, some burned to generate electricity on-site).
Instead of letting excess energy generation lay fallow, we could route the excess into ad-hoc, non-demand-generated production. For fixing Nitrogen, you could conceivably crack water to get Hydrogen, and distill Nitrogen from the air. Conceivably, a solar panel array in Arizona could make fertilizer out of nothing.
Does anyone know of other types of production which can tolerate quick start-up and shut-down?
Maybe some sort of automatic loom system for weaving cloth? Some sort of commodity cloth which is always in demand as a raw material for other products. Something like that.
Maybe something that can be produced using a lot of smaller installations, such as the loom idea noted above - a factory floor with 1,000 smaller looms computer controlled could fire up individual looms as energy becomes available. Would you need "wear leveling" as used for thumb drives?
They're not reasonable. You can't strike any sort of deal with them on any sort of rational basis.
Here are your options.
1. Over power them politically. This is politically expensive and is pretty annoying because they won't shut up which will mean you'll have to sustain a pretty high level of political suppression for some time to come.
2. Simply confuse them. They're by definition not very observant. They track on things put in the newspaper recently and don't really follow the logic of anything through. So if you make what you're doing out of sight out of mind... they tend to leave you alone. For example, we've moved most of our coal power generation to China where its a lot dirtier then it was in the US and they have no control over it. What do you think happens when industry is closed down or priced out of the US for environmental reasons? It goes over seas where the same thing happens with no restrictions. Mission accomplished, dipshits.
3. Pay off the leaders. Many times the organizers are little more then glorified shakedown artists. They'll want millions. But if you pay them they should be able to contain the gaggle of fools the follow them. This will mean striking up an alliance with the likes of Al Gore... but those are the sorts that control this monster.
Short of that... not much you can do...
Don't get me wrong, I love renewable energy. That said, I have no specific problem with any form of power generation.
Filtered coal plants are great and regardless of any regulation we will burn the coal in the ground... one way or another and eventually.
Nuclear is also pretty great. Mostly because its so compact. Mostly great for mobile high power platforms. We have nuke subs for example that were fueled when they were initially built and have been in continuous operation for 30 years. That beats the pants off gasoline.
Here is what renewable needs:
1. Cheap storage. Something like flywheels or ultra capacitors. Batteries are a non starter.
2. Decentralized generation. Ideally on top of your actual house. A percentage of power is lost in transmission over long distances. A percentage of power is lost meeting demand largely by over supplying a bit... there are other things that each shave their percentage off the total. Add them all up and its a significant amount of power. If the power were provided locally you'd get most of that back.
3. Extremely cheap solar panels. We need something so cheap that you can put it on every surface without thinking about the cost. The efficiency doesn't have to be great. It just needs to be insanely cheap. Do that, and then link everything up to that... and then maybe you'll need a few high efficiency cells.
Get everyone running mostly on their own generation and they'll start conserving power. Not because they want to conserve but because they would run out of power otherwise.
Ideally do the same thing with water as well... at least in so far as having a cistern that is fed from municipal supply. So if there is a disruption or there are months when the water is expensive... they can shift around. Also, in California they're talking about water rationing again. So it might be nice to just have a giant tank buried somewhere on the property and get it topped up from time to time by a water truck.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
The funny and factual true story of Elmer Allen is documented in "The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War" By Eileen Welsome. Another fun fact? Folks in Japan have had to abandon land that their families had occupied for 10 generations. Nevermind all that. Just remember, and repeat after me, "Coal is more dangerous than Nuclear!".
Come on, there have been a ton of advances around storing hydrogen, and building fuel cells generally - also around extracting Hydrogen.
Not enough to base our infrastructure on those advances. Hydrogen powered cars face three obstacles - one technological and two economic. The teachnological one is developing a functioning technology. There are hurdles to overcome but there is reason to believe they could be overcome. After all, fuel cells and the like are already in existence and prototype vehicles have been made. The much bigger problem is economic. The first economic problem is that hydrogen powered cars are expensive because there is no manufacturing economies of scale, supporting industries and a limited manufacturing base. Absent some sort of subsidy they cannot be produced for a price in the near term that is competitive with existing vehicles. The second economic problem and the real killer is that there is no fuel infrastructure in place and developing one would be hugely expensive. We have infrastructure in place for natural gas, petroleum/diesel products and electricity. Anything that doesn't use one of those three things is essentially starting from scratch.
