4 ms·

> and we have other options that we didn't have 20 years ago. We do, but those options are not enough. If they were, the Democrats in Washington would not have

> and we have other options that we didn't have 20 years ago. We do, but those options are not enough. If they were, the Democrats in Washington would not have turned pro-nuclear. They saw the numbers. You can store electricity from day to night, but not from Summer to Winter. Months-long electricity storage will never make economic sense (or at least not in the next 30 years). Nuclear reactor construction is currently a decades-long affair. Can we make it shorter? Here's a little historical tidbit: in WW2, when the Liberty ships started being built, it took the first such ships about 250 days to be built. They took down that number to 150, then to 105, then to 71, then to 30 and then to 10. They even built one in less than 5 days, and that one did survive the war, and kept working until 1963. The secret was to build large components separately, each on its own assembly line, and then to just snap them together as a giant Lego toy. The fact that current nuclear reactors take 20 years to build is not a mathematical proof that any design will take as long. It is entirely possible for SMRs to be build in a matter of months, maybe, just like the Liberty ships, in a matter of days. If the politicians in Washington want to make that happen, then the engineers can make it happen.

kitkat_new 4y ago
> They saw the numbers. You can store electricity from day to night, but not from Summer to Winter. Months-long electricity storage will never make economic sense (or at least not in the next 30 years). where's your crystal ball?
- credit_guy 4y ago
  It's just math. If you have a storage solution where you can recoup you capital costs by charging every day and selling electricity every night, you will recoup only one hundredth of that if you charge one day and sell 100 days later. Currently the capital costs of batteries add a few cents to the kWh (the average price of 1 kWh in the US in 2021 was 14 cents). If you multiply that number by one hundred, you end up with dollars for kWh, and you can sell that kWh, because nobody will buy it. If you find a storage solution that adds only hundredths of cents to a kWh if sold daily, that would be absolutely fantastic. But no such solution is in sight. The only long term storage solution that has a shadow of a chance to make it is hydrogen. But we are so, so much behind the plan in building green hydrogen production facilities. As for hydrogen liquefaction and shipping, that's just a distant plan.
  - tcfhgj 4y ago
    Logical fallacy: Every storage technology is scaled up/down linearly in terms of cost from a daily to monthly or even higher cycle Another thing: Demand based power consumption
    - p1mrx 4y ago
      "Demand based consumption" is a fancy way to say shortage.
      - tcfhgj 4y ago
        No, its not
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  They are correct about this bit, but not the wider conclusion. Months long storage of electricity is uneconomic compared with alternatives. Which is a shame for nuclear, as it would really benefit from it if you could just build enough for the average demand and run then 100% of the time. Instead, flexible demand is much cheaper. So you overbuild the nuclear and modulate the demand for making green hydrogen and ammonia and store that. Much cheaper than long term storage. Note we don't use that to generate electricity, but for chemical feedstocks. Again, cheaper to overgenerate with nuclear. However, now that you have overbuild and responsive demand in the equation there is no advantage of nuclear over renewables, which are much cheaper to build for the same capacity.
  - credit_guy 4y ago
    Not all overbuilding is the same. This link [1] shows that solar energy generation is 6 times higher in the summer than in the winter in Germany. The total electricity consumption varies is about 1.5 times higher in the winter than in the summer [2]. In other words, you need to overbuild nuclear by a factor of 1.5, and solar by a factor of 9. [1] https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/monthly-generation-of-solar-pv-in-germany https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/monthly-gener... [2] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      You're so confident about nuclear that you feel you need to compare it to purely solar in Germany to make a good case for it? Doesn't this just show that you know it can't compete with solar in equatorial regions or wind in the UK, never mind appropriate combinations of the two across Europe and the rest of the world? And you didn't even compare price. Solar would only need to be 6x cheaper to still win that rigged comparison and provide masses of cheap energy in the summer. It's about 4 or 5x cheaper at the moment and predicted to fall further as it gets rolled out globally at massive scale. And every watt rolled out at the moment can displace coal.
      - credit_guy 4y ago
pfdietz 4y ago
> You can store electricity from day to night, but not from Summer to Winter. Hydrogen can do that.
- adrian_b 4y ago
  Synthetic hydrocarbons can do that much better than hydrogen. Also ammonia can do that much better than hydrogen. There are also several types of flow batteries which can store energy for any time desired, without losses. Compared to hydrocarbons or ammonia they have a low energy density (which is not prohibitive for stationary applications), but they have a higher energy efficiency for a charge and discharge cycle, similar to the other kinds of batteries. Hydrogen is the worst solution for long-term energy storage, compared to the many other alternatives, which are also already proven in practice, unlike hydrogen. Hydrogen is good only for rockets, when its low mass is more important than its high volume and all its other disadvantages.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    Synthetic hydrocarbons requires you either capture CO2 from the atmosphere, or capture, store, and reuse the CO2 of combustion from your turbines (so you're still storing compressed gases underground; you've also made the per-output-power part of your system more costly, which is very undesirable for rarely used backup storage). The round trip efficiency with hydrogen will also be higher, since you don't have to do either of those and the process that makes hydrocarbons starts with H2 and CO2 and is significantly below 100% efficient. Flow batteries would be better than ordinary batteries, but would still be costly for seasonal storage or rare event backup compared to hydrogen (especially flow batteries using vanadium).
- credit_guy 4y ago
  I agree with you that Hydrogen can do that. Or that at least it stands a chance. Both nuclear and Hydrogen are unproven at this point, for the scale we need. Europe has chosen to bet it all on Hydrogen. Although, in the last one year France decided to get back in the game of building nuclear. I see no talk of Hydrogen in the US.

