5 ms·

I think you (and most people that talk about storage) drastically underestimate the scale of the storage required and just how tight supply is for the resources

by jpgvm 4y ago

I think you (and most people that talk about storage) drastically underestimate the scale of the storage required and just how tight supply is for the resources necessary to build it. For now EVs are going to consume the world's supply of batteries. Leaves you with thermal or potential energy storage like pumped hydro. All of which aren't even fully developed yet or are restricted to specific geography. As of right now, even ignoring new designs nuclear is 100% technically viable, it's just expensive. Expensive is generally easy to fix just needs scale like what we have for solar now.

henearkr 4y ago
I hear you, but the real argument against nuclear fission is not the economic one, it's the safety one. The safety during the (peace time) use of nuclear plants has been hugely improved, so I agree that's not anymore the main concern. But nuclear fission facilities are very cumbersome to dismantle, and they are liabilities during and after their commissioning. You can see that in Ukraine for example, Zaporizhia plant has been taken into hostage. Chernobyl was too, briefly. This kind of liability is especially concerning in our era of crisis (triggered by the global warming), that we could even suspect to be the beginning of a civilization collapse, which is a big word to say simply that situations of conflict, including internal conflict (civil wars and guerrillas) will multiply everywhere. Imagine the 6th January folks marching to a nuclear plant... There is still also the problem of the nuclear fuel: now West Africa and Sahel are providing a sizable part of it. But what will happen when they do not want to cooperate anymore with the Western world? (Russia is working very hard to push to this situation)
- mcv 4y ago
  This is an important point. Nuclear can be very safe in theory. Under the right circumstances, all risks can be accounted for (except long term waste storage, apparently). Problem is, in the hands of profit-seeking companies and aggressive and/or corrupt governments, those circumstances will not be right. Remember that both Fukushima and Deep Water Horizon were caused by companies cutting costs in the face of warnings of the risks.
  - origin_path 4y ago
    Why can't the waste just be ejected into space. SpaceX has made launches a lot cheaper than it once was and once you push it into the solar system it'll never cause problems again.
    - mcv 4y ago
      Launching large amounts of nuclear material comes with its own risks, and if it orbits the sun in an earth-crossing orbit, we will eventually encounter it again. Launching into the sun would be nice, but that's way more expensive.
    - 988747 4y ago
      Putting few tons of radioactive material on top of dozens of tons of highly explosive rocket fuel... what could possibly go wrong?
      - origin_path 4y ago
        Compared to keeping it on earth, or putting it in the ocean, where there are also many things that can go wrong? Yes, launches can explode, but it's very rare, getting rarer and presumably these rockets could be launched from small islands where if there's an explosion the fallout would mostly be over the ocean.
        mcv 4y ago
        I once read that 1 kg of plutonium burning up in the higher atmosphere would be enough to kill the entire population of the earth. I'm not enough of an expert to know if that's really true, but I suspect there's a good reason why experts don't consider this a good option. Or at least not yet.
- PoignardAzur 4y ago
  I assume you mean nuclear fission.
  - henearkr 4y ago
    Big oops! Yes, thank you!! I fixed it in the comment.
- jpgvm 4y ago
  Nuclear safety in war time is unproven sure but I would argue that a nuclear power plant is much less dangerous than a hydro dam. Imagine a strike on Three Gorges Dam, at minimum millions would die, without needing to use a nuclear weapon. Sure it's a tough pile of concrete, but that is exactly what a nuclear power plant is too. Nuclear fuel is a non-issue if it was profitable to mine it. Australia has vast supplies of very high quality Uranium deposits and a substantial portion of the worlds supply of Thorium so the "West" will have ample supply to fissile material for the next several millennia. Spent fuel is also really a non-issue. It gets talked about a lot but even if we were to supply 100% of the worlds energy on nuclear (which we never would, solar and hydro are too good for that) we could still store all of it in probably a single facility in a desert in Australia far from where anyone could give a shit about it. Australia is -extremely- large and -extremely- sparsely populated, especially the interior. I get why people don't like the sound of nuclear but the arguments just don't stack up against the facts, cost really is it's only downside and I'm certain that can be fixed with mass production of reactors and designs that don't need active cooling in failure scenarios.
  - chrsw 4y ago
    Nuclear definitely has a PR problem and I don't have enough background in the science to claim how unfounded the problem actually is. But what I do have are memories of how people react to anything nuclear related. All it takes is one high profile incident and all the political capital spent on selling nuclear as an attractive option to the public vanishes instantly. I don't know why other energy sources don't seem to have this problem. Not to the degree nuclear has, at least.
    - jpgvm 4y ago
      For the same reason why people turn a blind eye to oil, coal, guns, alcohol and cigarettes yet have a problem with cannabis, abortions, nuclear power, gun control and until recently electric cars. PR/marketing trumps all because people aren't sufficiently educated in science and statistics to understand what represents risk vs what is feasible, etc. Because they can't interpret the data themselves they defer to media and public figures and unfortunately in our world those people aren't incentivised to present things honestly - even in the rare cases they are educated enough to do so.
jefftk 4y ago
> EVs are going to consume the world's supply of batteries The ideal battery technologies for electric vehicles are completely different than what you want for balancing the grid: vehicles need very high energy density because they need to move the batteries, while the grid can use bulky heavy options. For example, a friend is working on very heavy iron-air batteries targeting grid applications: https://formenergy.com/technology/battery-technology/ https://formenergy.com/technology/battery-technology/
- jpgvm 4y ago
  I get that but they are also not ready yet. Right now both cars and stationary storage are competing for LFP capacity (somewhat also NCA). Which is exactly the problem with the storage argument, simply not ready yet.
pfdietz 4y ago
Of course the scale is large. Anything that replaces fossil fuel use is large. That doesn't mean it impossible, or even uncompetitive. If you think there is some specific resource limit that would prevent adequate storage (from all storage technologies) from being implemented, do please tell me what you think it is. Realize you have to kill ALL the disparate storage technologies to make this argument, not just one specific one.

