yeah, right. a report from an opponent of renewables who reports of behalf of major utility and fossil fuel interests
Is it really? I took a look at the Wikipedia pages of each company to see what kind of investments these companies have.
like Exelon;
They sold off their holdings in coal. They have huge investment in nuclear and hydro. Bought up a bunch of wind and solar projects. Stands to benefit greatly from carbon cap-and-trade.
Occidental;
Sold off all their holdings in coal 25 years ago. Produces a lot of natural gas, which would be needed as backup power for wind and solar, and therefore would benefit from expanded wind and solar investment and government subsidies.
Duke Energy;
Does own a lot of coal generation. Owns a lot of nuclear, including a site for which they were issued a license for a new plant in 2016. Owns a lot of hydro, including pumped hydro storage. Just completed a big solar power farm in 2017. Is in a good position to gain from carbon cap-and-trade.
and FirstEnergy to name a few
Has large investments in coal and nuclear power. Filed for bankruptcy and asked for federal intervention to prevent closure of some of its coal and nuclear power plants. Announced plans to close a large coal fired power plant as well as several nuclear power reactors. Of the companies you mentioned this appears to be the only one that has any reason to oppose renewable energy. Even then it's been trying to "greenwash" it's image by converting coal plants to biomass, made investments in experimental carbon sequestration, and made plans to re-power nuclear power reactors.
All these companies would see more profit from increased electricity usage from electric cars. Occidental stand to profit either way since they have investment in oil and natural gas. First Energy would be the biggest loser from reduced electric vehicle subsidies as they risk going out of business if people aren't buying enough electricity to keep their nuclear power plants open. It seems odd for companies that rely so heavily on low carbon electricity for their income to fund a report that encourages people to buy fossil fuel burning cars instead of electric ones, discourage government subsidies in energy from wind and sun, and highlights the benefits to air quality from improved internal combustion engines.
I'd expect these companies to want a report that goes into detail on how to reduce CO2 and air pollution from investments in electric vehicles powered by new nuclear, extending the life of existing nuclear, expanded use of wind and solar, and the need for pumped hydro storage and clean(er) natural gas to moderate the intermittent nature of renewable energy.
I'll put it another way, do you have a better report I should read?
Yes, nuclear is greener than coal and NG. But even with coal, power plants are greener than ICE engines. Your post is disingenuous at best.
No, that's not true. An electric car charged from the grid in an area of the country that relies heavily on coal will have increased CO2 emissions per mile as compared to a gasoline burning car.
Graff Zivin, along with economics researchers Matthew Kotchen and Erin Mansur, waded into this contentious territory in a 2014 paper. Zivin concluded that a plug-in electric vehicle, such as the Nissan Leaf, always produces less carbon dioxide emissions than a hybrid electric- and gas-powered car - but only in selected regions that rely on less coal, like the western United States and Texas. Charging from the coal-dependent grid in the upper midwest of the US at night could generate more emissions than an average gasoline car. And, in some US regions, plugging in at different times of day could even double an electric car's emissions impact.
The common claim is that this shortfall in nuclear will be made up with more wind and solar. The problem is that growth in solar and wind is not keeping pace with the planned shuttering of nuclear power. This means that the balance will be made up with coal and natural gas.
But this isn't about the environmental impact of electric cars, this is about the future profitability of Tesla.
Tesla will soon lose their federal subsidies while other electric car manufacturers will keep them. https://www.forbes.com/sites/g...
Maybe Tesla can weather this long enough for the playing field to level as other manufacturers lose their subsidies as well, through name recognition, a larger profit margin, and less cost sensitive luxury car buyers. If only the virtue signalling types knew that electric cars aren't so great for the environment, then maybe they'd buy a "green" gasoline car instead. That is unless we get more nuclear, if we see more nuclear power then their "green" status symbolism is restored.
This is the same BS that happened with penicillin etc. Yeah, if you give every single farm animal half a dose per day, everything is going to grow resistant.
What a bunch of bullshit.
Farmers aren't as stupid as you think. They know bacteria can get resistance to antibiotics if they are overused. I grew up on a farm and we used antibiotics fairly regularly, but far from daily. Pigs would get a shot of antibiotics when they were brought off the truck into the confinement building. They wouldn't get another shot unless one got sick, and only that one pig would be separate from the rest and get a shot. If the pig improved then it would be returned to the pen with the rest of the pigs. If it didn't improve then it got another shot... from a revolver. The carcass would then be fed to the dogs.
The cattle, like the pigs, typically got one shot of antibiotics in their life. This would happen when they got big enough to dehorn. They'd be run one by one into a dehorn chute where one guy would cut of the horns and another would give a shot of antibiotics. If a cow got sick then it might get a shot of antibiotics, and if it was producing milk at the time the milk would be discarded. If the cow got better then it would be returned to producing milk. If it didn't then it would be sent to the rendering plant for leather and bone meal, the meat would be discarded.
All meat and milk is tested for antibiotics randomly and when there is suspicion of contamination. I'm not aware of any fines imposed but a dairy farmer seeing 1000 gallons of grade A milk get dumped down the drain, and not getting paid for that shipment, is punishment enough.
Almost all natural gas service is very low pressure.
Household service is very low pressure, less than 100 psi at the street and regulated down to a fraction of a psi to inside the home. Main service feeders run as high as 1500 psi.
Compressing it for use in a vehicle costs a lot of energy, even if you have the patience to do it near-adiabatically.
People do have compressors at home to fill their natural gas cars so it can be done cheaply enough to compete with gasoline. CNG filling stations have higher pressure feed lines, bigger compressors, and high pressure tanks on site. They can get the costs down through economy of scale and fill a CNG vehicle in minutes, about the same time as it would to fill a gasoline or diesel fuel tank.
Not efficient.
It all depends on your point of view and the specifics of the situation. Natural gas is the primary source of electricity in many places in the USA. Burning that natural gas in a turbine for electricity, then moving that down long wires, and charging up an electric car is not all that efficient either. Shipping that natural gas down a 100 psi feeder, regulating it down to 1/4 psi, then pumping that back up to 2000 psi in the vehicle tank, does have losses but I'm guessing still more efficient than electric cars in turning natural gas to transportation. If you live in a place that gets it's electricity from nuclear or hydro then that changes the calculations.
In the end though people don't much care about being energy efficient, they want maximum convenience at minimum cost. CNG has the convenience of at home refuel (like an electric), quick refuel at a filling station (just like gasoline), and at a cost less than or equal to any gasoline or electric.
The Tesla semi is as range limited as the Toyota hydrogen semis, both about 300 miles. It's not unheard of for a diesel engine truck to get 2000 miles on one fill. If we assume a truck driver goes their daily limit of about 10 hours in a day, on an open road pace of 70 MPH, that's 700 miles in a day. If an alternative fuel truck can't do even a single day on one tank, and have some left over for an emergency reserve, then it's not going to replace diesel.
Diesel trucks can allow for a 700 mile day drive out, an overnight stop, then a day drive back to base, and still have reserve for any detours or delays. With electric trucks the distance from base, where the chargers would be, and back is 150 miles and nothing left for reserve. Improvements on range to 500 miles on a charge, but allowing for some reserve, puts that range at 200 miles or so.
Electric semis will most likely out compete these hydrogen semis. What electrics won't do is replace diesel, at least not any time soon.
I brought up CNG trucks in my previous posts because the concern with the diesel trucks running these short run hauls is that they are dirtying the air around the dock and the cities to where they deliver. CNG burns clean enough that they are used indoors, in factories and warehouses, for trucks and forklifts. Propane is popular too, but I haven't seen any propane trucks, only forklifts. CNG trucks already exist, and there is plenty of natural gas to burn. If long range is needed then it's almost trivial to put a natural gas filling station most any where, because natural gas lines are everywhere. Hydrogen is difficult to pipe in, and when put on a truck it takes a lot of space for the energy it moves. Making hydrogen at the filling station is possible but means installing and operating expensive equipment, and which would likely be producing the hydrogen from natural gas anyway.
Dual fuel trucks do seem to be catching some traction. Dual fuel means the truck burns both CNG and diesel fuel. It can't run without diesel but it can run without natural gas. Not as clean burning as hydrogen or CNG but an established technology with little risk for fleet owners and big improvements on air quality. Dual fuel trucks can run clean(er) on short hauls where fleet owners can install their own natural gas filling stations, but can still run long hauls by filling up at any truck stop with diesel fuel.
Tesla entices people with "free" charging as well, for a while. How is that different?
Unlike hydrogen an electric car is not going to run out of a place to get filled up if/when the subsidies run out.
Those hydrogen filling points exist because of the subsidies. People fill up there because the fuel is free to them. If/when the subsidies run out the filling stations will have to support themselves on what they charge for fuel. Given the price of hydrogen now it's unlikely the stations can stay profitable, people will simply choose to sell the car or (if it can plug-in) just drive it like an electric. I'm guessing that people can find a way to fill up with hydrogen from an industrial gas supplier but that's going to be far less convenient and far higher cost.
