3 ms·

How do you envision energy storage of the future? Where are you going to get the metals? How much fossil fuel is going to burn in order to extract it? Also, wh

How do you envision energy storage of the future? Where are you going to get the metals? How much fossil fuel is going to burn in order to extract it? Also, why are energy prices locked for 40-60 years? The energy required to create a nuclear plant is equal to what it can produce in ~5 years. I don't understand how you believe the future is "very unlikely to include nuclear". How else do you provide base load requirements? It's naive to think we can transition to a "green grid" without nuclear.

audunw 4y ago
> How do you envision energy storage of the future? Not the guy you responded to, but: a combination of traditional batteries, molten metal batteries, liquid air or CO2 storage, pumped hydro, gravity storage, stored thermal energy, and more. All of which are around the commercial demonstration plant phase right now. > Where are you going to get the metals? Many of these don't require much metals. Molten metal batteries use metals that are extremely abundant. > How much fossil fuel is going to burn in order to extract it? In a decarbonized world? Zero. What? You think climate change can be solved without making mining zero-emission? If you're wondering how this will be done, it'll be battery/hydrogen/ammonia/e-fuel for mining equipment, trucks, ships, etc. We have to do that no matter what, otherwise we've just postponed climate change, not solved it. > How else do you provide base load requirements? Personally I believe a good share of base load will be provided by nuclear in many countries. I have nothing against nuclear. But I also think the base load problem can be solved without nuclear quite easily, assuming we actually solve CO2-emissions. This is because solving CO2-emissions means we'll produce batteries/hydrogen/ammonia/e-fuels on the same order of magnitude needed to balance renewables to provide baseload. If you want to dive into more detail, look at Marc Z Jacobsens studies: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0960148121016499?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09601... I think advanced geothermal may become a significant part of renewable base load in the future. It would be a huge hail mary for the climate change cause, because it'd make it SO much easier to get political willpower and investments from the whole oil/gas-sector. Check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2P2stuQ_KY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2P2stuQ_KY > It's naive to think we can transition to a "green grid" without nuclear. Optimistic, but not naive. There's a clear path. Difficult, but not much more difficult than rebooting the nuclear energy industry. And you have to be optimistic to think we can get to zero CO2-emissions anyway.
- catiopatio 4y ago
  This is science fiction-thinking. Not just optimistic: absolutely naive. We have the tech for nuclear, today. In fact, we could have switched the entire country over to nuclear 30+ years ago. Instead, we’ve been burning fossil fuels for decades because, for so-called environmental activists, an impossible perfect solution is the only thing they’ll accept.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    Run the numbers, time tracking throughout the day, on how you're going to run an entire grid on nuclear. Calculate how much storage you need in order to convert baseload into something that matches demand. Do the same calculation for renewables. Both need storage, and renewables need a bit more storage, but their primary energy is also 5-10x cheaper than nuclear. Calling something "naive" or "fantasy" requires evaluating the current state of the tech, and where the tech is going. From that perspective, especially with the data coming from the nuclear build at Vogtle and Summer, thinking that nuclear GenIII+ reactors have any place on the grid is completely unrealistic. We can not even build four of these nuclear reactors . We started plans to build about a dozen, started on only four, and had to abandon two mid-build. Nuclear is not a good fit for advanced economies, anymore than complex Victorian style wood carving is a fit for advanced economies. Nuclear requires way too much skilled labor, too much construction versus manufacturing. We no longer live in the 80s, we have much better tech, 40 years of advancement, and we need to use the best tech, not the one that was best in 1980.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      > Run the numbers, time tracking throughout the day, on how you're going to run an entire grid on nuclear. Calculate how much storage you need in order to convert baseload into something that matches demand. Very tiny amounts are needed. It's pretty straightforward to make reactors that can ramp along with daily power use.
Tade0 4y ago
> I don't understand how you believe the future is "very unlikely to include nuclear". China aggressively pushed nuclear over the past 20 years and they still haven't caught up with France in terms of generating capacity. Almost 10 years ago wind power in China overtook nuclear in terms of GWh delivered and things stayed that way. Unless there's some kind of breakthrough, nuclear will remain this safe, stable, clean but really slow to build and expensive energy source.
cycomanic 4y ago
> How do you envision energy storage of the future? Where are you going to get the metals? How much fossil fuel is going to burn in order to extract it? Where do they come from for electric vehicles? Also where do you get the uranium from? If we significantly increase nuclear energy production we run out of uranium in 40 years or so. > Also, why are energy prices locked for 40-60 years? The energy required to create a nuclear plant is equal to what it can produce in ~5 years. Maybe you should have a look how contracts for these things are made. Nobody would invest into a nuclear power plant if they don't get a guaranteed price. > I don't understand how you believe the future is "very unlikely to include nuclear". How else do you provide base load requirements? It's naive to think we can transition to a "green grid" without nuclear. Wind, solar are provide base load, they are not load following, to quote wikipedia: Base load demand... can be met by unvarying power plants,[2] dispatchable generation,[3] or by a collection of smaller intermittent energy sources,[4] depending on which approach has the best mix of cost, availability and reliability in any particular market. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load
pfdietz 4y ago
> Where are you going to get the metals? Which metals are you talking about? There are energy storage systems that use no rare (or even uncommon) materials.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
> Also, why are energy prices locked for 40-60 years? The energy required to create a nuclear plant is equal to what it can produce in ~5 years. Because of the $30 billion dollar loan and $40/MWh of O&M costs. > How do you envision energy storage of the future? Where are you going to get the metals? Sodium ion is made purely of abundant materials. There are electrolyser chemistries that use nothing less common than Nickel. Current PV tech is made of sand, copper, and silver. Olympic dam is one of the largest Uranium mines in the world. For every joule of uranium fuel for a PWR it produces, it produces enough silver for 0.5 joules of solar at the current 9mg per net watt (as well as enough copper). This is improving by 10-20% per year. So by the time your nuclear reactor opened you could get more energy from that mine from PV than solar. The nuclear reactor will also require most of that silver and a bunch of indium, cadmium, zirconium, chromium, molybdenum, iron, and almost as much copper as the PV (if using 1.5kV strings). > I don't understand how you believe the future is "very unlikely to include nuclear". How else do you provide base load requirements? It's naive to think we can transition to a "green grid" without nuclear. Base load is a myth. What matters is being able to provide a joule at the time it is required at a given resource, carbon, and labour cost, if you have surplus joules available at other times for the same cost that's an upside, not a downside. France's continued unreliability or any of the recent western nuclear plants show that the nuclear is an absolute joke from both the time and cost perspective. Whenthe >0.04% concentration uranium mines run out it will also be a joke on the carbon front. There's no need to ban it. Just give all installations that hit a low carbon threshold (without loopholes like CCS or 'biofuel') and net availability the same deal with regard to public insurance, guaranteed loans, decomissioning obligations, and guaranteed electricity prices and see if anyone even considers nuclear.

