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There are 50k miles of natural gas pipeline in my state alone. The US as a whole has 2M miles. Somtimes problems become a bigger as you scale. The main issue i
by blix 5y ago
There are 50k miles of natural gas pipeline in my state alone. The US as a whole has 2M miles. Somtimes problems become a bigger as you scale.
The main issue is hydrogen embrittlement; where steel spontaneously weakens and fractures in the prescence of hydrogen. The problem is much worse with pure hydrogen than with methane (where even the low concentrations of hydrogen are enough to pose a serious problem). There is a lot of serious enghineering work being done on this front, but I don't think we have reached the ablility to scale by a factor 200k just yet.
The magical hypothetical world where nuclear is much cheaper is called "the 1970s." In this improbable scenario, first world countries like France completely divest from coal in favor of non-carbon-polluting energy techologies.
- pfdietz 5y agoYes, that is a magical alternate world, since France now cannot build nuclear power plants on time or budget. Flamanville 3 is an incredible fiasco with a budget ballooning by a factor of 5. Hydrogen embrittlement is a known issue with known solutions. After all, the world consumes 700 cubic kilometers (at STP) of hydrogen each year. This gas is confined in tanks and pipes, which obviously have to be made of materials for which the problem is solved.
- blix 5y agoThere do exist materials for which hyrdogen embrittlement is 'solved,' but they are far too expensive to build 2M miles of pipe. Transportation at scale is a difficult challenge, and an active goal of a lot of metallurgy research.
- pfdietz 5y agoYou don't need 2M miles of hydrogen pipeline to use hydrogen as a grid backup. It's not clear you need much if any for that purpose: make and use the hydrogen at the storage site. Most of that 2M miles of natural gas pipeline will be for distribution. To be clear: I'm not talking about replacing consumer natural gas with hydrogen.