Electricity is cheap and available nearly everywhere. A Tesla doesn't need to recharge at a Tesla charging point. Charging at a Tesla charging point can be cheaper or even free, it's likely faster than any other place to charge, but a Tesla is not tied to Tesla charging points like hydrogen fuel cell cars are tied to hydrogen filling points. If the hydrogen car has an ability to plug-in for recharging it's battery then it's not much different than any plug-in hybrid electric, there's an option to run on fuel or electricity, and if there's no fuel then it's just an electric car.
That brings me to something I've suspected for a long time, I suspect that few people with plug-in hybrid electric cars actually plug them in for a recharge. We've been trained for refilling a car at a station with decades of gasoline fueled cars, and filling a gas tank takes only minutes. Recharging an electric at home takes overnight with a standard 120 volt plug, and still hours with a 240 volt plug that few people have. It's probably cheaper to run on electricity than gasoline but gasoline is still cheap enough that I suspect people are willing to pay for the convenience of a quick fill up, and an excuse to go to the gas station where they can buy lottery tickets, cigarettes, pizza, or whatever their vice might be.
The funds for the hydrogen likely come from a combination of car maker funding (paid for by buyers of their hydrogen, and non-hydrogen, cars), government subsidies, electric utility funding (because they get future customers if hydrogen from electrolysis takes off), and investment from "greenies" buying carbon offsets (which is either another government subsidy through a carbon tax, or just virtue signaling).
These fuel cell vehicles almost always have a battery pack to go with the fuel cells. This can be a means to buffer the output from the fuel cells and/or a means to be able to drive as a plug-in electric when/where hydrogen is in short supply. My guess is that once these cars run out of the "free" hydrogen that they will be sold off for parts, converted to a more conventional hybrid or pure electric, or driven unmodified as a plug-in electric (the fuel cells just being dead weight).
With a cost for fuel that high I can't see hydrogen getting very far in market penetration. I find it difficult to believe that hydrogen prices will come down much unless there is a drop in the feedstock for the hydrogen. Right now that feedstock is primarily natural gas, oil, and electricity, and if those prices come down then hydrogen still loses out on the competition.
When are people going to realise that hydrogen based vehicle are never going to amount to anything. I have been reading about them since the 1980s and it has gone nowhere in all that time.
That will probably happen about the time public schools teach real math and science.
I can't help but wonder how many hydrogen vehicles were bank rolled by big oil to muddy the waters around EV development.
I doubt "big oil" is behind funding hydrogen. They have nothing to gain from this. There's certainly a lot of hydrogen produced from natural gas right now but the oil companies have to know that if someone makes a working hydrogen vehicle that the next step is someone finding a means to improve electrolysis of water for hydrogen.
I'm guessing it's the car and truck manufacturers funding this. They are the primary target of "greenies" because of the petroleum they burn. Car makers have a lot to gain on hydrogen because the "greenies" are doing all they can to make car ownership unattractive. If cars can be proven to be able to run on hydrogen then nearly all the complaints on environmental impact go away.
News flash, EVs are here now and for most people practical (but still over priced) and hydrogen solutions will not be able to catch up with EVs.
News flash, no long haul truck is going to run on batteries.
Batteries just do not have the energy density required to keep a truck moving long distances. Trains might solve some of the long haul transport needed, and they can be electrified, but trucks still need reasonable range to do multiple short hauls in a day to compete with diesel. Even these short haul trucks can't be electric. This hydrogen fuel cell truck that Toyota is showcasing has a range of 300 miles or so on a tank, which is barely enough for running a day driving loops around a dockyard.
I worked in a metalwork shop and they had two forklifts for moving parts inside the shop. The "small" one (small in quotes because it's relative) was electric. The big forklift was propane. No one liked to drive the electric forklift because it was underpowered, and once the battery ran down it was done for the day and needed overnight to charge. In a forklift the weight of the battery wasn't much of an issue because it served nicely as a counterweight against what was being lifted, the propane forklift had steel counterweights. On even a short haul truck the battery weight counts against it as that reduces the cargo it can carry. On a long haul truck the batteries would have to weigh more than the cargo to get a reasonable range.
Battery-electric passenger cars are fine for a daily driver. Even then most owners of a BEV have a second gasoline vehicle for longer drives, such as taking the kids to visit Grandma once per month. The practicality of BEVs to be a true replacement for gasoline and diesel fuel vehicles is still questionable. Plug-in hybrids are a nice compromise but they are still burning hydrocarbons. Compressed natural gas vehicles seem like a more viable compromise over BEVs and gasoline. CNG vehicles cut CO2 emissions by half, can fill up at home like an electric (since many homes have natural gas service already), and can tank up in minutes at a station equipped with a CNG filling point.
I've seen hydrogen mixed with natural gas as a compromise, it reduces CO2 emissions further than natural gas alone but does away with many problems of hydrogen storage as the hydrogen is "dissolved" in the natural gas and doesn't attack seals and metals (and therefore creating dangerous leaks) like pure hydrogen. If we see hydrogen make it to the transportation market then it's likely to be as a mix with methane and other hydrocarbon gasses. This methane doesn't have to be from fracking out of the ground, it can be synthesized or from biomass processing.
If these trucks use hydrogen from electrolysis, in California (the planned location for most of these trucks), and California continues with their plans to drive nuclear power out of the state, then these are natural gas powered trucks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There are no mines or wells to bring up hydrogen from the earth. Given current sources of electricity for electrolysis and how hydrogen is predominately formed this is a truck that burns natural gas. There are already natural gas trucks on the market, Kenworth announced they'd have some in 2104. https://www.kenworth.com/news/...
Given that T. Boone Pickens has been talking about his "Pickens Plan" on energy policy for 10 years now moving transportation fuel to natural gas is far from new. https://www.ted.com/talks/t_bo...
Cut out the middle man from natural gas to moving cargo and just use natural gas in the trucks. What hydrogen does is add the costs and losses in running power plants on natural gas for water electrolysis, or using that natural gas in steam reformers. Natural gas trucks exist now, they have better range than these hydrogen trucks, and I'm guessing that they cost less to make and maintain. Natural gas reduces particulate emissions, NOx emissions, CO2 emission, and other air quality problems.
If we burn natural gas in trucks instead of for electricity then where do we get our electricity? Pickens endorses wind and nuclear, and I believe he's right about that. Pickens admits his plan is a "bridge", a plan that alone is not a permanent solution because the natural gas will run out at some point. Something will have to replace even natural gas at some point. How long can natural gas last? Decades at least, if not centuries, so it's not like investing in natural gas will be a loss for someone buying a fleet of trucks, the trucks will have plenty of natural gas for the life of the truck.
What's one possible endpoint for the Pickens Plan "bridge"? Synthesized fuel. The US Navy has been researching how to turn electricity and seawater into jet fuel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
This synthetic fuel process from the US Navy doesn't have to produce only jet fuel, it can produce hydrocarbons of any length on that carbon chain, from methane (the primary component of natural gas with one carbopn) to cetane (primary component of diesel fuel with 16 carbons).
Synthetic fuels from this process the Navy is researching produces hydrogen as part of the process, they just take one more step of grabbing carbon (from CO2 dissolved in the water) and attach it to the hydrogen to make fuel. The Navy is intending this electricity to come from a nuclear power plant on a large warship but the electricity can come from anywhere, and the water can come from anywhere it is exposed to the air and dissolves the CO2 from the atmosphere. It closes the carbon cycle so this fuel is as "carbon free" as anything else.
I expect any plans to use hydrogen as transportation fuel to fail, unless that means of transportation is a rocket. It's just far easier and cheaper to cut out the hydrogen middle man and burn natural gas for cleaner running trucks. If the concern is CO2 output even from the natural gas then produce "synthetic natural gas" (or rather "substitute natural gas" since synthetic and natural are opposing terms) and introduce that into the existing natural gas infrastructure.
Hydrogen is a terrible fuel, especially since it's not really a "fuel" as most people understand it since it does not exist as something we can just dig up out of the ground. This Toyota truck burning hydrogen is a stupid idea and there are already existing solutions that are far easier and cheaper to implement.
Then explain me why in a desert around 12AM solar power is unreliable....
That's a very interesting definition of "reliable". I guess solar is "reliable" if you define it so narrowly to the point it's nothing more than "when the sun shines". My last car was "reliable" when the weather was warm and no snow on the streets, but in the winter it didn't like to start and had trouble getting up the steep hill in front of my house in the snow.
Or at any ofher place or time?
I'll remember that when a nuclear power plant has to reduce power or shutdown because of a heat wave. Nuclear power is "reliable" except in a time and place where the heat sink isn't cool enough.
There is completely reliable no sun at mid night, and there is completely reliable ligh around noon, unless you live close to the poles.
Again: you are mixing up dispatchable with reliable.
Repeating your claim does not make it true. Perhaps you could explain further, such as why "dispatchable" is relevant to the discussion. Just repeating yourself is very childish.
Regarding the costs, solar is the second cheapest power source, after wind, since nearly a decade now... get up to date man.