audunw 4y ago

> How do you envision energy storage of the future? Not the guy you responded to, but: a combination of traditional batteries, molten metal batteries, liquid air or CO2 storage, pumped hydro, gravity storage, stored thermal energy, and more. All of which are around the commercial demonstration plant phase right now. > Where are you going to get the metals? Many of these don't require much metals. Molten metal batteries use metals that are extremely abundant. > How much fossil fuel is going to burn in order to extract it? In a decarbonized world? Zero. What? You think climate change can be solved without making mining zero-emission? If you're wondering how this will be done, it'll be battery/hydrogen/ammonia/e-fuel for mining equipment, trucks, ships, etc. We have to do that no matter what, otherwise we've just postponed climate change, not solved it. > How else do you provide base load requirements? Personally I believe a good share of base load will be provided by nuclear in many countries. I have nothing against nuclear. But I also think the base load problem can be solved without nuclear quite easily, assuming we actually solve CO2-emissions. This is because solving CO2-emissions means we'll produce batteries/hydrogen/ammonia/e-fuels on the same order of magnitude needed to balance renewables to provide baseload. If you want to dive into more detail, look at Marc Z Jacobsens studies: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0960148121016499?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09601... I think advanced geothermal may become a significant part of renewable base load in the future. It would be a huge hail mary for the climate change cause, because it'd make it SO much easier to get political willpower and investments from the whole oil/gas-sector. Check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2P2stuQ_KY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2P2stuQ_KY > It's naive to think we can transition to a "green grid" without nuclear. Optimistic, but not naive. There's a clear path. Difficult, but not much more difficult than rebooting the nuclear energy industry. And you have to be optimistic to think we can get to zero CO2-emissions anyway.