by jpgvm 4y ago

henearkr 4y ago

I hear you, but the real argument against nuclear fission is not the economic one, it's the safety one. The safety during the (peace time) use of nuclear plants has been hugely improved, so I agree that's not anymore the main concern. But nuclear fission facilities are very cumbersome to dismantle, and they are liabilities during and after their commissioning. You can see that in Ukraine for example, Zaporizhia plant has been taken into hostage. Chernobyl was too, briefly. This kind of liability is especially concerning in our era of crisis (triggered by the global warming), that we could even suspect to be the beginning of a civilization collapse, which is a big word to say simply that situations of conflict, including internal conflict (civil wars and guerrillas) will multiply everywhere. Imagine the 6th January folks marching to a nuclear plant... There is still also the problem of the nuclear fuel: now West Africa and Sahel are providing a sizable part of it. But what will happen when they do not want to cooperate anymore with the Western world? (Russia is working very hard to push to this situation)

mcv 4y ago
This is an important point. Nuclear can be very safe in theory. Under the right circumstances, all risks can be accounted for (except long term waste storage, apparently). Problem is, in the hands of profit-seeking companies and aggressive and/or corrupt governments, those circumstances will not be right. Remember that both Fukushima and Deep Water Horizon were caused by companies cutting costs in the face of warnings of the risks.
- origin_path 4y ago
  Why can't the waste just be ejected into space. SpaceX has made launches a lot cheaper than it once was and once you push it into the solar system it'll never cause problems again.
  - mcv 4y ago
    Launching large amounts of nuclear material comes with its own risks, and if it orbits the sun in an earth-crossing orbit, we will eventually encounter it again. Launching into the sun would be nice, but that's way more expensive.
  - 988747 4y ago
    Putting few tons of radioactive material on top of dozens of tons of highly explosive rocket fuel... what could possibly go wrong?
    - origin_path 4y ago
      Compared to keeping it on earth, or putting it in the ocean, where there are also many things that can go wrong? Yes, launches can explode, but it's very rare, getting rarer and presumably these rockets could be launched from small islands where if there's an explosion the fallout would mostly be over the ocean.
      - mcv 4y ago
        I once read that 1 kg of plutonium burning up in the higher atmosphere would be enough to kill the entire population of the earth. I'm not enough of an expert to know if that's really true, but I suspect there's a good reason why experts don't consider this a good option. Or at least not yet.
PoignardAzur 4y ago
I assume you mean nuclear fission.
- henearkr 4y ago
  Big oops! Yes, thank you!! I fixed it in the comment.
jpgvm 4y ago
Nuclear safety in war time is unproven sure but I would argue that a nuclear power plant is much less dangerous than a hydro dam. Imagine a strike on Three Gorges Dam, at minimum millions would die, without needing to use a nuclear weapon. Sure it's a tough pile of concrete, but that is exactly what a nuclear power plant is too. Nuclear fuel is a non-issue if it was profitable to mine it. Australia has vast supplies of very high quality Uranium deposits and a substantial portion of the worlds supply of Thorium so the "West" will have ample supply to fissile material for the next several millennia. Spent fuel is also really a non-issue. It gets talked about a lot but even if we were to supply 100% of the worlds energy on nuclear (which we never would, solar and hydro are too good for that) we could still store all of it in probably a single facility in a desert in Australia far from where anyone could give a shit about it. Australia is -extremely- large and -extremely- sparsely populated, especially the interior. I get why people don't like the sound of nuclear but the arguments just don't stack up against the facts, cost really is it's only downside and I'm certain that can be fixed with mass production of reactors and designs that don't need active cooling in failure scenarios.
- chrsw 4y ago
  Nuclear definitely has a PR problem and I don't have enough background in the science to claim how unfounded the problem actually is. But what I do have are memories of how people react to anything nuclear related. All it takes is one high profile incident and all the political capital spent on selling nuclear as an attractive option to the public vanishes instantly. I don't know why other energy sources don't seem to have this problem. Not to the degree nuclear has, at least.
  - jpgvm 4y ago
    For the same reason why people turn a blind eye to oil, coal, guns, alcohol and cigarettes yet have a problem with cannabis, abortions, nuclear power, gun control and until recently electric cars. PR/marketing trumps all because people aren't sufficiently educated in science and statistics to understand what represents risk vs what is feasible, etc. Because they can't interpret the data themselves they defer to media and public figures and unfortunately in our world those people aren't incentivised to present things honestly - even in the rare cases they are educated enough to do so.

jefftk 4y ago

> EVs are going to consume the world's supply of batteries The ideal battery technologies for electric vehicles are completely different than what you want for balancing the grid: vehicles need very high energy density because they need to move the batteries, while the grid can use bulky heavy options. For example, a friend is working on very heavy iron-air batteries targeting grid applications: https://formenergy.com/technology/battery-technology/ https://formenergy.com/technology/battery-technology/

jpgvm 4y ago
I get that but they are also not ready yet. Right now both cars and stationary storage are competing for LFP capacity (somewhat also NCA). Which is exactly the problem with the storage argument, simply not ready yet.

pfdietz 4y ago

Of course the scale is large. Anything that replaces fossil fuel use is large. That doesn't mean it impossible, or even uncompetitive. If you think there is some specific resource limit that would prevent adequate storage (from all storage technologies) from being implemented, do please tell me what you think it is. Realize you have to kill ALL the disparate storage technologies to make this argument, not just one specific one.