Then why is only 2% of the world's energy from solar? If it's so cheap (and reliable) then everyone would want it. Egypt is building a big solar energy collector but they are also building a nuclear power plant with four reactors. If solar is so great compared to nuclear then why is Egypt bothering with nuclear and not just building more solar instead?
Perhaps then we'll just have to agree to disagree.
Solar power is neither expensive nor unreliable.
Well, things like "expensive" and "reliable" are relative. Solar compared to nuclear, coal, natural gas, or even wind, is expensive and unreliable. What's your metric for comparison?
You keep mixing up 'reliable' with 'dispatchable'.
No, I'm not.
Two complete different things!
I agree that they are two different things, I'll use "dispatchable" when it's appropriate and "reliable" when it's appropriate. I used "unreliable" to describe solar power and I meant that.
But, this whole argument goes away if the solar plant they're building uses molten salts.
That's a lot like the arguments against nuclear power going away if new nuclear reactors are built are using molten salts.
If you want to bring up some experimental technology in solar power to make the case for solar power then nuclear power advocates should be able to bring up experimental technology to make the case for nuclear power. Just like molten salt solar can use high temperature salts for thermal energy storage and load following so can molten salt nuclear reactors.
If pumped hydro can be used for solar energy storage then so can pumped hydro be used for nuclear energy storage. In fact, the Tennessee Valley Authority uses pumped hydro storage to allow their coal and nuclear power plants to follow loads. I've visited one of the facilities.
Barring some grand leap in solar and wind technology we will be using more nuclear power very soon. A leap in storage technology helps nuclear power adoptions just as much, if not more, than wind and solar.
I look forward to any use of solar molten salt technology. That will demonstrate many of the technologies currently proposed for fourth generation nuclear power. Maybe these next generation reactors won't use a molten salt fuel, but it could use a high temperature solid fuel and molten salt cooling.
Imagine instead of nuclear power we were talking about space flight.
"We can't send people into space!" "Why not?" "Because of the Challenger explosion!" "You do realize that was 32 years ago, don't you? With technology that's 40 years old now." "But getting into space is so expensive and dangerous, with every launch needing handcrafted rockets and a history of so many failures." "Rockets come off assembly lines now, built by highly automated manufacturing, using redundant safety mechanisms and fail safe systems."
Now that same thing with nuclear.
"We can't use nuclear power!" "Why not?" "Because of the Chernobyl explosion!" "You do realize that was 32 years ago, don't you? With technology that's 40 years old now." "But nuclear power is so expensive and dangerous, with every power plant needing handcrafted reactors and a history of so many failures." "Nuclear reactors come off assembly lines now, built by highly automated manufacturing, using redundant safety mechanisms and fail safe systems."
I don't know how old you are but I'm old enough to remember Challenger and Chernobyl. There's people now that have no recollection of those incidents. Someone born in 1986 would be 32 years old now, old enough to have joined the US Navy at 18, become a nuclear technician, and looking forward to retirement after serving their 20 years just about the time President Trump would leave office if he serves two terms. What do you believe that person thinks of nuclear power? How do you believe that person will vote in that election? Keep in mind that while this person was in school he or she would have been told in public school modern history classes that the wars in the Middle East were conflicts over oil. Since then the USA has started building nuclear power plants again and much of Europe is starting to rely on Russian natural gas.
My predictions on the future are worth precisely what you paid for them. What's happening now is not history repeating but it does rhyme. The young adults today grew up in a time of very safe and reliable nuclear power, and seeing people argue and fight over energy that nuclear power could provide. I gave an example of someone with first hand knowledge of nuclear power, which is admittedly a small portion of the population. These people though have families and friends. There's a lot of people now that know someone that served on nuclear powered Navy vessels. These people only know of Chernobyl and Challenger as something they read about in some college history course.
What of Fukushima? Again, that's 1970s technology, older than Chernobyl. It's also in a far off place which was only read about on the internet and seen in history classes. Go ahead, keep bringing up Chernobyl as an argument against nuclear power because that's just about the only thing people can bring up to make their case. That's like telling someone that saw a Tesla sports coupe get launched to Mars about how people died on Challenger.
If you actually bothered to read the report, rather than just look at the charts and graphs, you'd see that they point out that their cost analysis did not account for issues like the regional needs and existing electricity generation capacity.
In other words, it's complicated.
If wind power didn't need these subsidies then the wind lobby wouldn't spend so much money on push poll calls, radio advertisements, and letters in the mail, for me to vote a certain way. What has happened is that these wind subsidies have turned into a political money laundering scheme. A political party can now vote in favor of wind subsidy to encourage these subsidies getting turned into political contributions. The politicians can leverage a their vote in favor of a wind subsidy to get money for reelection.
I'll give you two guesses on which political party benefits from energy subsidies, like those for wind.
Third generation nuclear is fine where it works, but it does have limitations. It needs water cooling which limits site selection, and produces low temperature heat making it useless for industrial processes. That leaves a large part of the clean energy problem unaddressed.
Third generation nuclear is pretty bad about needing cooling water. Running at such low temperatures does mean that it's useful for industrial heat or electricity, but not both at the same time. Saying it leaves a large part of the clean energy problem unaddressed is a stretch. Third generation nuclear is basically a coal plant but without needing the coal, that alone solves a lot of problems. Fourth generation would be better, for example being able to produce heat for electricity and still have enough heat left over for something like desalinating water. If we lifted the effective ban on fourth generation nuclear today then we could expect prototypes in 5 years, and small scale commercial plants in 10 years. At least that's what the molten salt reactor people claim.
Less obvious, is that water cooled reactors will always be very high pressure systems necessitating ~9" (23cm) thick piping/pressure vessels, and enormous concrete/steel containment structures for when pressure is lost and the water flashes to steam. There is no avoiding the large amount of complicated and time-consuming on-site construction work, and there are few places able to forge the parts needed, both of which will slow builds.
The only reason these large parts are so difficult to obtain is that there's been no demand for them. Show the industry a demand, by issuing licenses for reactors, and we'll see the forges built. You think those forges we have now just appeared from thin air? They appeared because people wanted these large forged parts.
There are ways to avoid these complicated and time consuming on-site construction. Set up a license structure where a design is approved so an assembly line can be made. You think nuclear reactors can't be made assembly line style? We do that with Boeing jets, those are multi-million dollar projects that are at least as complex as a nuclear reactor. The difference is that a nuclear reactor tend to stay in the same spot once it is powered up. We build Nimitz class aircraft carriers on an assembly line, and that's a multi-billion dollar project with a nuclear power plant inside.
Molten salt reactors address these issues, and are inherently safe low-pressure/high-temperature systems, which may be compact and factory produced, with simple on-site construction and safety systems. Some supporting conventional nuclear are failing to appreciate these points and actively critical of advanced reactors, when they are a necessary part of a viable roadmap.
We don't need to go to molten salt reactors for assembly line production of nuclear power. Military nuclear reactors have been built assembly line style for decades. The only difference is the scale.
I'm not so sure the incumbent nuclear power people are as opposed to molten salt reactors. They opposed molten salt reactors in the past because it threatened their "razor and blades" business model. They'd take a hit on the building of the reactor knowing they'd make a good sized profit on making the fuel assemblies. Now that all these reactors are starting to reach end of life their ability to profit on the fuel manufacture will dry up. Even a single plant shutdown could threaten this model. I'm guessing that we'll see solid fuel reactors get shut down because the people supplying the fuel just don't want to be in that business any more. This will force the utilities to shutdown the reactor or go through the process of finding someone willing to make the high precision fuel assemblies.
It's great being the first to do something but no one is afraid of being second. A lot of details behind building a MSR was lost when the experimental reactors were
You would think a mature world-saving technology wouldn't need government support OR you trying to hijack discussions of solar power with FUD.
I'm fine with doing away with the energy subsidies. Let's not subsidize solar, wind, oil, coal, ethanol, or even nuclear. Let's level the playing field and see who wins.
Given how loudly the wind lobby screams (usually into my phone in election years) when their precious subsidies are threatened I suspect even "mature world saving technology" that is wind wouldn't be very successful without the subsidies they've been getting.
Solar is quite likely a suitable energy source for a nation like Egypt. Here's what I expect to happen though, if the people planning these projects plan this out like so many others in the past, they'll soon exceed their ability to match supply to load and end up with excessive costs and unreliable electricity.
It's real easy to go from 0% solar power to 10%. Getting from 10% to 20% solar is often a bit harder but still rather trivial. What usually happens when trying to get past 15% or 20% of wind and solar is there's a need for some kind of energy storage, or means to shed demand. This is what happened in California and Hawaii as a result of solar power subsidies. Germany is seeing this, but offset to some extent because they can still import electricity from it's neighbors with plentiful nuclear, hydro, and natural gas, and export excess wind and solar when they have it. Germany is basically using the rest of Europe as a battery, but paying for this service in having to buy high and sell low.