The truth is that if you want every person to own an electric car, Hydrogen is the only way you get there.
Not even remotely. Hybrids are the path of least resistance (no pun intended) towards electric vehicles. Electric vehicles based on batteries become practical once you solve the charging time problem. Basically you have to get charging time down below about 10 minutes for at least 200 miles of range. We're almost there technologically already.
You cannot manufacture a literal ton of batteries per person across the globe
Actually you probably can. Every vehicle made already has at least one battery in it and it wouldn't be all that complicated to scale up production unless there is some sort of raw material limitation.
I take umbrage with solar and wind power being called renewable. They aren't. When the sun is used up we won't get another one. When the heat from the sun is gone we won't have any more wind.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
Actually France has some major problems. Apart from a string of low level but concerning accidents over the years they suffered from power cuts when the weather got too warm for the plants to operate. At first they tried dumping hot water into lakes, killing much of the wildlife living there, but had to stop and just idled the plants instead.
The only thing that saves them now is being able to import energy from other countries, particularly Germany where it gets very cheap during warn periods.
Being reliant on a single source of electricity is a really, really bad idea. One of the biggest strengths of renewables is their diversity and distributed nature. People actually died in France due to those shut downs.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Fine. Go back to burning peat and whale oil then.
before too long I expect 500 year lifespans
So did Qin Shi Huang. He still died.
there have been a ton of advances around storing hydrogen
No there haven't. You can store it as a cryogenic fluid, but no one really wants the general public to haul around a significant mass of fuel at 20K. You can store it as a compressed gas, but no one really wants the general public to haul around a significant mass of fuel at several hundred atmospheres. You can potentially store it as a solid using metallic hydrides, but there hasn't been any meaningful work in that area for decades.
Good. Now you understand the 'gravity' of the situation. Pun intended.
So you are telling me we can't replace old power plants built in the 1970s with XXIst century tech because its too expensive? But the old ones were based on bleeding edge technology back then and the proved economical. I agree they need to replaced. They should have started replacing them a long time ago. The proposed lifetime was 20 years. A lot of these plants were built in the late 1970s. They should be closing down right now. But replacing them is neither too expensive nor is it impossible. Its just a bunch of steel and concrete. Remember that construction industry that stopped having anything to do? Use the materials for something useful instead of building more useless second and third vacation homes no one really needs.
Yes, but the Greens have way too much influence to be safely ignored. Politicians don't like throwing away votes that other parties will easily catch.
It is variable, but it has to be precisely controlled. Given what's at work, generous safety margins should be employed as well. What this means, in practice, is that it takes time.
Sometimes, you need a lot more power during the next 10 minutes and then you go back to your baseline. Nuclear isn't fast enough. Hydro is and that's why it's so popular as storage.
concrete used to build the stations
Its a building. Its build using stuff used to make buildings. It could have been brick if you wanted to. Lets stop making buildings because they pollute too.
energy used in the mining, extraction and refining processes
Yes because solar panels and windmills aren't made of materials which need mining operations. Silicon wafers are magically turned with no energy from what is essentially silica sand into crystal ingots. Not.
It can take more than 6 years to mitigate the energy used in building of the facility, let alone the actual construction costs
Bunk. Plus they last for over 4 times that time.
negative learning curve of nuclear power
More bunk. Costs increase with inflation. Plus if you don't build reactors in series but only make a prototype or two... of course the per unit costs will be more expensive. For more information on this phenomenon Google 'Augustine's Laws'.
it really is very dated technology
Not as dated as wind power which dates from BC.
flow batteries
Been available since forever. They don't generate energy only store it. Plus they are usually made of acids and similar not very pleasant liquids.
don't need to have peaking power plants paired with the renewables. You just need more renewables
Its a matter of cost effectiveness. Resources you devote to unproductive things are resources you don't use for other things. Period.
Nuclear does well in propulsion for the Navy and with areal drones, it may work out in the air as well. But it just is too expensive to be considered for a solution to our climate problems. It's opportunity cost is just too high. http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-C...
Ooh, low blow. Right in the fact node!
Explain how these cannot apply to a nuclear plant.
In Germany, they have stopped generating nuclear,
They now just import the nuclear generated electricity from France. This is another example of merely moving the issue and creating a false sound bite.
Nuclear plants can swing at 5% per minute, between 30% and 100% output.
So... there's that.
"Besides, electricity-to-hydrogen-back-to-electricity has a round trip efficiency of less than 50%."
