7 ms·

that's enough for 10 or more nuclear plants or at least a lot of research into them. Why solar and hydrogen? Is it the fact that they're already in hydrocarbo

that's enough for 10 or more nuclear plants or at least a lot of research into them. Why solar and hydrogen? Is it the fact that they're already in hydrocarbons?

throw8932894 5y ago
Solar actually makes sense in India, it does not snow there :) I seen documentary where they covered river with solar panels. It reduced evaporation of water by significant amount. And it did not occupy any arable land. And big parts of India have underdeveloped electricity grid. Solar is easiest way to bring electric infrastructure there.
- dubcanada 5y ago
  That will destroy the river ecosystem, while providing little to nothing for power, since rivers are often shaded. That's a terrible idea, unless I am missing something. Why not cover the vast amount of uninhabitable land in solar panels, rather then what small amount of precious resource land that exists.
  - nindalf 5y ago
    Rivers are shaded? What kind of rivers are you thinking of? Are you talking about a flowing river, several hundred feet in width having shade in the middle of it?
    - dubcanada 5y ago
      At that size probably not. But I still cannot wrap my head around this being a good idea, destroy the ecosystem of rivers, provide next to zero power (compared to resources required to build and maintain), require a HUGE investment as it's fast moving water and everyone knows fast moving water destroys material, have to deal with overflowing from rain, drought, etc. Way too many factors for this to be a good idea. It could probably if it was a man made canal or something with a set amount of water, but that still destroys any chance of an ecosystem.
    - YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
      he thinks because America has the tendency to put their city rivers underground its a world wide thing.
      - dubcanada 5y ago
        I have no idea what you are even talking about? Underground?
        YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
        Sunswick Creek, Tibbets Brook, Sawmill River, Park River, Bluespring Caverns, Arroyo de las Pasa, Arroyo de la Sacatela...
  - foolinaround 5y ago
    these are not rivers, they are canals
    - dubcanada 5y ago
      I’m fine with canals, but there must be easier places to put them then on moving water.
      - throw8932894 5y ago
        Yes, canals. Not every country has infinitive supply of land. It is very difficult to find free land in India.
  - LightG 5y ago
    Irrigation channels ... eco systemic rivers.
  - kumarvvr 5y ago
    Actually, these panels are placed on irrigation canals, where concrete embankment alreadyy exists.
- KrishnaShripad 5y ago
  > Solar actually makes sense in India Only in arid regions. Specifically Thar desert of Rajasthan and Gujarat. Doesn't make any sense in other places. > it does not snow there Oh it does! Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh come to mind [1]. India has all seasons and all types of weather. > big parts of India have underdeveloped electricity grid What do you mean by an "underdeveloped" electricity grid? India recently achieved 99% electrification target. Only 31 million out of 1.3 billion people have no/non-continuous electricity. I wouldn't label it "big parts of India". [1]: https://www.happyeasygo.com/travel-blog/travel-tips/best-places-to-experience-snowfall-in-india/ https://www.happyeasygo.com/travel-blog/travel-tips/best-pla...
_fizz_buzz_ 5y ago
Solar is cheaper than nuclear power, faster to build, easier to deploy, easier to scale up and extend. Downside is obviously that one needs storage. But nuclear power is also not really suited for load following.
- piokoch 5y ago
  And how much ground you need to cover to have equivalent of an average nuclear power plant? And yes, one needs storage, and viable storage technology is not even on the horizon. It is so sad and so bad for our planet that for instance Germany decided to spend billions of billions on renewable energy plants while spending the same amount on nuclear power plant would made Germany zero emission economy.
  - marmarama 5y ago
    Viable storage is already here. It's called green hydrogen or hydrogen-from-seawater, and pilot plants are coming online or being built right now. The storage is limited only by tank size, and we already know how to store and use large quantities of hydrogen. The hydrogen produced from the process can be pumped elsewhere by pipeline and used as fuel for gas turbines to balance the grid, or combined with carbon dioxide or nitrogen from the atmosphere to produce zero net carbon methane and ammonia for use as denser fuel sources, or feedstock for industrial processes. You can even make zero net carbon synthetic jet fuel this way.
    - oneoff786 5y ago
      If pilot plants are coming online now, it isn’t here.