Egypt has already got to the point of having to import fuel for their electricity. They have some hydroelectricity that they might be able to convert to pumped storage, which would be helpful for expanding reliance on solar power. A quick search of the internet tells me that Egypt has signed a deal with Russia to build a nuclear power plant. I'm not sure if construction started yet as the news articles I found claimed construction would start in 2017.
Egypt will have to do something new. They've run out of rivers to dam up. They already started importing natural gas. On top of it all, oil is their major export and domestic oil consumption started to take a big bite out of their production decades ago.
Egypt will have to do more than just solar to solve their problems.
That's still fewer than the number of birds killed by Texas hunters every year.
I don't dispute that it's fewer. I also don't dispute that lots of birds are killed by hunters in Texas. I'm just curious though where you got that number. Is that birds taken in legal hunts? Illegally killed? Both? I'm guessing that if this is all legal hunting then how is that relevant? The reason that hunters can take these birds as game is because it is deemed as part of population control of certain species. That's how conservation works.
Can you please stop pretending you care about birds?
Oh, right, I forgot my usual disclaimer. Birds are jerks. I don't care about the birds.
It is possible for you to say that you don't believe there should be any solar energy used in the US, and only nuclear plants should be built and subsidized by the government without having to make up some big narrative about saving the lives of birds.
I just thought it would be relevant to the discussion to put bird deaths by the different energy sources into perspective. I'm not arguing that nuclear should be used to the exclusion of all other energy sources, only that nuclear must be part of the solution to solve our energy problems if a modern economy is to continue existing.
If you loved birds, you would hate hunting,
I don't see why I can't love birds and hunting. Birds are jerks but they are also tasty.
and my guess is you're one of these brave militia types who believe that the tree of liberty has to be watered with the blood of innocent animals. Or something. For liberty. So don't play. Peddle your FUD elsewhere.
The whole of the arguments against nuclear power are based on fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Whenever there's a mention of trying to get a new nuclear reactor built there's mention of Chernobyl and Fukushima. Both those reactors were second generation designs, designs that required active safety systems to prevent a meltdown. With Chernobyl the active safety systems were disabled by drunken fools that wanted to impress their superiors. With Fukushima the problems were the active safety systems were overwhelmed by a combination of ignoring known faults in the design (just having the sea wall to spec could have saved the plant) and that it was hit by a rare tsunami that exceeded expectations. Well, we have new expectations now. We also have had passive safety systems, that don't require external power like second generation designs, for at least 20 years now.
What kind of FUD did I bring here? I showed my math. I know I didn't cite my sources but if you dispute them I'll go dig them up for you.
Seems like you have a bit of underdog syndrome going there blindseer. Nuclear has been going since the 50's when it was "too cheap to meter" and received billions of dollars of taxpayer funded subsidies - and still does.
I can't find the precise numbers right now but nuclear does get billions in subsidies, but wind and solar get many times more. Nuclear power produces about 20% of the electricity in the USA, while wind and solar produce less than 10% combined. That means we get much more electricity for each dollar spent on nuclear than from wind and solar.
You're all about blaming NIMBYs and greenies for the Nuclear industries woes instead of the fact that it isn't a cost effective investment.
Huh? I'm not sure what you are saying here. It's pretty apparent that the reason nuclear power is not cost effective is because of the NIMBYs and "greenies" constantly protesting and tossing wrenches in the works. The material and engineering costs for a nuclear power plant are comparable to that of a coal plant, which makes sense because the two kinds of plants are highly similar. The only reason nuclear costs so much is because of the lawyers having to fight constantly for a license to get issued. Since they keep fighting for these licenses, in spite of the legal costs, then they still must expect to get their money back somehow. It's cost effective, otherwise no one would bother to even apply for a license.
You're all about everyone else being too stupid to see how good *some new reactor technology* is when it is the oil and coal companies that comprehensively dismantled that technology by lobbying government.
Current third generation designs do just fine on being cost effective, safe, low carbon, and low waste. It's because NIMBYs have kept protesting and suing the government when a license for a new reactor is issued that we have kept these second generation power plants running for decades beyond their designed life span. We don't need "some new technology" to make nuclear power cheap and safe, we just need a government willing to issue licenses for new reactors to replace the old. But there's far less political risk to extend the license on an old reactor than issue a license for a replacement. We can thank the NIMBYs for that. So, we have dozens of second generation reactors, like at Chernobyl and Fukushima, instead of far safer third generation designs.
Oh, and there's political risk in not extending the licenses for old nuclear power plants. That would mean protests for new coal plants, or natural gas plants, that would have to replace it. Or even some NIMBY not wanting windmills to spoil their view of the bay. There would also be protests for lost jobs at shuttering a nuclear power plant. So, the NIMBYs backed the politicians in a corner, and the path of least resistance is quietly extending the license on a 40 or 50 year old nuclear reactor for another 10 years.
You're all about forcing lots of other people who have valid concerns to accept your worldview without addressing those concerns.
But they are not valid concerns. Nuclear power is safe. This is especially true with current third generation designs instead of the second generation designs that like to get "explody" when run by drunken soviet bureaucrats, or hit by a once in a century tsunami. We aren't going to get rid of the "explody" reactors without replacing them with new reactors, because even with the NIMBYs the path to a new reactor has lower resistance than coal power, bird killing and view destroying wind, or letting the lights go dark.
Nuclear Ideology, it's the false reality too expensive to maintain.
Nuclear power is the worst form of energy, except all the others. We are running out of choices and new nuclear power plants will have to be built. We can do that now or later, but it will happen. It would be nice to see some o
That's 6000 birds killed per year at a single 400MW solar power facility. Let's scale that up to the 100GW that nuclear power provides in the USA.
100GW / 400MW * 6000 = 1.5 million
But then we have to factor in the capacity factor difference to get a more accurate comparison of actual energy produced. Nuclear power in the USA has an average capacity factor of over 90%, but just to make the math easy let's just assume it's four times that of Ivanpah, which has a capacity factor of about 20%. That means if we replace nuclear power in the USA with concentrated solar thermal power that would mean 6 million birds killed.
Now, we can not simply take this as the total because nuclear power does not kill zero birds. I did some searching on the internet and I get different numbers of birds killed by nuclear power but they fall between 500,000 on the high end to 300,000 on the low end. So, that would mean at least an additional 5 million birds killed if we replaced nuclear power with concentrated solar thermal power.
For comparison I've seen estimates that coal kills somewhere between 8 million and 25 million birds per year. Coal produces about 30% of the electricity in the USA. A little back of the envelope math tells me that on the low end of those numbers coal is as dangerous for birds as solar. If we take the high end of bird kills then solar looks pretty good by comparison to coal.
Wind produces about 5% of the electricity in the USA (compared to about 20% for nuclear) and kills somewhere around 250,000 birds. Scale that electrical output up to what nuclear produces and that's about 1 million per year. Not that bad, but still higher than nuclear.
None of this compares to the billions of birds killed by domestic cats but domestic cats don't hunt eagles. Windmills, solar collectors, and (I can only assume) nuclear power plants, kill eagles. Domestic cats don't kill eagles. If people care at all about protecting threatened eagle species then wind and solar are not the energy sources you are looking for.
Oh, one more thing. Electric power lines kill somewhere around 50 million birds per year. There's wide error bars on that, and I don't know how many of those would be eagles. If the solution for addressing the intermittent nature of wind and solar is putting up more power lines to move the electricity from where it is produced (as the sun and winds move) to where it is needed then we can expect this number to grow. How many more birds would be killed? I believe it doesn't matter, I've already shown that nuclear power would reduce the birds killed while wind and sun would increase it. I've established that birds would be saved with nuclear power, the only question is the magnitude.
But you do know that power need more or less follows the course of the sun? Hence you do know that the CF is completely irrelevant?
CF is relevant when comparing generating capacity with demand. Egypt currently consumes about 170 TWh per year. That means they need 170 TWh production capacity. The CF will become very important if they intend to replace oil fired plants that have a CF of (I'm pulling a number out of the air) 60% with solar panels that they can expect only 30% CF.
So why starting an argument about power with the dreaded CF?
Because solar power is notorious for over promising and under delivering. You live in Germany, no? Then you should be abundantly aware of the high costs and low reliability of solar power.
Oh, my mistake!? You did not know?
You are right, I should know not to have a battle of wits with someone that is unarmed.
That's a nice list of predictions, here's mine: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
I see nuclear power has now finally gone beyond being ignored. Seems we're at the "laugh at you" stage now. There is no carbon free energy solution for any nation, that wishes to enter the modern economy, that does not include nuclear power.
Is going 100% nuclear the only way to solve the world's energy problems? No, those videos should have made that clear. Judging by the success of a handful of nations that embraced nuclear power we can expect nuclear to be something like 50% to 80% of the solution.
Slashdot Mirror
yeah, right. a report from an opponent of renewables who reports of behalf of major utility and fossil fuel interests
Is it really? I took a look at the Wikipedia pages of each company to see what kind of investments these companies have.
like Exelon;
They sold off their holdings in coal. They have huge investment in nuclear and hydro. Bought up a bunch of wind and solar projects. Stands to benefit greatly from carbon cap-and-trade.