This is arguing that an alternative isn't perfect yet so we should abandon it entirely.
Seriously, quit that. The loss is a factor, but not an important one. The efficiency of fossil fuels is so low we cannot express it. Solar to organic to fuel involving millions of years of intense heat and pressure- massively inefficient.
So what if turning wind, or solar to hydrogen is inefficient? It's free. 50% of free is still free. Same with old design nuclear reactors that can't ramp up or down efficiently- the energy is wasted anyway, so the conversion is still a 50% waste reduction.
There are some hurdles to pass for hydrogen fuel cars, this just isn't one of them. It is a factor that we could also work to improve- nothing more.
That said, yes we need to be plowing money into renewables, it's an investment that will pay itself off many times over...but unfortunately over a number of decades and so private industry simply isn't going to do that.
I think you will find that Ecotricity [http://www.ecotricity.co.uk] is providing wind generated electricity to the UK domestic market. I think the revolution has started...
The best thing about hydrogen in my books is you can grow it with algae and sunlight in your backyard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Using methane pipelines to ship hydrogen is as easy as just doing it.
Gas pipelines are run through compression plants and separation plants. membranes separate the gas compounds already- getting the hydrogen sulfide out on the basis that it is a larger molecule, shunting it out while sending the "sweet" gas methane on down the line. The membrane technology has recently been made more exact and cheaper by research at U of Texas:
http://membrane.ces.utexas.edu...
The same technology can separate the tiny hydrogen molecule out at an earlier step for very little cost increase to the plant.
We have a huge methane infrastructure in place- something CNG has been capitalizing on. All you have to do is offer the same rates to the pipelines that methane does- transport based on CFM to a destination. I can't imagine any pipeline owner saying "no, I refuse to double my profits AND get my foot in the door of a whole new energy field at the same time." At least, not without a LOT of bribery from opponents to offset those profits.
Source: I worked for a 5 state pipeline owner handling their SCADA setup. I am no petroleum engineer, but I have a decent grasp of their operations and setup.
This gets repeated a lot. I imagine it would get traced back to anti-renewable groups.
Modern nuclear reactor ARE scalable. And getting more so. These claims are based on 30 and 40 year old reactor designs. No one is going to build new reactors based on those designs, now are they?
http://theenergycollective.com...
With some high-voltage DC cables running easy to west,
Correct me if I'm wrong but 'DC' is terrible at long distances, you lose vast amounts of the energy put in to push it the whole way. This is why AC is used today.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
If you care about the environment you should want the mountain of nuclear waste reduced. And treating it with a particle accelerator, using a so called spallation reaction, you can do exactly this, while running the whole thing as an inherently save reactor with net energy gain.
The technology is proven and an industrial scale prototype is about to be build in Belgium.
1 - It's 100% true that current nuclear technology is 100% due to military research, the USA invested thousands of times more money on nuclear fusion than on 100% energy oriented nuclear fission research (thorium molten salt reactors). Light water reactors exist because they were the best option for Navy needs. Uranium/Plutonium breeder reactors (IFR) were researched because they were able to produce more plutonium than they consumed. 99% of nuclear reactor research moneys was spent on light/heavy water and IFR reactors.
2 - One of the key minds in development of light water nuclear reactors, Dr. Alvin Weinberg, as in the holder of the original light water reactor patent, wanted molten salt thorium reactors since the days of the Manhattan project, but the nuclear bomb driven process never properly funded molten salt reactor research (less than 2% of the money spent on IFR research was spent on molten salt reactors), because the Thorium fuel cycle only produces fuel very undesirable for nuclear weapons (radiation type that can be detected from satellites anytime that material is transported, the only know thorium based nuclear weapon resulted in lower yield than expected, no know nuclear weapons in the world's stockpiles are based on Uranium 233, the nuclear fuel generated from Thorium).
3 - There are very compelling safety, efficiency and cost reasons to go Thorium / LFTR, the main one against is research on this stuff was essentially liked in the Nixon administration, documents on this stuff were actually ordered destroyed, but saved covertly by those working on LFTR research. Much like the Clinton administration killed the IFR reactor research for political appeasement to the anti-nuclear interests.