    - mrpopo 5y ago
      Hydrogen is an extremely inefficient energy storage medium. We don't have massive amounts of energy to just waste away in an inefficient system. If we did, green hydrogen would have been chewing away at current hydrogen production for industrial usage (95% gray hydrogen). You're of course free to believe that countries will build 3 times the capacity of their energy production to compensate for that inefficiency.
dghughes 5y ago
India has a lot of thorium my guess is any nuclear power plant will be thorium-based.
- oneoff786 5y ago
  We don’t have this technology to do this reliably and economically.
- VaxWithSex 5y ago
  While my home is powered by solar, there is not a single commercially run Thorium reactor on the planet. Go figure.
option_greek 5y ago
Because its not easy to get fuel for nuclear reactors as there is an ever lasting cloud on India's nuclear status. Existing reactors also run on partial capacity due to lack of fuel. What little is produced in the country has to be rationed between defence and electricity generation.
locallost 5y ago
It's nowhere near enough for 10 nuclear plants. The best comparison is probably Bangladesh, their plant will cost $13B. And it's of course really slow to build them. Renewables are both cheaper and way way faster to build.
kumarvvr 5y ago
Solar is dead easy, dead simple, dead safe, dead everything. The next decade may see rise of distributed solar based base load plants, where we have 3x capacity panels and 2x storage, delivering constant 1x power, all year round. We need efficient panels, lower infra costs, etc
- simiones 5y ago
  Solar is also dead dead for more than half of the day most of the year, and working at much lower capacity during the monsoon season. At the very least, you would need somewhat more than 2x storage. And, 2x storage is NOT dead easy or dead simple, especially with only 3x capacity, since storing the electricity will not happen with 100% efficiency, or anything close to that.
  - credit_guy 5y ago
    That's not really the problem with solar. Storing energy in batteries from day to night is a solved problem, it doesn't even double the price of electricity. The round trip efficiency is about 80%. The big problem is storing electricity from summer to winter at higher latitudes; it's difficult because the day is much longer during the summer than the winter, the incidence angle higher, so you may end up producing as much as 10 times less energy in the winter, while the energy demand is actually higher; storage losses over 6 months are very high, but that's not the really big problem. The big problem is that you are not getting the bang for the buck. For batteries used from day to night, you get MWh of energy into and out of them every day, and you can charge for that, so you can get a decent ROI. For batteries used from summer to winter, you'll charge for the energy once a year; you need to charge much, much more, and this becomes uneconomical by a huge distance. There's an alternative to storing energy from summer to winter: you simply overbuild solar capacity so that even in the winter you can produce enough during the day to last you through the night. At high latitudes, you need to overbuild by a factor of 10, and solar may be cheap, but not 10 times cheaper than other sources of electricity. However, if you find something to do with the excess summer energy, you may end up being profitable. India, being at a lower latitude, has a much easier problem. First, it's very likely the demand during "winter" months is not much higher than during "summer" months if at all. Then the day length during winter is not that short. So the overcapacity that you need may be only a factor of 3x. This guy wants to manufacture green hydrogen. Even if he sells it at a loss, the overall venture may still be profitable.
stubish 5y ago
Nuclear plants take decades to build and require a good power grid to distribute power to remote regions. Even longer if you want one of the safer types like Thorium, since you also need to wait for someone to work out how to build and run them at scale. This is kind of important if you are interested in making money now, rather than that getting money from investors in exchange for the promise of profits in 20 years time. Oh, and a lot of people also think climate change should be tackled now rather than in a decade or two. Solar and wind you can start building straight away and can build small local plants that don't rely on long distance links of sufficient quality and reliability. Hydrogen is trickier since you still need solar or wind and a production facility to make it and logistics to distribute it. Hydrogen seems a side show at the moment, since lots of people seem interested in generating Green hydrogen it but I don't see anyone actually wanting to make use of it. Maybe it is a good way of getting governments to kick in money.

