3 ms·

that would be a non-issue in existing desalination plants sounds promising but papers tend to overpromise, so we'll see if it's viable - cheap and abundant lit

by muyuu 5y ago

that would be a non-issue in existing desalination plants sounds promising but papers tend to overpromise, so we'll see if it's viable - cheap and abundant lithium batteries would be a major breakthrough for renewables

jokoon 5y ago
It would be a breakthrough for vehicles, but not necessarily for the electrical network. Batteries still have a lifespan, their manufacture emits CO2, and they need to be disposable or to be recycled. Nuclear is still the best energy in terms of carbon.
- Retric 5y ago
  The manufacturing process indirectly produces CO2 in the same way the staff driving to a nuclear power plant produces CO2. Aka it’s all indirect and could be replaced with EV and clean energy. Nuclear is a non starter from a cost perspective at this point. You get vastly more bang for the buck subsidizing battery backed up wind / solar which can actually load follow without becoming even more expensive.
  - jokoon 5y ago
    > indirectly produces CO2 in the same way the staff driving to a nuclear power plant The same way? Mining, processing, shipping, etc... There is a difference between "the same way" and an actual carbon accounting. Money doesn't matter, only carbon matters. Nuclear is a long term investment, it doesn't mean it's more expensive.
    - Retric 5y ago
      First, Nuclear is more than 10c/kWh unsubsidized at 90% capacity factor, which only gets worse as you try and scale up. France got into the 70% range and they had countries to export to. Nuclear is not even vaguely competitive even without energy storage involved. Just the fuel rod lifecycle alone costs almost as much per kWh as solar. 24/7/365 security is only the tip of the iceberg when you look into why Nuclear is so stupidly expensive. Maintenance for example takes up roughly 1 month per year of operation and you can’t send the guards home. Anyway, it’s the same in that their all indirectly producing CO2. In a full accounting all of those things that make nuclear expensive actually produce CO2 because construction equipment, mining to produce the parts to build a reactor, etc etc all produce CO2 in the current economy. In fact if you do the full breakdown for all activities related to Nuclear Reactor Construction, Operation, and Decommissioning their a very significant CO2 source in large part because all economic activity is and their really expensive. Regardless of how easy to draw arbitrary lines that ignore say CO2 emissions from workers daily commutes etc. The only way to move past that is to have serious energy storage that’s used for all equipment and thus very widespread adoption of cheap battery technology. At which point Nuclear costs become an even larger issue because cheap batteries tank the cost of battery backed up wind/solar. In the end far northern countries can make some use of Nuclear, but it’s a dead end technology without a significant role in actually solving climate change.
      - ENIanDEM 5y ago
        Some pretty wild unsourced claims masquerading as facts. As with pretty much any energy source, (including wind, solar, gas..) nuclear tends to get cheaper the more you build. You can look up FOAK vs NOAK and note the curves. Not sure what you're referring to re difficulty of increasing %share? How are you measuring "fuel rod lifecycle"? And how does that possibly comparable to "$/kWh solar"? Here's [0] a good source for some facts. You should note that accounting for the whole lifecycle of mining/processing/operating/defueling/decommissioning, nuclear is ~1/4 of the emissions of solar. And this is only considering electricity; we still have 2-3x the kwh to source for our heating requirements. You're suggesting we get that all sorted with solar & wind too? 0 - https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the-environment/co2-implications-of-electricity-generation.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the...
        Retric 5y ago
        First your source is heavily biased, dig into the numbers they use and they skip for example workers commuting emissions as nobody lives within walking distance of a reactor. Making their comparison absolutely meaningless. More importantly nuclear very specifically gets more expensive as you ramp up the percentage of grid energy your supplying. For a simple fact check look at the capacity factor of French nuclear reactors, for example: France: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chooz_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chooz_Nuclear_Power_Plant Capacity factor 70.6% and around 700 full-time workers USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callaway_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callaway_Nuclear_Generating_St... Capacity Factor: 87.70% (lifetime) Lower capacity factors directly translate into higher costs as you still need to pay for the building and security guards etc, you just don’t generate as much energy from identical infrastructure. PS: If you don’t want to do the leg work just compare national averages around 2000-2005 and then realize France needed to import and export a lot of electricity because they simply couldn’t afford to operate in isolation at 70+% nuclear generation.
endymi0n 5y ago
While still significant, the impact of lithium cost on battery cost is commonly far overestimated: "A 50% increase in lithium prices would for instance increase the battery pack price of a nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) 811 battery by less than 4%." [1] Nevertheless, together with improvements in (low-cobalt) battery chemistry, this sounds like an important piece of the puzzle. [1] https://about.bnef.com/blog/behind-scenes-take-lithium-ion-battery-prices/ https://about.bnef.com/blog/behind-scenes-take-lithium-ion-b...
- tootie 5y ago
  I'm assuming there's other advantages in terms of supply chain. We can put saltwater lithium extractors anywhere and have them be mostly automated. I don't know much about conventional lithium extraction but mining anything tends to be dirty business for both workers and the environment.

by muyuu 5y ago

jokoon 5y ago

It would be a breakthrough for vehicles, but not necessarily for the electrical network. Batteries still have a lifespan, their manufacture emits CO2, and they need to be disposable or to be recycled. Nuclear is still the best energy in terms of carbon.