4 - Until the population gets an honest, balanced view of true radiation risks, most people will be somewhat anti-nuclear, most of the anti-nuclear activists are very irrational and unwilling to collect hard data to prove their stand, if they did, they would find out at least 90% of what they say is utter bullshit. Look up hormesis, lookup up no linear threshold, hard data support hormesis (a little radiation being good, too much radiation very bad, much like taking one or two aspirin a day is good, one thousand aspirin a day can kill you), no linear threshold pretends the best for humans is zero radiation, ignoring the FACT that we get radiation from several sources naturally: Cosmic rays, sunlight, radon coming from the earth's core, potassium 40, carbon 14. Plenty of places documented for having therapeutic waters or sand are due to naturally occurring radiation (typically from radon/uranium/thorium/radium). Watched that video of the place in Georgia where FDR went before becoming president to try to cure his pollio, those are radioactive waters. If more radiation were bad due to no linear threshold, we would see clusters of cancer cases among flying airline personnel, living in Denver and Salt Lake City would show more cancer than Los Angeles or Miami, but data shows its the opposite (little city or big city notwithstanding, people at higher altitude gets more cosmic rays and solar radiation, yet, we see lower cancer stats).
5 - Your typical pro nuclear guy accepts none of the downsides I pointed out (item 1), dismissing everything as wrong. It's true that water cooled nuclear reactors are safe enough, but the public wants something much safer, and the companies selling water cooled reactors are investing nothing towards revolutionary (as in not water cooled nor IFR designs). General Electric / Hitachi S-PRISM IFR is interesting, and probably would be a little safer than current light water reactors, but have two large downsizes: They need at least ten times more nuclear material on the reactor due to usage of FAST neutrons (increasing the cost of plant startup and risks in case of a meltdown), the usage of Sodium is a risk factor (less than the pundits claim, but much more than the defendants of this alternative claim). Finally, if General Electric actually truly believed S-PRISM was such a great solutio
Typical anti-nuclear miss information. Please provide rational, data based arguments. Rational, fact driven studies show Bielorussia having much lower cancer stats than worldwide average, yet, they were downwind of Chernobyl radiation. Less than 100 people died short term from chernobyl radiation exposure, and even the worse case credible study predicts less long term deaths from increased cancer rates long term (total) than people die every year from coal pollution in the USA alone. And the Chernobyl case was an absolute disaster:
1 - The reactor had no secondary containment vessel, something unthinkable essentially anywhere else in the world, if it had a secondary containment vessel, worst case Chernobyl would be a little worse than Fukushima, plus the accident was 100% the result of homer simpson style stupidity from the plant operators.
2 - There was no credible effort to keep the area suffering the worst of the radiation from agriculture, specially preventing milk produced from that land to be drink by people.
3 - Even then, there were villages that were re-populated inside the isolation area (people walked through forests back there), and community leaders say there were no cancers.
Don't get me wrong, there are serious radiation risks, some radiation materials will cause cancers, but the anti-nuclear folks take those one in a million scenarios and claim that as almost a certainty. Look no further than all the speculation on the first months after Fukushima, where are the radiation deaths ? Where are the mass cancer cases ?
The reality is except for Chernobyl, the two nuclear bombs used on Japan, and the nuclear detonation tests, there never was a serious nuclear accident/incident, outside of the media frenzy and the anti-nuclear paranoia. Most of their rational is based on conspiracy theories, with very clear parallels to the climate change deniers (cherry picking studies that favor their logic, discrediting everything else as a hoax/dishonesty).
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
You asked a question based on a false premise. Also a variant of the Complex Question fallacy, due to phrasing in such a way as to presuppose a controversial point of view. We DON'T live in an irradiated wasteland. It's difficult to prove someone wrong when they put the cart before the horse. Frankly, the horse is more intelligent than the aforementioned person.
Well, you are wrong.
We are talking about very very high voltage DC.
AC loses energy by radiation and by inducing low currents into nearby conductors, DC does not. That is why modern long range lines are DC.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Overpopulation is always the primary problem that nobody dares to address.
Nuclear power is a scam. Heavily subsidized and not regulated heavily enough or even properly for the regulations they already have. I doubt that the subsidization is enough to balance out the costs for the current level of inadequate regulation.
Next gen nuclear is always off topic because it doesn't exist even after decades of solutions that were 5 years away - anything you build today is not next gen; therefore, off topic. It is foolish to build them today, the USA is building TWO nuclear plants and those cost MORE than India's solar plants - plus the construction time is comparable (except India's can be online before it's completed and its construction costs are going to go down while it is being built, so it's likely to be near budget, unlike the nuclear plants.)