Occidental;
Sold off all their holdings in coal 25 years ago. Produces a lot of natural gas, which would be needed as backup power for wind and solar, and therefore would benefit from expanded wind and solar investment and government subsidies.
Duke Energy;
Does own a lot of coal generation. Owns a lot of nuclear, including a site for which they were issued a license for a new plant in 2016. Owns a lot of hydro, including pumped hydro storage. Just completed a big solar power farm in 2017. Is in a good position to gain from carbon cap-and-trade.
and FirstEnergy to name a few
Has large investments in coal and nuclear power. Filed for bankruptcy and asked for federal intervention to prevent closure of some of its coal and nuclear power plants. Announced plans to close a large coal fired power plant as well as several nuclear power reactors. Of the companies you mentioned this appears to be the only one that has any reason to oppose renewable energy. Even then it's been trying to "greenwash" it's image by converting coal plants to biomass, made investments in experimental carbon sequestration, and made plans to re-power nuclear power reactors.
All these companies would see more profit from increased electricity usage from electric cars. Occidental stand to profit either way since they have investment in oil and natural gas. First Energy would be the biggest loser from reduced electric vehicle subsidies as they risk going out of business if people aren't buying enough electricity to keep their nuclear power plants open. It seems odd for companies that rely so heavily on low carbon electricity for their income to fund a report that encourages people to buy fossil fuel burning cars instead of electric ones, discourage government subsidies in energy from wind and sun, and highlights the benefits to air quality from improved internal combustion engines.
I'd expect these companies to want a report that goes into detail on how to reduce CO2 and air pollution from investments in electric vehicles powered by new nuclear, extending the life of existing nuclear, expanded use of wind and solar, and the need for pumped hydro storage and clean(er) natural gas to moderate the intermittent nature of renewable energy.
I'll put it another way, do you have a better report I should read?
Yes, nuclear is greener than coal and NG. But even with coal, power plants are greener than ICE engines. Your post is disingenuous at best.
No, that's not true. An electric car charged from the grid in an area of the country that relies heavily on coal will have increased CO2 emissions per mile as compared to a gasoline burning car.
https://www.theguardian.com/en...
Graff Zivin, along with economics researchers Matthew Kotchen and Erin Mansur, waded into this contentious territory in a 2014 paper. Zivin concluded that a plug-in electric vehicle, such as the Nissan Leaf, always produces less carbon dioxide emissions than a hybrid electric- and gas-powered car - but only in selected regions that rely on less coal, like the western United States and Texas. Charging from the coal-dependent grid in the upper midwest of the US at night could generate more emissions than an average gasoline car. And, in some US regions, plugging in at different times of day could even double an electric car's emissions impact.
It gets worse. There are scheduled shutdowns for 10 nuclear power plants in the next 5 years.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/m...
The common claim is that this shortfall in nuclear will be made up with more wind and solar. The problem is that growth in solar and wind is not keeping pace with the planned shuttering of nuclear power. This means that the balance will be made up with coal and natural gas.
But this isn't about the environmental impact of electric cars, this is about the future profitability of Tesla.
Tesla will soon lose their federal subsidies while other electric car manufacturers will keep them.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/g...
Maybe Tesla can weather this long enough for the playing field to level as other manufacturers lose their subsidies as well, through name recognition, a larger profit margin, and less cost sensitive luxury car buyers. If only the virtue signalling types knew that electric cars aren't so great for the environment, then maybe they'd buy a "green" gasoline car instead. That is unless we get more nuclear, if we see more nuclear power then their "green" status symbolism is restored.
This is the same BS that happened with penicillin etc.
Yeah, if you give every single farm animal half a dose per day, everything is going to grow resistant.
What a bunch of bullshit.
Farmers aren't as stupid as you think. They know bacteria can get resistance to antibiotics if they are overused. I grew up on a farm and we used antibiotics fairly regularly, but far from daily. Pigs would get a shot of antibiotics when they were brought off the truck into the confinement building. They wouldn't get another shot unless one got sick, and only that one pig would be separate from the rest and get a shot. If the pig improved then it would be returned to the pen with the rest of the pigs. If it didn't improve then it got another shot... from a revolver. The carcass would then be fed to the dogs.
The cattle, like the pigs, typically got one shot of antibiotics in their life. This would happen when they got big enough to dehorn. They'd be run one by one into a dehorn chute where one guy would cut of the horns and another would give a shot of antibiotics. If a cow got sick then it might get a shot of antibiotics, and if it was producing milk at the time the milk would be discarded. If the cow got better then it would be returned to producing milk. If it didn't then it would be sent to the rendering plant for leather and bone meal, the meat would be discarded.
All meat and milk is tested for antibiotics randomly and when there is suspicion of contamination. I'm not aware of any fines imposed but a dairy farmer seeing 1000 gallons of grade A milk get dumped down the drain, and not getting paid for that shipment, is punishment enough.
Almost all natural gas service is very low pressure.
Household service is very low pressure, less than 100 psi at the street and regulated down to a fraction of a psi to inside the home. Main service feeders run as high as 1500 psi.
Compressing it for use in a vehicle costs a lot of energy, even if you have the patience to do it near-adiabatically.
People do have compressors at home to fill their natural gas cars so it can be done cheaply enough to compete with gasoline. CNG filling stations have higher pressure feed lines, bigger compressors, and high pressure tanks on site. They can get the costs down through economy of scale and fill a CNG vehicle in minutes, about the same time as it would to fill a gasoline or diesel fuel tank.
Not efficient.
It all depends on your point of view and the specifics of the situation. Natural gas is the primary source of electricity in many places in the USA. Burning that natural gas in a turbine for electricity, then moving that down long wires, and charging up an electric car is not all that efficient either. Shipping that natural gas down a 100 psi feeder, regulating it down to 1/4 psi, then pumping that back up to 2000 psi in the vehicle tank, does have losses but I'm guessing still more efficient than electric cars in turning natural gas to transportation. If you live in a place that gets it's electricity from nuclear or hydro then that changes the calculations.
In the end though people don't much care about being energy efficient, they want maximum convenience at minimum cost. CNG has the convenience of at home refuel (like an electric), quick refuel at a filling station (just like gasoline), and at a cost less than or equal to any gasoline or electric.
The Tesla semi is as range limited as the Toyota hydrogen semis, both about 300 miles. It's not unheard of for a diesel engine truck to get 2000 miles on one fill. If we assume a truck driver goes their daily limit of about 10 hours in a day, on an open road pace of 70 MPH, that's 700 miles in a day. If an alternative fuel truck can't do even a single day on one tank, and have some left over for an emergency reserve, then it's not going to replace diesel.
Diesel trucks can allow for a 700 mile day drive out, an overnight stop, then a day drive back to base, and still have reserve for any detours or delays. With electric trucks the distance from base, where the chargers would be, and back is 150 miles and nothing left for reserve. Improvements on range to 500 miles on a charge, but allowing for some reserve, puts that range at 200 miles or so.
Electric semis will most likely out compete these hydrogen semis. What electrics won't do is replace diesel, at least not any time soon.
I brought up CNG trucks in my previous posts because the concern with the diesel trucks running these short run hauls is that they are dirtying the air around the dock and the cities to where they deliver. CNG burns clean enough that they are used indoors, in factories and warehouses, for trucks and forklifts. Propane is popular too, but I haven't seen any propane trucks, only forklifts. CNG trucks already exist, and there is plenty of natural gas to burn. If long range is needed then it's almost trivial to put a natural gas filling station most any where, because natural gas lines are everywhere. Hydrogen is difficult to pipe in, and when put on a truck it takes a lot of space for the energy it moves. Making hydrogen at the filling station is possible but means installing and operating expensive equipment, and which would likely be producing the hydrogen from natural gas anyway.
Dual fuel trucks do seem to be catching some traction. Dual fuel means the truck burns both CNG and diesel fuel. It can't run without diesel but it can run without natural gas. Not as clean burning as hydrogen or CNG but an established technology with little risk for fleet owners and big improvements on air quality. Dual fuel trucks can run clean(er) on short hauls where fleet owners can install their own natural gas filling stations, but can still run long hauls by filling up at any truck stop with diesel fuel.
Tesla entices people with "free" charging as well, for a while. How is that different?
Unlike hydrogen an electric car is not going to run out of a place to get filled up if/when the subsidies run out.
Those hydrogen filling points exist because of the subsidies. People fill up there because the fuel is free to them. If/when the subsidies run out the filling stations will have to support themselves on what they charge for fuel. Given the price of hydrogen now it's unlikely the stations can stay profitable, people will simply choose to sell the car or (if it can plug-in) just drive it like an electric. I'm guessing that people can find a way to fill up with hydrogen from an industrial gas supplier but that's going to be far less convenient and far higher cost.