that's enough for 10 or more nuclear plants or at least a lot of research into them. Why solar and hydrogen? Is it the fact that they're already in hydrocarbons?

throw8932894 5y ago

Solar actually makes sense in India, it does not snow there :) I seen documentary where they covered river with solar panels. It reduced evaporation of water by significant amount. And it did not occupy any arable land. And big parts of India have underdeveloped electricity grid. Solar is easiest way to bring electric infrastructure there.

dubcanada 5y ago
That will destroy the river ecosystem, while providing little to nothing for power, since rivers are often shaded. That's a terrible idea, unless I am missing something. Why not cover the vast amount of uninhabitable land in solar panels, rather then what small amount of precious resource land that exists.
- nindalf 5y ago
  Rivers are shaded? What kind of rivers are you thinking of? Are you talking about a flowing river, several hundred feet in width having shade in the middle of it?
  - dubcanada 5y ago
    At that size probably not. But I still cannot wrap my head around this being a good idea, destroy the ecosystem of rivers, provide next to zero power (compared to resources required to build and maintain), require a HUGE investment as it's fast moving water and everyone knows fast moving water destroys material, have to deal with overflowing from rain, drought, etc. Way too many factors for this to be a good idea. It could probably if it was a man made canal or something with a set amount of water, but that still destroys any chance of an ecosystem.
  - YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
    he thinks because America has the tendency to put their city rivers underground its a world wide thing.
    - dubcanada 5y ago
      I have no idea what you are even talking about? Underground?
      - YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
        Sunswick Creek, Tibbets Brook, Sawmill River, Park River, Bluespring Caverns, Arroyo de las Pasa, Arroyo de la Sacatela...
- foolinaround 5y ago
  these are not rivers, they are canals
  - dubcanada 5y ago
    I’m fine with canals, but there must be easier places to put them then on moving water.
    - throw8932894 5y ago
      Yes, canals. Not every country has infinitive supply of land. It is very difficult to find free land in India.
- LightG 5y ago
  Irrigation channels ... eco systemic rivers.
- kumarvvr 5y ago
  Actually, these panels are placed on irrigation canals, where concrete embankment alreadyy exists.
KrishnaShripad 5y ago
> Solar actually makes sense in India Only in arid regions. Specifically Thar desert of Rajasthan and Gujarat. Doesn't make any sense in other places. > it does not snow there Oh it does! Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh come to mind [1]. India has all seasons and all types of weather. > big parts of India have underdeveloped electricity grid What do you mean by an "underdeveloped" electricity grid? India recently achieved 99% electrification target. Only 31 million out of 1.3 billion people have no/non-continuous electricity. I wouldn't label it "big parts of India". [1]: https://www.happyeasygo.com/travel-blog/travel-tips/best-places-to-experience-snowfall-in-india/ https://www.happyeasygo.com/travel-blog/travel-tips/best-pla...

_fizz_buzz_ 5y ago

Solar is cheaper than nuclear power, faster to build, easier to deploy, easier to scale up and extend. Downside is obviously that one needs storage. But nuclear power is also not really suited for load following.

piokoch 5y ago
And how much ground you need to cover to have equivalent of an average nuclear power plant? And yes, one needs storage, and viable storage technology is not even on the horizon. It is so sad and so bad for our planet that for instance Germany decided to spend billions of billions on renewable energy plants while spending the same amount on nuclear power plant would made Germany zero emission economy.
- marmarama 5y ago
  Viable storage is already here. It's called green hydrogen or hydrogen-from-seawater, and pilot plants are coming online or being built right now. The storage is limited only by tank size, and we already know how to store and use large quantities of hydrogen. The hydrogen produced from the process can be pumped elsewhere by pipeline and used as fuel for gas turbines to balance the grid, or combined with carbon dioxide or nitrogen from the atmosphere to produce zero net carbon methane and ammonia for use as denser fuel sources, or feedstock for industrial processes. You can even make zero net carbon synthetic jet fuel this way.
  - oneoff786 5y ago
    If pilot plants are coming online now, it isn’t here.
  - mrpopo 5y ago
    Hydrogen is an extremely inefficient energy storage medium. We don't have massive amounts of energy to just waste away in an inefficient system. If we did, green hydrogen would have been chewing away at current hydrogen production for industrial usage (95% gray hydrogen). You're of course free to believe that countries will build 3 times the capacity of their energy production to compensate for that inefficiency.