Solar is cheaper than nuclear power. TODAY. The same tech from decades ago finally being mass produced with the resources that could have been there for decades already... The "innovations" have been minimal (silicon cells) and they are mass production related; nothing that couldn't have happened 20 years ago. If solar only had half what the nuclear industry had to help it evolve it's mass production... (instead we kept putting money into new tech and ignoring mass production... delaying.... The USA dumped some $$ into CIGS instead of making existing tech cheaper like the Chinese did. CIGS may win long term but we can't keep stalling letting the perfect be the enemy of good. )
A modern grid to replace our century+ old primitive power grid would mitigate most the fluctuation issues of wind and solar. Leaving other kinds of power to fill in the gaps which can be done cheaper and safer than nuclear can do. We still have plenty of old power plants that can fill the void while newer ones are invented; perhaps the mythical mini next-gen nuclear plant will happen by that time.
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You are wrong for comparable peak voltage (which sets insulation requirements) and RMS current DC has lower cable losses than AC both because the RMS voltage can be higher (for DC RMS=peak, for a sinewave RMS*sqrt(2)=peak) and because of the elimination of capacitive and inductive affects.
The reason AC won the "war of the currents" was the transformer. Transformers provide an efficient and economical way to convert between different voltages, something the DC systems of the time did not have. Voltage conversion is a vital part of any large scale electricity grid as the voltages that are appropriate for generation and use are very different from the voltages that are appropriate for transmission and distribution. DC can also be problematic for end use because it's far more prone to sustaining arcs than AC is.
What has changed since the war of the currents is the introduction of power electronics. We can now convert between AC and DC and convert between different DC voltages with reasonablly high efficiency. It's still too expensive to use it for most of the grid but for long distance or undersea interconnects the advantages of DC can outweigh the costs.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Hydrogen is actually a terrible solution for cars for a number of reasons.
1. Creating hydrogen from water is very inefficient and prohibitively expensive for transportation.
2. Creating hydrogen from natural gas is at best around 70% efficient due to the laws of physics, then there's all that CO2 left over.
3. Compressing hydrogen consumes at least 20% of the energy contained in the hydrogen. Cryogenically cooling it is far more energy intensive.
4. Fuel cells such as the type used in cars are at best around 40% efficient. Fuel cells also must maintain a certain temperature range, even when not in use. They must never freeze or they will be destroyed. They also must maintain a certain internal humidity level.
5. Transportation of hydrogen is expensive. For pressurized hydrogen the tanks are quite heavy. A truck carrying enough hydrogen for around 200 cars will weigh around 13 tons due to the tanks.
6. Existing pipelines cannot be used. Hydrogen embrittles metal so the pipes must be specially lined.
7. Safety is a concern for refueling. The Alameda County hydrogen filling station for the fuel cell busses already had one fire due to a failed valve and this refueling station is not open to the public.
8. Hydrogen is extremely flammable and burns with an almost invisible flame. A hydrogen leak in an indoor area could be catestrophic. Hydrogen also will leak through virtually any joint. Hydrogen is also explosive over a very wide range of mixtures with air, more so than even natural gas.
9. A diesel powered car is more efficient than a hydrogen fuel cell and will produce less CO2 since virtually all hydrogen comes from cracking methane.
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/...
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they suffered from power cuts when the weather got too warm for the plants to operate
FWIW, that's a common problem to all types of thermal electricity generation. Coal, gas, nuclear, oil, all need a heat sink to work efficiently and that heat sink tends to be water. Lots of water. If the river you're drawing from runs very low, you've got to shut down. If you're drawing from the sea or a large lake, you won't have the problem, but that wasn't the case for those French power plants along the Loire during that year's drought...
Mixed generation is good, gives flexibility and different types have different downsides. (I live in an area where solar makes almost no sense at all because it's so cloudy; we make Seattle look bright and sunny. We also don't have anything like the air-conditioner load of cities like Phoenix or Miami.) Nuclear power can make sense; it's principal down-sides relate to decommissioning. Otherwise, its very much like coal, oil and gas in terms of constraints.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
If the goal is to prevent "bickering", there's no better way to do it than to post an article on the subject here.