Electricity is cheap and available nearly everywhere. A Tesla doesn't need to recharge at a Tesla charging point. Charging at a Tesla charging point can be cheaper or even free, it's likely faster than any other place to charge, but a Tesla is not tied to Tesla charging points like hydrogen fuel cell cars are tied to hydrogen filling points. If the hydrogen car has an ability to plug-in for recharging it's battery then it's not much different than any plug-in hybrid electric, there's an option to run on fuel or electricity, and if there's no fuel then it's just an electric car.
That brings me to something I've suspected for a long time, I suspect that few people with plug-in hybrid electric cars actually plug them in for a recharge. We've been trained for refilling a car at a station with decades of gasoline fueled cars, and filling a gas tank takes only minutes. Recharging an electric at home takes overnight with a standard 120 volt plug, and still hours with a 240 volt plug that few people have. It's probably cheaper to run on electricity than gasoline but gasoline is still cheap enough that I suspect people are willing to pay for the convenience of a quick fill up, and an excuse to go to the gas station where they can buy lottery tickets, cigarettes, pizza, or whatever their vice might be.
That fuel isn't "free", someone is paying for it.
The funds for the hydrogen likely come from a combination of car maker funding (paid for by buyers of their hydrogen, and non-hydrogen, cars), government subsidies, electric utility funding (because they get future customers if hydrogen from electrolysis takes off), and investment from "greenies" buying carbon offsets (which is either another government subsidy through a carbon tax, or just virtue signaling).
These fuel cell vehicles almost always have a battery pack to go with the fuel cells. This can be a means to buffer the output from the fuel cells and/or a means to be able to drive as a plug-in electric when/where hydrogen is in short supply. My guess is that once these cars run out of the "free" hydrogen that they will be sold off for parts, converted to a more conventional hybrid or pure electric, or driven unmodified as a plug-in electric (the fuel cells just being dead weight).
With a cost for fuel that high I can't see hydrogen getting very far in market penetration. I find it difficult to believe that hydrogen prices will come down much unless there is a drop in the feedstock for the hydrogen. Right now that feedstock is primarily natural gas, oil, and electricity, and if those prices come down then hydrogen still loses out on the competition.
When are people going to realise that hydrogen based vehicle are never going to amount to anything. I have been reading about them since the 1980s and it has gone nowhere in all that time.
That will probably happen about the time public schools teach real math and science.
I can't help but wonder how many hydrogen vehicles were bank rolled by big oil to muddy the waters around EV development.
I doubt "big oil" is behind funding hydrogen. They have nothing to gain from this. There's certainly a lot of hydrogen produced from natural gas right now but the oil companies have to know that if someone makes a working hydrogen vehicle that the next step is someone finding a means to improve electrolysis of water for hydrogen.
I'm guessing it's the car and truck manufacturers funding this. They are the primary target of "greenies" because of the petroleum they burn. Car makers have a lot to gain on hydrogen because the "greenies" are doing all they can to make car ownership unattractive. If cars can be proven to be able to run on hydrogen then nearly all the complaints on environmental impact go away.
News flash, EVs are here now and for most people practical (but still over priced) and hydrogen solutions will not be able to catch up with EVs.
News flash, no long haul truck is going to run on batteries.
Batteries just do not have the energy density required to keep a truck moving long distances. Trains might solve some of the long haul transport needed, and they can be electrified, but trucks still need reasonable range to do multiple short hauls in a day to compete with diesel. Even these short haul trucks can't be electric. This hydrogen fuel cell truck that Toyota is showcasing has a range of 300 miles or so on a tank, which is barely enough for running a day driving loops around a dockyard.
I worked in a metalwork shop and they had two forklifts for moving parts inside the shop. The "small" one (small in quotes because it's relative) was electric. The big forklift was propane. No one liked to drive the electric forklift because it was underpowered, and once the battery ran down it was done for the day and needed overnight to charge. In a forklift the weight of the battery wasn't much of an issue because it served nicely as a counterweight against what was being lifted, the propane forklift had steel counterweights. On even a short haul truck the battery weight counts against it as that reduces the cargo it can carry. On a long haul truck the batteries would have to weigh more than the cargo to get a reasonable range.
Battery-electric passenger cars are fine for a daily driver. Even then most owners of a BEV have a second gasoline vehicle for longer drives, such as taking the kids to visit Grandma once per month. The practicality of BEVs to be a true replacement for gasoline and diesel fuel vehicles is still questionable. Plug-in hybrids are a nice compromise but they are still burning hydrocarbons. Compressed natural gas vehicles seem like a more viable compromise over BEVs and gasoline. CNG vehicles cut CO2 emissions by half, can fill up at home like an electric (since many homes have natural gas service already), and can tank up in minutes at a station equipped with a CNG filling point.
I've seen hydrogen mixed with natural gas as a compromise, it reduces CO2 emissions further than natural gas alone but does away with many problems of hydrogen storage as the hydrogen is "dissolved" in the natural gas and doesn't attack seals and metals (and therefore creating dangerous leaks) like pure hydrogen. If we see hydrogen make it to the transportation market then it's likely to be as a mix with methane and other hydrocarbon gasses. This methane doesn't have to be from fracking out of the ground, it can be synthesized or from biomass processing.
If these trucks use hydrogen from electrolysis, in California (the planned location for most of these trucks), and California continues with their plans to drive nuclear power out of the state, then these are natural gas powered trucks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Kenworth has been making natural gas trucks for years.
https://www.kenworth.com/news/...
There appears to be plenty of natural gas filling stations in California.
https://maps.cngnow.com/search...
Hydrogen fueled trucks are a stupid idea.
There are no mines or wells to bring up hydrogen from the earth. Given current sources of electricity for electrolysis and how hydrogen is predominately formed this is a truck that burns natural gas. There are already natural gas trucks on the market, Kenworth announced they'd have some in 2104.
https://www.kenworth.com/news/...
Given that T. Boone Pickens has been talking about his "Pickens Plan" on energy policy for 10 years now moving transportation fuel to natural gas is far from new.
https://www.ted.com/talks/t_bo...
Cut out the middle man from natural gas to moving cargo and just use natural gas in the trucks. What hydrogen does is add the costs and losses in running power plants on natural gas for water electrolysis, or using that natural gas in steam reformers. Natural gas trucks exist now, they have better range than these hydrogen trucks, and I'm guessing that they cost less to make and maintain. Natural gas reduces particulate emissions, NOx emissions, CO2 emission, and other air quality problems.
If we burn natural gas in trucks instead of for electricity then where do we get our electricity? Pickens endorses wind and nuclear, and I believe he's right about that. Pickens admits his plan is a "bridge", a plan that alone is not a permanent solution because the natural gas will run out at some point. Something will have to replace even natural gas at some point. How long can natural gas last? Decades at least, if not centuries, so it's not like investing in natural gas will be a loss for someone buying a fleet of trucks, the trucks will have plenty of natural gas for the life of the truck.
What's one possible endpoint for the Pickens Plan "bridge"? Synthesized fuel. The US Navy has been researching how to turn electricity and seawater into jet fuel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
This synthetic fuel process from the US Navy doesn't have to produce only jet fuel, it can produce hydrocarbons of any length on that carbon chain, from methane (the primary component of natural gas with one carbopn) to cetane (primary component of diesel fuel with 16 carbons).
Synthetic fuels from this process the Navy is researching produces hydrogen as part of the process, they just take one more step of grabbing carbon (from CO2 dissolved in the water) and attach it to the hydrogen to make fuel. The Navy is intending this electricity to come from a nuclear power plant on a large warship but the electricity can come from anywhere, and the water can come from anywhere it is exposed to the air and dissolves the CO2 from the atmosphere. It closes the carbon cycle so this fuel is as "carbon free" as anything else.
I expect any plans to use hydrogen as transportation fuel to fail, unless that means of transportation is a rocket. It's just far easier and cheaper to cut out the hydrogen middle man and burn natural gas for cleaner running trucks. If the concern is CO2 output even from the natural gas then produce "synthetic natural gas" (or rather "substitute natural gas" since synthetic and natural are opposing terms) and introduce that into the existing natural gas infrastructure.
Hydrogen is a terrible fuel, especially since it's not really a "fuel" as most people understand it since it does not exist as something we can just dig up out of the ground. This Toyota truck burning hydrogen is a stupid idea and there are already existing solutions that are far easier and cheaper to implement.
Then explain me why in a desert around 12AM solar power is unreliable ....
That's a very interesting definition of "reliable". I guess solar is "reliable" if you define it so narrowly to the point it's nothing more than "when the sun shines". My last car was "reliable" when the weather was warm and no snow on the streets, but in the winter it didn't like to start and had trouble getting up the steep hill in front of my house in the snow.
Or at any ofher place or time?
I'll remember that when a nuclear power plant has to reduce power or shutdown because of a heat wave. Nuclear power is "reliable" except in a time and place where the heat sink isn't cool enough.
There is completely reliable no sun at mid night, and there is completely reliable ligh around noon, unless you live close to the poles.
Maybe this video can clarify things:
https://www.prageru.com/videos...
Again: you are mixing up dispatchable with reliable.
Repeating your claim does not make it true. Perhaps you could explain further, such as why "dispatchable" is relevant to the discussion. Just repeating yourself is very childish.
