3 ms·

As I pointed out to Casey on Twitter as well, this strategy works really well with Nuclear as well. Largely because the production of fuel rather than electrici

As I pointed out to Casey on Twitter as well, this strategy works really well with Nuclear as well. Largely because the production of fuel rather than electricity means you can transport it over great distances without the losses generated by heat or radiation. My suggestion was setting up a 3GW nuclear plant in the middle of the Nevada Test site (an area that would not suffer in the extremely unlikely event there was any leakage of radioactive material in the even more rare event of an accident) And have that plant produce methane 24/7. It can ship the methane by pipeline to anywhere and provide heating or electricity using existing gas infrastructure. If you made it a more complex breeder reactor (or had a breeder reactor on site and a fuel reclamation facility) it could do that essentially forever. (caveat lifetime of materials and maintenance etc). Solar works for this too, but you have to build a lot of panels (this is the article lede of course). This is also how fusion would change everything as well, with excess power you could spend it on making carbon neutral burnable fuels and desalinating water for mitigating droughts.

jeffrallen 4y ago
I suspect the voters of Nevada would say, "Nimby". Maybe the DoE should make a reactor like this and put it in DC, where the voters are not allowed to say "Nimby". Anti-democracry to save the day.
- ChuckMcM 4y ago
  As a former Nevada resident, and someone who has worked at the Test Site, I can assure you that it would be unusual if the folks living in Nevada objected. :-)
ajuc 4y ago
> Largely because the production of fuel rather than electricity means you can transport it over great distances without the losses generated by heat or radiation. I very much doubt you can get higher efficiency by going electricity -> fuel -> pipeline -> generator than by going electricity -> wires -> And even if you just use it for heating (so you skip the last part) - it wouldn't be worth it. In particular big turbines are about 60% efficient, ICEs are about 30% efficient and electricity -> fuel conversion is even worse.
- ChuckMcM 4y ago
  Back when I had a class in power engineering as part of my EE program there was about a week discussing transmission line loss. The example we worked on was Hoover Dam which sends its electricity 266 miles over transmission lines to LA where the University was. It was remarkable how much energy was lost both in what are called "i2r" (I squared R) losses (that is just the transmission wires losing energy as heat) and radiation losses where the power lines are essentially very long antennas. There are lots of strategies that are employed to mitigate both kinds of losses, those strategies have their own limits as well. It is all rather more complex than just hooking a wire from point A to point B, as such things are. The other advantage that Casey's scheme has is power generated during the day doesn't need to be consumed right away if it is stored in Methane. This is true of Nuclear power as well. The efficiency argument weakened still further if you compare the full cost of drilling, extracting, transporting, and then burning existing "fossil fuel" sources of methane because that not only damages the environment with the contaminated ground water from fracking or other extraction methods, but adds to greenhouse gasses in the the air. The efficiency here is that your take zero (or nearly so) carbon foot print energy generation to create fuel that has net 0 impact on warming gases in the atmosphere (it takes the CO2 out of the air which is then re-released back into the air when it is burned). For things that can't be electrified, or are better served by heat combustion. Those things are, jet fuel, heating homes, baking, etc. The other advantage is it re-uses existing infrastructure. So on a dollars per ton reduction of CO2 it is much more efficient than existing solutions, whether you use solar or nuclear. Like most things, efficiency is a measure of some metric with respect to two choices to achieve the same result. The choice presented by Casey is "How do you get methane for things that use it?" If your metric is greenhouse gas emissions you get more gas with has a much lower greenhouse gas impact. On that basis it is much more efficient whether you use Nuclear or Solar as your energy input.
  - ajuc 4y ago
    > The U.S. grid loses about 5 percent of all the electricity generated through transmission and distribution [1] Compared to losing over 70% of energy by converting it to methane (optimistic bound, I vaguely remember seeing 14% efficiency somewhere but can't find it quickly so I doubled it and ignored other loses which are probably also over 50% combined). I think it's pretty clear it makes no sense to do this for predictable baseload powerplants like nuclear. The main advantage is storage for unpredictable, time-dependent solar energy. [1] https://www.nrdc.org/experts/jennifer-chen/lost-transmission-worlds-biggest-machine-needs-update https://www.nrdc.org/experts/jennifer-chen/lost-transmission...

jeffrallen 4y ago

I suspect the voters of Nevada would say, "Nimby". Maybe the DoE should make a reactor like this and put it in DC, where the voters are not allowed to say "Nimby". Anti-democracry to save the day.

ChuckMcM 4y ago
As a former Nevada resident, and someone who has worked at the Test Site, I can assure you that it would be unusual if the folks living in Nevada objected. :-)

ajuc 4y ago

> Largely because the production of fuel rather than electricity means you can transport it over great distances without the losses generated by heat or radiation. I very much doubt you can get higher efficiency by going electricity -> fuel -> pipeline -> generator than by going electricity -> wires -> And even if you just use it for heating (so you skip the last part) - it wouldn't be worth it. In particular big turbines are about 60% efficient, ICEs are about 30% efficient and electricity -> fuel conversion is even worse.

ChuckMcM 4y ago
Back when I had a class in power engineering as part of my EE program there was about a week discussing transmission line loss. The example we worked on was Hoover Dam which sends its electricity 266 miles over transmission lines to LA where the University was. It was remarkable how much energy was lost both in what are called "i2r" (I squared R) losses (that is just the transmission wires losing energy as heat) and radiation losses where the power lines are essentially very long antennas. There are lots of strategies that are employed to mitigate both kinds of losses, those strategies have their own limits as well. It is all rather more complex than just hooking a wire from point A to point B, as such things are. The other advantage that Casey's scheme has is power generated during the day doesn't need to be consumed right away if it is stored in Methane. This is true of Nuclear power as well. The efficiency argument weakened still further if you compare the full cost of drilling, extracting, transporting, and then burning existing "fossil fuel" sources of methane because that not only damages the environment with the contaminated ground water from fracking or other extraction methods, but adds to greenhouse gasses in the the air. The efficiency here is that your take zero (or nearly so) carbon foot print energy generation to create fuel that has net 0 impact on warming gases in the atmosphere (it takes the CO2 out of the air which is then re-released back into the air when it is burned). For things that can't be electrified, or are better served by heat combustion. Those things are, jet fuel, heating homes, baking, etc. The other advantage is it re-uses existing infrastructure. So on a dollars per ton reduction of CO2 it is much more efficient than existing solutions, whether you use solar or nuclear. Like most things, efficiency is a measure of some metric with respect to two choices to achieve the same result. The choice presented by Casey is "How do you get methane for things that use it?" If your metric is greenhouse gas emissions you get more gas with has a much lower greenhouse gas impact. On that basis it is much more efficient whether you use Nuclear or Solar as your energy input.
- ajuc 4y ago
  > The U.S. grid loses about 5 percent of all the electricity generated through transmission and distribution [1] Compared to losing over 70% of energy by converting it to methane (optimistic bound, I vaguely remember seeing 14% efficiency somewhere but can't find it quickly so I doubled it and ignored other loses which are probably also over 50% combined). I think it's pretty clear it makes no sense to do this for predictable baseload powerplants like nuclear. The main advantage is storage for unpredictable, time-dependent solar energy. [1] https://www.nrdc.org/experts/jennifer-chen/lost-transmission-worlds-biggest-machine-needs-update https://www.nrdc.org/experts/jennifer-chen/lost-transmission...