On top of that, cryogenically cooling hydrogen is extremely energy intensive.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Distribute the storage. Don't store the energy to keep the country powered at the station. End consumers can draw that power while it's being generated and store it themselves. The ideal solution here would be for every household to have a hydrogen power plant, and the hydrogen can be renewed during the day by a solar powered grid. Hell! Even better, go full smart grid, and allow households to distribute directly to their neighbours when they're in need using their own solar power panels and or hydrogen plants. The technology is there already. It's just corrupt politics getting in the way.
Can someone please explain why "cost" is ever an issue regarding society switching from carbon based power sources to sustainable ones? Isn't that what the argument is really about? It's going to be more expensive than burning the trees in my backyard, or more expensive than operating off the coal-based grid. What is the most cost-effective and expeditious way forward? Can we proceed with that best way forward? Can the US get a fucking Energy Policy written up so we can actually begin to have meaningful discussions about this?
"Wind and solar have variable output"
And the world has variable input. Go here and look at the graph:
http://www.ieso.ca/imoweb/marketdata/markettoday.asp
Notice that the daytime peak is about twice the nighttime base load.
So in order to supply this sort of demand, which is typical around the world, you need to either have highly "dispatchable" power, like hydro and gas, or have multiple power sources that can be used in concert to fill in the peaks.
Nuclear is not very throttlable, on the order of 20% on a per reactor basis. That means nuclear alone cannot follow our loads. We need something to fill in during daytime peaks.
What we have been doing so far is using coal, and more recently, switching to gas. However, we are all aware of the problems with this approach, namely CO2.
So what power source is primarily available during the day and doesn't give off CO2? Solar. Solar and nuclear are fantastic together.
Yes, we still need gas as a backup when the entire CONUS is covered in cloud, it will happen. But because we've already built all those gas plants, we already have this covered. All we need is more panels.
When faced with this obvious fact, the haters started coming up with new excuses. For instance, solar is bad because now the gas plants have to spin up. We know this isn't actually the case, as study after study has demonstrated, but that's not the point, this is all about FUD.
FUD for whom? For people who think energy policy is a political issue, one that it's perfectly OK to form on the basis of what the people look like. "I notice a lot of liberals like solar, so I'll look for every excuse to hate it". I don't tilt at that windmill, it's the way the world has always worked, but it's sad to see in such obvious fashion.
"Your example would work if the reactors only ran in the day time"
It's the other way around. Reactors supply base load because they can't throttle. The daytime load has to be offloaded to something that can. That used to be coal, now it's gas.
"Meh, all that crap will take to long."
PV is the fastest growing power source in history. Last year 35 GW (a reactor's worth) went in, this year the projections are for another 50. However, due to rapid price declines, more recent projections are for 60 to 100 GW. There are about 400 reactors in the world, built over a period of 40 years. At the current rate, PV will outstrip nuclear before 2020.
This shouldn't be surprising. CAPEX on PV is about 1/6th of nuclear. Systems can go in in months, start to finish, so the banks love you. Scales smoothly from 250W to 400MW with only a two-fold reduction in price over that range. Permitting is a snap.
The energy per person is astronomical. You send one, you spend the equivalent for 5000. Now if you start a world war, that is a different story. Nuclear will solve all your problems again.
If we have the capacity to change the fundamental dynamic, right now, why would we want to increase nuclear? Efficiency will much more cheaply get us where we need to go in the short term and profit-driven developments in wind/solar/"renewables" will get us where we need to be in 30-50 years. The nuclear option is idiotically expensive and a step away from distributed power generation. We can't afford it!
Correct me if I'm wrong but 'DC' is terrible at long distances, you lose vast amounts of the energy put in to push it the whole way. This is why AC is used today.
Consider this your correction. With modern technologies, High Voltage DC is actually the preferred method for long-distance power transmission. In the past, the issue was always the AC/DC conversion at either end of the line.
HVDC has a number of things to recommend it.
1) Uses the entirety of the conductor for power transmission. When you push AC through a conductor, it exhibits what's called the "Skin Effect." In the case of 60Hz AC, the power is actually only using about the outer 7mm of the conductor. Power companies actually do make use of this, using a steel core for tensile strength, and a copper sheath for high conductivity, but it also puts a limit on how much current a given conductor can actually carry. At DC, the power will flow through the entirety of the conductor, and since resistance is proportional to the cross-section area of the conductor, you get less loss for a given piece of cable.
2) AC loses significant amounts of power to the ground through capacitive losses. In effect, the transmission line forms a very large capacitor with the earth. For long transmission lines this becomes a significant effect. Again, because this is due to frequency, DC solves the problem.