dghughes 5y ago

India has a lot of thorium my guess is any nuclear power plant will be thorium-based.

oneoff786 5y ago
We don’t have this technology to do this reliably and economically.
VaxWithSex 5y ago
While my home is powered by solar, there is not a single commercially run Thorium reactor on the planet. Go figure.

option_greek 5y ago

Because its not easy to get fuel for nuclear reactors as there is an ever lasting cloud on India's nuclear status. Existing reactors also run on partial capacity due to lack of fuel. What little is produced in the country has to be rationed between defence and electricity generation.

locallost 5y ago

It's nowhere near enough for 10 nuclear plants. The best comparison is probably Bangladesh, their plant will cost $13B. And it's of course really slow to build them. Renewables are both cheaper and way way faster to build.

kumarvvr 5y ago

Solar is dead easy, dead simple, dead safe, dead everything. The next decade may see rise of distributed solar based base load plants, where we have 3x capacity panels and 2x storage, delivering constant 1x power, all year round. We need efficient panels, lower infra costs, etc

simiones 5y ago
Solar is also dead dead for more than half of the day most of the year, and working at much lower capacity during the monsoon season. At the very least, you would need somewhat more than 2x storage. And, 2x storage is NOT dead easy or dead simple, especially with only 3x capacity, since storing the electricity will not happen with 100% efficiency, or anything close to that.
- credit_guy 5y ago
  That's not really the problem with solar. Storing energy in batteries from day to night is a solved problem, it doesn't even double the price of electricity. The round trip efficiency is about 80%. The big problem is storing electricity from summer to winter at higher latitudes; it's difficult because the day is much longer during the summer than the winter, the incidence angle higher, so you may end up producing as much as 10 times less energy in the winter, while the energy demand is actually higher; storage losses over 6 months are very high, but that's not the really big problem. The big problem is that you are not getting the bang for the buck. For batteries used from day to night, you get MWh of energy into and out of them every day, and you can charge for that, so you can get a decent ROI. For batteries used from summer to winter, you'll charge for the energy once a year; you need to charge much, much more, and this becomes uneconomical by a huge distance. There's an alternative to storing energy from summer to winter: you simply overbuild solar capacity so that even in the winter you can produce enough during the day to last you through the night. At high latitudes, you need to overbuild by a factor of 10, and solar may be cheap, but not 10 times cheaper than other sources of electricity. However, if you find something to do with the excess summer energy, you may end up being profitable. India, being at a lower latitude, has a much easier problem. First, it's very likely the demand during "winter" months is not much higher than during "summer" months if at all. Then the day length during winter is not that short. So the overcapacity that you need may be only a factor of 3x. This guy wants to manufacture green hydrogen. Even if he sells it at a loss, the overall venture may still be profitable.

stubish 5y ago

Nuclear plants take decades to build and require a good power grid to distribute power to remote regions. Even longer if you want one of the safer types like Thorium, since you also need to wait for someone to work out how to build and run them at scale. This is kind of important if you are interested in making money now, rather than that getting money from investors in exchange for the promise of profits in 20 years time. Oh, and a lot of people also think climate change should be tackled now rather than in a decade or two. Solar and wind you can start building straight away and can build small local plants that don't rely on long distance links of sufficient quality and reliability. Hydrogen is trickier since you still need solar or wind and a production facility to make it and logistics to distribute it. Hydrogen seems a side show at the moment, since lots of people seem interested in generating Green hydrogen it but I don't see anyone actually wanting to make use of it. Maybe it is a good way of getting governments to kick in money.