kitkat_new 4y ago

> They saw the numbers. You can store electricity from day to night, but not from Summer to Winter. Months-long electricity storage will never make economic sense (or at least not in the next 30 years). where's your crystal ball?

credit_guy 4y ago
It's just math. If you have a storage solution where you can recoup you capital costs by charging every day and selling electricity every night, you will recoup only one hundredth of that if you charge one day and sell 100 days later. Currently the capital costs of batteries add a few cents to the kWh (the average price of 1 kWh in the US in 2021 was 14 cents). If you multiply that number by one hundred, you end up with dollars for kWh, and you can sell that kWh, because nobody will buy it. If you find a storage solution that adds only hundredths of cents to a kWh if sold daily, that would be absolutely fantastic. But no such solution is in sight. The only long term storage solution that has a shadow of a chance to make it is hydrogen. But we are so, so much behind the plan in building green hydrogen production facilities. As for hydrogen liquefaction and shipping, that's just a distant plan.
- tcfhgj 4y ago
  Logical fallacy: Every storage technology is scaled up/down linearly in terms of cost from a daily to monthly or even higher cycle Another thing: Demand based power consumption
  - p1mrx 4y ago
    "Demand based consumption" is a fancy way to say shortage.
    - tcfhgj 4y ago
      No, its not
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
They are correct about this bit, but not the wider conclusion. Months long storage of electricity is uneconomic compared with alternatives. Which is a shame for nuclear, as it would really benefit from it if you could just build enough for the average demand and run then 100% of the time. Instead, flexible demand is much cheaper. So you overbuild the nuclear and modulate the demand for making green hydrogen and ammonia and store that. Much cheaper than long term storage. Note we don't use that to generate electricity, but for chemical feedstocks. Again, cheaper to overgenerate with nuclear. However, now that you have overbuild and responsive demand in the equation there is no advantage of nuclear over renewables, which are much cheaper to build for the same capacity.
- credit_guy 4y ago
  Not all overbuilding is the same. This link [1] shows that solar energy generation is 6 times higher in the summer than in the winter in Germany. The total electricity consumption varies is about 1.5 times higher in the winter than in the summer [2]. In other words, you need to overbuild nuclear by a factor of 1.5, and solar by a factor of 9. [1] https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/monthly-generation-of-solar-pv-in-germany https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/monthly-gener... [2] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    You're so confident about nuclear that you feel you need to compare it to purely solar in Germany to make a good case for it? Doesn't this just show that you know it can't compete with solar in equatorial regions or wind in the UK, never mind appropriate combinations of the two across Europe and the rest of the world? And you didn't even compare price. Solar would only need to be 6x cheaper to still win that rigged comparison and provide masses of cheap energy in the summer. It's about 4 or 5x cheaper at the moment and predicted to fall further as it gets rolled out globally at massive scale. And every watt rolled out at the moment can displace coal.
    - credit_guy 4y ago

pfdietz 4y ago

> You can store electricity from day to night, but not from Summer to Winter. Hydrogen can do that.

adrian_b 4y ago
Synthetic hydrocarbons can do that much better than hydrogen. Also ammonia can do that much better than hydrogen. There are also several types of flow batteries which can store energy for any time desired, without losses. Compared to hydrocarbons or ammonia they have a low energy density (which is not prohibitive for stationary applications), but they have a higher energy efficiency for a charge and discharge cycle, similar to the other kinds of batteries. Hydrogen is the worst solution for long-term energy storage, compared to the many other alternatives, which are also already proven in practice, unlike hydrogen. Hydrogen is good only for rockets, when its low mass is more important than its high volume and all its other disadvantages.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Synthetic hydrocarbons requires you either capture CO2 from the atmosphere, or capture, store, and reuse the CO2 of combustion from your turbines (so you're still storing compressed gases underground; you've also made the per-output-power part of your system more costly, which is very undesirable for rarely used backup storage). The round trip efficiency with hydrogen will also be higher, since you don't have to do either of those and the process that makes hydrocarbons starts with H2 and CO2 and is significantly below 100% efficient. Flow batteries would be better than ordinary batteries, but would still be costly for seasonal storage or rare event backup compared to hydrogen (especially flow batteries using vanadium).
credit_guy 4y ago
I agree with you that Hydrogen can do that. Or that at least it stands a chance. Both nuclear and Hydrogen are unproven at this point, for the scale we need. Europe has chosen to bet it all on Hydrogen. Although, in the last one year France decided to get back in the game of building nuclear. I see no talk of Hydrogen in the US.