3) Isolates and relaxes the frequency requirements of the grid. After they lost most of the power grid to an ice storm in 1998, Quebec Hydro rebuilt their grid using HVDC transmission lines and interconnects to the eastern grid. Because of this, they were isolated from the frequency instability that caused the large north-east blackout in 2003 and thus the lights stayed on.
Anyhow, the main reason why AC has been used for long haul transmission is because when the grid was built out, there was no efficient way to convert power between AC and DC or to change the voltage once it was in the DC domain. With the advent of modern power electronics, it's quite possible to build megawatt and/or gigawatt scale inverter/rectifiers that will do this more efficiently than the AC losses for long distance power transmission. As with all of our crumbling infrastructure, the main problem is that no one is willing to invest in the capital expenditures to make it happen.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
Whether the technologies are compatible is irrelevant.
The people are not compatible.
Further, many of the people have little desire to be compatible. The "other" side is seen as evil and disingenuous rather than just disagreeing. Compromise is thus impossible in the same way as the current Washington political situation. Gridlock. Forever. No quarter given or expected.
So, no worries, Dice Holdings. This will continue to be a profitable generator of page and ad views for the foreseeable future.
No, hot weather is not a problem to all thermal electricity generation. It's a limitation only to those power plants that rely on water for cooling. The issue is that in exceptionally warm weather the temperature differential is not large enough to cool the water sufficiently. A thermal plant that operates at higher temperatures would not have this limitation. To run at higher temperatures requires using a coolant other than water.
This is where molten salt reactors come in. MSRs operate at temperatures high enough that the temperature difference of the outside air is largely irrelevant. These reactors operate at temperatures that would melt aluminum. At that high temperature the air is a sufficient heat, even if the reactor is located in Death Valley under a noon day sun.
I'm no longer an advocate of mixed sources of power generation like I used to be. I think all of our grid electricity could, and should, come from nuclear power. People that do not have access to the electrical grid should choose whatever works best for them, which might also be nuclear power. A modern MSR can load follow just as well as natural gas. Nuclear power is very insensitive to the price of the fuel, it uses so little fuel to produce such vast amount of usable electricity that a change of the fuel price by orders of magnitude will change the price to the consumer by only pennies. As pointed out above a MSR does not care about the weather. MSRs can be placed just about anywhere that power is needed.
Solar, wind, hydro, whatever are certainly welcome to attach to the grid to provide power in my world, I just don't see the need. Modern nuclear power could be so cheap and reliable that if allowed to reach it's full potential that I feel no other power source could compete.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Umm, I'm for both. There's no need for separation.
Nuclear is the best option until we can get solar or other working as well for base load, and have storage options. If we used the right type of reactors, there wouldn't be much longlived nuclear waste either.
Slashdot Beta Fail
Why are the comments nested on both edges?
Why so much white space on the right half of the screen
How do you change the comment level (I want to only see >3)
The upconing articles are gone.... never to returen ??
Option to post without preview is gone- almost good
How to go back to original Slashdot ?
In a perfectly efficient world, nothing would be wasted, so there would be no room for contention and competition. This is an ideal, I know, but we should measure ourselves relative to it, and no other absolute reference. If cooperation is, as it must be, efficiency and thermodynamics will force them to either cooperate or die, so why wait to start getting along?
John_Chalisque
No, hot weather is not a problem to all thermal electricity generation. It's a limitation only to those power plants that rely on water for cooling.
At the levels these plants operate on, it's all about economic decisions, and using water as your heatsink is relatively cheap.
The issue is that in exceptionally warm weather the temperature differential is not large enough to cool the water sufficiently.
Actually, at least in the states the problem is more likely to be EPA guidelines protecting the wildlife. Other countries have their own equivalents which is why I think the French killing fish stocks by raising a lake's water temperature too high is unlikely. On the other hand, I've read about shutdowns in the states where the natural temperature of the water rose to the point that it exceeded the allowable release temperature, IE it was coming in hotter than the plant was allowed to release it at.
I'm reminded of the proposed additional generators at Palo Verde which would have been dry cooling - completely air cooled, and while it's not in death valley it's still in a desert location.
Living up in Alaska, I'd love to see some cogenerating nuclear plants - use the 'waste' heat to warm buildings in the area. No real worry about things being too hot there!