Retric 5y ago
The manufacturing process indirectly produces CO2 in the same way the staff driving to a nuclear power plant produces CO2. Aka it’s all indirect and could be replaced with EV and clean energy. Nuclear is a non starter from a cost perspective at this point. You get vastly more bang for the buck subsidizing battery backed up wind / solar which can actually load follow without becoming even more expensive.
- jokoon 5y ago
  > indirectly produces CO2 in the same way the staff driving to a nuclear power plant The same way? Mining, processing, shipping, etc... There is a difference between "the same way" and an actual carbon accounting. Money doesn't matter, only carbon matters. Nuclear is a long term investment, it doesn't mean it's more expensive.
  - Retric 5y ago
    First, Nuclear is more than 10c/kWh unsubsidized at 90% capacity factor, which only gets worse as you try and scale up. France got into the 70% range and they had countries to export to. Nuclear is not even vaguely competitive even without energy storage involved. Just the fuel rod lifecycle alone costs almost as much per kWh as solar. 24/7/365 security is only the tip of the iceberg when you look into why Nuclear is so stupidly expensive. Maintenance for example takes up roughly 1 month per year of operation and you can’t send the guards home. Anyway, it’s the same in that their all indirectly producing CO2. In a full accounting all of those things that make nuclear expensive actually produce CO2 because construction equipment, mining to produce the parts to build a reactor, etc etc all produce CO2 in the current economy. In fact if you do the full breakdown for all activities related to Nuclear Reactor Construction, Operation, and Decommissioning their a very significant CO2 source in large part because all economic activity is and their really expensive. Regardless of how easy to draw arbitrary lines that ignore say CO2 emissions from workers daily commutes etc. The only way to move past that is to have serious energy storage that’s used for all equipment and thus very widespread adoption of cheap battery technology. At which point Nuclear costs become an even larger issue because cheap batteries tank the cost of battery backed up wind/solar. In the end far northern countries can make some use of Nuclear, but it’s a dead end technology without a significant role in actually solving climate change.
    - ENIanDEM 5y ago
      Some pretty wild unsourced claims masquerading as facts. As with pretty much any energy source, (including wind, solar, gas..) nuclear tends to get cheaper the more you build. You can look up FOAK vs NOAK and note the curves. Not sure what you're referring to re difficulty of increasing %share? How are you measuring "fuel rod lifecycle"? And how does that possibly comparable to "$/kWh solar"? Here's [0] a good source for some facts. You should note that accounting for the whole lifecycle of mining/processing/operating/defueling/decommissioning, nuclear is ~1/4 of the emissions of solar. And this is only considering electricity; we still have 2-3x the kwh to source for our heating requirements. You're suggesting we get that all sorted with solar & wind too? 0 - https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the-environment/co2-implications-of-electricity-generation.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the...
      - Retric 5y ago
        First your source is heavily biased, dig into the numbers they use and they skip for example workers commuting emissions as nobody lives within walking distance of a reactor. Making their comparison absolutely meaningless. More importantly nuclear very specifically gets more expensive as you ramp up the percentage of grid energy your supplying. For a simple fact check look at the capacity factor of French nuclear reactors, for example: France: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chooz_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chooz_Nuclear_Power_Plant Capacity factor 70.6% and around 700 full-time workers USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callaway_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callaway_Nuclear_Generating_St... Capacity Factor: 87.70% (lifetime) Lower capacity factors directly translate into higher costs as you still need to pay for the building and security guards etc, you just don’t generate as much energy from identical infrastructure. PS: If you don’t want to do the leg work just compare national averages around 2000-2005 and then realize France needed to import and export a lot of electricity because they simply couldn’t afford to operate in isolation at 70+% nuclear generation.

endymi0n 5y ago

While still significant, the impact of lithium cost on battery cost is commonly far overestimated: "A 50% increase in lithium prices would for instance increase the battery pack price of a nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) 811 battery by less than 4%." [1] Nevertheless, together with improvements in (low-cobalt) battery chemistry, this sounds like an important piece of the puzzle. [1] https://about.bnef.com/blog/behind-scenes-take-lithium-ion-battery-prices/ https://about.bnef.com/blog/behind-scenes-take-lithium-ion-b...

tootie 5y ago
I'm assuming there's other advantages in terms of supply chain. We can put saltwater lithium extractors anywhere and have them be mostly automated. I don't know much about conventional lithium extraction but mining anything tends to be dirty business for both workers and the environment.