Regarding the costs, solar is the second cheapest power source, after wind, since nearly a decade now ... get up to date man.
Then why is only 2% of the world's energy from solar? If it's so cheap (and reliable) then everyone would want it. Egypt is building a big solar energy collector but they are also building a nuclear power plant with four reactors. If solar is so great compared to nuclear then why is Egypt bothering with nuclear and not just building more solar instead?
No, CF is completely irrelevant for that.
Perhaps then we'll just have to agree to disagree.
Solar power is neither expensive nor unreliable.
Well, things like "expensive" and "reliable" are relative. Solar compared to nuclear, coal, natural gas, or even wind, is expensive and unreliable. What's your metric for comparison?
You keep mixing up 'reliable' with 'dispatchable'.
No, I'm not.
Two complete different things!
I agree that they are two different things, I'll use "dispatchable" when it's appropriate and "reliable" when it's appropriate. I used "unreliable" to describe solar power and I meant that.
But, this whole argument goes away if the solar plant they're building uses molten salts.
That's a lot like the arguments against nuclear power going away if new nuclear reactors are built are using molten salts.
If you want to bring up some experimental technology in solar power to make the case for solar power then nuclear power advocates should be able to bring up experimental technology to make the case for nuclear power. Just like molten salt solar can use high temperature salts for thermal energy storage and load following so can molten salt nuclear reactors.
If pumped hydro can be used for solar energy storage then so can pumped hydro be used for nuclear energy storage. In fact, the Tennessee Valley Authority uses pumped hydro storage to allow their coal and nuclear power plants to follow loads. I've visited one of the facilities.
Barring some grand leap in solar and wind technology we will be using more nuclear power very soon. A leap in storage technology helps nuclear power adoptions just as much, if not more, than wind and solar.
I look forward to any use of solar molten salt technology. That will demonstrate many of the technologies currently proposed for fourth generation nuclear power. Maybe these next generation reactors won't use a molten salt fuel, but it could use a high temperature solid fuel and molten salt cooling.
Imagine instead of nuclear power we were talking about space flight.
"We can't send people into space!"
"Why not?"
"Because of the Challenger explosion!"
"You do realize that was 32 years ago, don't you? With technology that's 40 years old now."
"But getting into space is so expensive and dangerous, with every launch needing handcrafted rockets and a history of so many failures."
"Rockets come off assembly lines now, built by highly automated manufacturing, using redundant safety mechanisms and fail safe systems."
Now that same thing with nuclear.
"We can't use nuclear power!"
"Why not?"
"Because of the Chernobyl explosion!"
"You do realize that was 32 years ago, don't you? With technology that's 40 years old now."
"But nuclear power is so expensive and dangerous, with every power plant needing handcrafted reactors and a history of so many failures."
"Nuclear reactors come off assembly lines now, built by highly automated manufacturing, using redundant safety mechanisms and fail safe systems."
I don't know how old you are but I'm old enough to remember Challenger and Chernobyl. There's people now that have no recollection of those incidents. Someone born in 1986 would be 32 years old now, old enough to have joined the US Navy at 18, become a nuclear technician, and looking forward to retirement after serving their 20 years just about the time President Trump would leave office if he serves two terms. What do you believe that person thinks of nuclear power? How do you believe that person will vote in that election? Keep in mind that while this person was in school he or she would have been told in public school modern history classes that the wars in the Middle East were conflicts over oil. Since then the USA has started building nuclear power plants again and much of Europe is starting to rely on Russian natural gas.
My predictions on the future are worth precisely what you paid for them. What's happening now is not history repeating but it does rhyme. The young adults today grew up in a time of very safe and reliable nuclear power, and seeing people argue and fight over energy that nuclear power could provide. I gave an example of someone with first hand knowledge of nuclear power, which is admittedly a small portion of the population. These people though have families and friends. There's a lot of people now that know someone that served on nuclear powered Navy vessels. These people only know of Chernobyl and Challenger as something they read about in some college history course.
What of Fukushima? Again, that's 1970s technology, older than Chernobyl. It's also in a far off place which was only read about on the internet and seen in history classes. Go ahead, keep bringing up Chernobyl as an argument against nuclear power because that's just about the only thing people can bring up to make their case. That's like telling someone that saw a Tesla sports coupe get launched to Mars about how people died on Challenger.
Okay then, how would you do the math?
If you actually bothered to read the report, rather than just look at the charts and graphs, you'd see that they point out that their cost analysis did not account for issues like the regional needs and existing electricity generation capacity.
In other words, it's complicated.
If wind power didn't need these subsidies then the wind lobby wouldn't spend so much money on push poll calls, radio advertisements, and letters in the mail, for me to vote a certain way. What has happened is that these wind subsidies have turned into a political money laundering scheme. A political party can now vote in favor of wind subsidy to encourage these subsidies getting turned into political contributions. The politicians can leverage a their vote in favor of a wind subsidy to get money for reelection.
I'll give you two guesses on which political party benefits from energy subsidies, like those for wind.
Third generation nuclear is fine where it works, but it does have limitations. It needs water cooling which limits site selection, and produces low temperature heat making it useless for industrial processes. That leaves a large part of the clean energy problem unaddressed.
Third generation nuclear is pretty bad about needing cooling water. Running at such low temperatures does mean that it's useful for industrial heat or electricity, but not both at the same time. Saying it leaves a large part of the clean energy problem unaddressed is a stretch. Third generation nuclear is basically a coal plant but without needing the coal, that alone solves a lot of problems. Fourth generation would be better, for example being able to produce heat for electricity and still have enough heat left over for something like desalinating water. If we lifted the effective ban on fourth generation nuclear today then we could expect prototypes in 5 years, and small scale commercial plants in 10 years. At least that's what the molten salt reactor people claim.
Less obvious, is that water cooled reactors will always be very high pressure systems necessitating ~9" (23cm) thick piping/pressure vessels, and enormous concrete/steel containment structures for when pressure is lost and the water flashes to steam. There is no avoiding the large amount of complicated and time-consuming on-site construction work, and there are few places able to forge the parts needed, both of which will slow builds.
The only reason these large parts are so difficult to obtain is that there's been no demand for them. Show the industry a demand, by issuing licenses for reactors, and we'll see the forges built. You think those forges we have now just appeared from thin air? They appeared because people wanted these large forged parts.
There are ways to avoid these complicated and time consuming on-site construction. Set up a license structure where a design is approved so an assembly line can be made. You think nuclear reactors can't be made assembly line style? We do that with Boeing jets, those are multi-million dollar projects that are at least as complex as a nuclear reactor. The difference is that a nuclear reactor tend to stay in the same spot once it is powered up. We build Nimitz class aircraft carriers on an assembly line, and that's a multi-billion dollar project with a nuclear power plant inside.
Molten salt reactors address these issues, and are inherently safe low-pressure/high-temperature systems, which may be compact and factory produced, with simple on-site construction and safety systems. Some supporting conventional nuclear are failing to appreciate these points and actively critical of advanced reactors, when they are a necessary part of a viable roadmap.
We don't need to go to molten salt reactors for assembly line production of nuclear power. Military nuclear reactors have been built assembly line style for decades. The only difference is the scale.
I'm not so sure the incumbent nuclear power people are as opposed to molten salt reactors. They opposed molten salt reactors in the past because it threatened their "razor and blades" business model. They'd take a hit on the building of the reactor knowing they'd make a good sized profit on making the fuel assemblies. Now that all these reactors are starting to reach end of life their ability to profit on the fuel manufacture will dry up. Even a single plant shutdown could threaten this model. I'm guessing that we'll see solid fuel reactors get shut down because the people supplying the fuel just don't want to be in that business any more. This will force the utilities to shutdown the reactor or go through the process of finding someone willing to make the high precision fuel assemblies.
It's great being the first to do something but no one is afraid of being second. A lot of details behind building a MSR was lost when the experimental reactors were
You would think a mature world-saving technology wouldn't need government support OR you trying to hijack discussions of solar power with FUD.
I'm fine with doing away with the energy subsidies. Let's not subsidize solar, wind, oil, coal, ethanol, or even nuclear. Let's level the playing field and see who wins.
Given how loudly the wind lobby screams (usually into my phone in election years) when their precious subsidies are threatened I suspect even "mature world saving technology" that is wind wouldn't be very successful without the subsidies they've been getting.
Solar is quite likely a suitable energy source for a nation like Egypt. Here's what I expect to happen though, if the people planning these projects plan this out like so many others in the past, they'll soon exceed their ability to match supply to load and end up with excessive costs and unreliable electricity.
It's real easy to go from 0% solar power to 10%. Getting from 10% to 20% solar is often a bit harder but still rather trivial. What usually happens when trying to get past 15% or 20% of wind and solar is there's a need for some kind of energy storage, or means to shed demand. This is what happened in California and Hawaii as a result of solar power subsidies. Germany is seeing this, but offset to some extent because they can still import electricity from it's neighbors with plentiful nuclear, hydro, and natural gas, and export excess wind and solar when they have it. Germany is basically using the rest of Europe as a battery, but paying for this service in having to buy high and sell low.