Though for the 'entire' USA I'd recommend a mix, on the basis of energy generation(IE actual generation, not faceplate):
40% nuclear - this is average baseload for the states
20% solar - we average 50% more energy usage during the day than at night. 2(night) + 3(day) = 5, 1/5=20%
20% wind - max without serious risk of destabilization, not so high that we're putting too many turbines in non-ideal locations
20% other - about half this category is hydrodam, but also includes tidal, geothermal, biomass, etc... Most of your peaking is here.
I don't read AC A human right
You statement does not account for the grid. It does not acknowledge that the problem with renewables vs.carbon-based, vs nuclear is that the grid is developed to use carbon-based resources and that alternatives are put at an economic and practical disadvantage. The grid was designed by carbon-energy providers and they attempt to create a captive market by persuading utilities to not build very well WRT renewables. There are abundant wind resources in the north Great Plains, but they can't be used very well because the grid doesn't extend out there and that is in the interest of the coal-natural-gas-oil companies.
BTW you Sig needs editing it should be "Rich or Powerful Men exploit Poor and Weak Men" and possibly change "Men" to "People". It doesn't matter the means of setting priorities in society weather market or centralized, we are all capable of abusing power, which I think is what you really mean to say.
The anti-nuke crowd (which is overwhelmingly pro-renewables) has been attacking nuclear power for generations. Once they give up that aggression, you might see some amity forming and true solutions coming around.
/// Not a super-genius . . . yet. ///
A commercial nuclear reactor does follow the steam load in power output.
But, the efficiency loss is at the turbine end. With only one massive turbine for generation you have to keep it rolling at top load to get the best output efficiency.
And, it costs the same maintenance cost and personnel staffing cost to run at 100% power or 30% power.
You could make a nuclear plant power scaling with a major re-design... i.e. multiple smaller turbine generators that would be brought online as the power output requirement increased.
But, you would still have the same need for the number of people for maintenance and operation at reduced power or full power.
Hydroelectric is in the same situation. It costs the same to operate whether you are running one or all turbines at a given time. More cost effective to maximize output for the cost of operation.
NRRPT/RCT
So it's no surprise that nuclear advocates and the people who are vested in this expensive technology, with markedly hidden long-term costs, are geared-up to manipulate and propagandize.
Renewables work, the money you get out of investment in them works, the technology developed has somewhere to go, to improve...
This latest attempt to con people into a fake package deal, a fake option of both or none, is politics as usual. Follow the money. It's so obvious.
The thing that isn't being discussed is what needs to happen to the grid in the US. It's regional, mostly build around railroads and petrochemicals, it's inefficient. It's expensive to maintain these multiple regional grids, and there is no time-zone shifting of load, which is, to put it bluntly, idiotic yet profitable for certain corporations and political interests.
We need a modern grid, we need literally a hundred times more geothermal development and baseline capacity, and we need to stop letting the big corporations call the shots with their only real interest being in the short term returns on investment to the long term detriment of society, technology, and the nation as a whole...
There is nothing visionary about claiming nuclear is competitive and cost effective, and better than renewables in ANY way. THAT facade ignores the true long term cost of nuclear power.
You export energy in a bright summer day, and import in a hot night in the summer and on windless days in the winter.
You're trying to mislead others pretending you don't depend on France and neighbor countries with large baseload sources to make up for what Germany today lacks in baseload generation capacity.
The current German plan is 100% contingent on importing energy often, and when you do export, it's due to overproduction, it's energy that must be dumped into neighbor countries (to avoid throwing it away).
I suggest you compare the net cost of those exports and imports. It should be telling.
1 - The last really old plants (1950s designs) in the world was decommissioned almost 15 years ago, the ones operating in Germany were decommissioned even earlier. Nuclear power was only widely deployed in the mid 1960s, before that were only demonstration/research/plutonium making reactors, producing so little electricity they were shutdown in the late 70s.
2 - Your argument that is was decided 20 years ago to shutdown nuclear, with nuclear power bribing govt was more like the govt extorted more money from nuclear operator with higher taxes instead. Yes, public opinion in Germany is extremely anti-nuclear, which is unfortunate, since the best anti-nuclear argument is nuclear don't load follow (they should produce the cheapest electricity, and be operated around the clock instead).
3-Are you aware that average generation capacity of solar in the winter solstice (in German lattitudes) is about 1% (compared to 25% in the summer) ?
Solar PV in nov/dec/jan in Germany is less than 2GW at noon.