Egypt has already got to the point of having to import fuel for their electricity. They have some hydroelectricity that they might be able to convert to pumped storage, which would be helpful for expanding reliance on solar power. A quick search of the internet tells me that Egypt has signed a deal with Russia to build a nuclear power plant. I'm not sure if construction started yet as the news articles I found claimed construction would start in 2017.
Egypt will have to do something new. They've run out of rivers to dam up. They already started importing natural gas. On top of it all, oil is their major export and domestic oil consumption started to take a big bite out of their production decades ago.
Egypt will have to do more than just solar to solve their problems.
That's still fewer than the number of birds killed by Texas hunters every year.
I don't dispute that it's fewer. I also don't dispute that lots of birds are killed by hunters in Texas. I'm just curious though where you got that number. Is that birds taken in legal hunts? Illegally killed? Both? I'm guessing that if this is all legal hunting then how is that relevant? The reason that hunters can take these birds as game is because it is deemed as part of population control of certain species. That's how conservation works.
Can you please stop pretending you care about birds?
Oh, right, I forgot my usual disclaimer. Birds are jerks. I don't care about the birds.
It is possible for you to say that you don't believe there should be any solar energy used in the US, and only nuclear plants should be built and subsidized by the government without having to make up some big narrative about saving the lives of birds.
I just thought it would be relevant to the discussion to put bird deaths by the different energy sources into perspective. I'm not arguing that nuclear should be used to the exclusion of all other energy sources, only that nuclear must be part of the solution to solve our energy problems if a modern economy is to continue existing.
If you loved birds, you would hate hunting,
I don't see why I can't love birds and hunting. Birds are jerks but they are also tasty.
and my guess is you're one of these brave militia types who believe that the tree of liberty has to be watered with the blood of innocent animals. Or something. For liberty. So don't play. Peddle your FUD elsewhere.
The whole of the arguments against nuclear power are based on fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Whenever there's a mention of trying to get a new nuclear reactor built there's mention of Chernobyl and Fukushima. Both those reactors were second generation designs, designs that required active safety systems to prevent a meltdown. With Chernobyl the active safety systems were disabled by drunken fools that wanted to impress their superiors. With Fukushima the problems were the active safety systems were overwhelmed by a combination of ignoring known faults in the design (just having the sea wall to spec could have saved the plant) and that it was hit by a rare tsunami that exceeded expectations. Well, we have new expectations now. We also have had passive safety systems, that don't require external power like second generation designs, for at least 20 years now.
What kind of FUD did I bring here? I showed my math. I know I didn't cite my sources but if you dispute them I'll go dig them up for you.
Seems like you have a bit of underdog syndrome going there blindseer. Nuclear has been going since the 50's when it was "too cheap to meter" and received billions of dollars of taxpayer funded subsidies - and still does.
I can't find the precise numbers right now but nuclear does get billions in subsidies, but wind and solar get many times more. Nuclear power produces about 20% of the electricity in the USA, while wind and solar produce less than 10% combined. That means we get much more electricity for each dollar spent on nuclear than from wind and solar.
You're all about blaming NIMBYs and greenies for the Nuclear industries woes instead of the fact that it isn't a cost effective investment.
Huh? I'm not sure what you are saying here. It's pretty apparent that the reason nuclear power is not cost effective is because of the NIMBYs and "greenies" constantly protesting and tossing wrenches in the works. The material and engineering costs for a nuclear power plant are comparable to that of a coal plant, which makes sense because the two kinds of plants are highly similar. The only reason nuclear costs so much is because of the lawyers having to fight constantly for a license to get issued. Since they keep fighting for these licenses, in spite of the legal costs, then they still must expect to get their money back somehow. It's cost effective, otherwise no one would bother to even apply for a license.
You're all about everyone else being too stupid to see how good *some new reactor technology* is when it is the oil and coal companies that comprehensively dismantled that technology by lobbying government.
Current third generation designs do just fine on being cost effective, safe, low carbon, and low waste. It's because NIMBYs have kept protesting and suing the government when a license for a new reactor is issued that we have kept these second generation power plants running for decades beyond their designed life span. We don't need "some new technology" to make nuclear power cheap and safe, we just need a government willing to issue licenses for new reactors to replace the old. But there's far less political risk to extend the license on an old reactor than issue a license for a replacement. We can thank the NIMBYs for that. So, we have dozens of second generation reactors, like at Chernobyl and Fukushima, instead of far safer third generation designs.
Oh, and there's political risk in not extending the licenses for old nuclear power plants. That would mean protests for new coal plants, or natural gas plants, that would have to replace it. Or even some NIMBY not wanting windmills to spoil their view of the bay. There would also be protests for lost jobs at shuttering a nuclear power plant. So, the NIMBYs backed the politicians in a corner, and the path of least resistance is quietly extending the license on a 40 or 50 year old nuclear reactor for another 10 years.
You're all about forcing lots of other people who have valid concerns to accept your worldview without addressing those concerns.
But they are not valid concerns. Nuclear power is safe. This is especially true with current third generation designs instead of the second generation designs that like to get "explody" when run by drunken soviet bureaucrats, or hit by a once in a century tsunami. We aren't going to get rid of the "explody" reactors without replacing them with new reactors, because even with the NIMBYs the path to a new reactor has lower resistance than coal power, bird killing and view destroying wind, or letting the lights go dark.
Nuclear Ideology, it's the false reality too expensive to maintain.
Nuclear power is the worst form of energy, except all the others. We are running out of choices and new nuclear power plants will have to be built. We can do that now or later, but it will happen. It would be nice to see some o
That's 6000 birds killed per year at a single 400MW solar power facility. Let's scale that up to the 100GW that nuclear power provides in the USA.
100GW / 400MW * 6000 = 1.5 million
But then we have to factor in the capacity factor difference to get a more accurate comparison of actual energy produced. Nuclear power in the USA has an average capacity factor of over 90%, but just to make the math easy let's just assume it's four times that of Ivanpah, which has a capacity factor of about 20%. That means if we replace nuclear power in the USA with concentrated solar thermal power that would mean 6 million birds killed.
Now, we can not simply take this as the total because nuclear power does not kill zero birds. I did some searching on the internet and I get different numbers of birds killed by nuclear power but they fall between 500,000 on the high end to 300,000 on the low end. So, that would mean at least an additional 5 million birds killed if we replaced nuclear power with concentrated solar thermal power.
For comparison I've seen estimates that coal kills somewhere between 8 million and 25 million birds per year. Coal produces about 30% of the electricity in the USA. A little back of the envelope math tells me that on the low end of those numbers coal is as dangerous for birds as solar. If we take the high end of bird kills then solar looks pretty good by comparison to coal.
Wind produces about 5% of the electricity in the USA (compared to about 20% for nuclear) and kills somewhere around 250,000 birds. Scale that electrical output up to what nuclear produces and that's about 1 million per year. Not that bad, but still higher than nuclear.
None of this compares to the billions of birds killed by domestic cats but domestic cats don't hunt eagles. Windmills, solar collectors, and (I can only assume) nuclear power plants, kill eagles. Domestic cats don't kill eagles. If people care at all about protecting threatened eagle species then wind and solar are not the energy sources you are looking for.
Oh, one more thing. Electric power lines kill somewhere around 50 million birds per year. There's wide error bars on that, and I don't know how many of those would be eagles. If the solution for addressing the intermittent nature of wind and solar is putting up more power lines to move the electricity from where it is produced (as the sun and winds move) to where it is needed then we can expect this number to grow. How many more birds would be killed? I believe it doesn't matter, I've already shown that nuclear power would reduce the birds killed while wind and sun would increase it. I've established that birds would be saved with nuclear power, the only question is the magnitude.
But you do know that power need more or less follows the course of the sun?
Hence you do know that the CF is completely irrelevant?
CF is relevant when comparing generating capacity with demand. Egypt currently consumes about 170 TWh per year. That means they need 170 TWh production capacity. The CF will become very important if they intend to replace oil fired plants that have a CF of (I'm pulling a number out of the air) 60% with solar panels that they can expect only 30% CF.
So why starting an argument about power with the dreaded CF?
Because solar power is notorious for over promising and under delivering. You live in Germany, no? Then you should be abundantly aware of the high costs and low reliability of solar power.
Oh, my mistake!? You did not know?
You are right, I should know not to have a battle of wits with someone that is unarmed.
That's a nice list of predictions, here's mine:
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
I see nuclear power has now finally gone beyond being ignored. Seems we're at the "laugh at you" stage now. There is no carbon free energy solution for any nation, that wishes to enter the modern economy, that does not include nuclear power.
Here's a short video giving a quick review of some of the problems with ignoring nuclear power:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Here's a longer video going into more detail:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Is going 100% nuclear the only way to solve the world's energy problems? No, those videos should have made that clear. Judging by the success of a handful of nations that embraced nuclear power we can expect nuclear to be something like 50% to 80% of the solution.