catiopatio 4y ago
This is science fiction-thinking. Not just optimistic: absolutely naive. We have the tech for nuclear, today. In fact, we could have switched the entire country over to nuclear 30+ years ago. Instead, we’ve been burning fossil fuels for decades because, for so-called environmental activists, an impossible perfect solution is the only thing they’ll accept.
- epistasis 4y ago
  Run the numbers, time tracking throughout the day, on how you're going to run an entire grid on nuclear. Calculate how much storage you need in order to convert baseload into something that matches demand. Do the same calculation for renewables. Both need storage, and renewables need a bit more storage, but their primary energy is also 5-10x cheaper than nuclear. Calling something "naive" or "fantasy" requires evaluating the current state of the tech, and where the tech is going. From that perspective, especially with the data coming from the nuclear build at Vogtle and Summer, thinking that nuclear GenIII+ reactors have any place on the grid is completely unrealistic. We can not even build four of these nuclear reactors . We started plans to build about a dozen, started on only four, and had to abandon two mid-build. Nuclear is not a good fit for advanced economies, anymore than complex Victorian style wood carving is a fit for advanced economies. Nuclear requires way too much skilled labor, too much construction versus manufacturing. We no longer live in the 80s, we have much better tech, 40 years of advancement, and we need to use the best tech, not the one that was best in 1980.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    > Run the numbers, time tracking throughout the day, on how you're going to run an entire grid on nuclear. Calculate how much storage you need in order to convert baseload into something that matches demand. Very tiny amounts are needed. It's pretty straightforward to make reactors that can ramp along with daily power use.

Tade0 4y ago

> I don't understand how you believe the future is "very unlikely to include nuclear". China aggressively pushed nuclear over the past 20 years and they still haven't caught up with France in terms of generating capacity. Almost 10 years ago wind power in China overtook nuclear in terms of GWh delivered and things stayed that way. Unless there's some kind of breakthrough, nuclear will remain this safe, stable, clean but really slow to build and expensive energy source.

cycomanic 4y ago

> How do you envision energy storage of the future? Where are you going to get the metals? How much fossil fuel is going to burn in order to extract it? Where do they come from for electric vehicles? Also where do you get the uranium from? If we significantly increase nuclear energy production we run out of uranium in 40 years or so. > Also, why are energy prices locked for 40-60 years? The energy required to create a nuclear plant is equal to what it can produce in ~5 years. Maybe you should have a look how contracts for these things are made. Nobody would invest into a nuclear power plant if they don't get a guaranteed price. > I don't understand how you believe the future is "very unlikely to include nuclear". How else do you provide base load requirements? It's naive to think we can transition to a "green grid" without nuclear. Wind, solar are provide base load, they are not load following, to quote wikipedia: Base load demand... can be met by unvarying power plants,[2] dispatchable generation,[3] or by a collection of smaller intermittent energy sources,[4] depending on which approach has the best mix of cost, availability and reliability in any particular market. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load

pfdietz 4y ago

> Where are you going to get the metals? Which metals are you talking about? There are energy storage systems that use no rare (or even uncommon) materials.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

> Also, why are energy prices locked for 40-60 years? The energy required to create a nuclear plant is equal to what it can produce in ~5 years. Because of the $30 billion dollar loan and $40/MWh of O&M costs. > How do you envision energy storage of the future? Where are you going to get the metals? Sodium ion is made purely of abundant materials. There are electrolyser chemistries that use nothing less common than Nickel. Current PV tech is made of sand, copper, and silver. Olympic dam is one of the largest Uranium mines in the world. For every joule of uranium fuel for a PWR it produces, it produces enough silver for 0.5 joules of solar at the current 9mg per net watt (as well as enough copper). This is improving by 10-20% per year. So by the time your nuclear reactor opened you could get more energy from that mine from PV than solar. The nuclear reactor will also require most of that silver and a bunch of indium, cadmium, zirconium, chromium, molybdenum, iron, and almost as much copper as the PV (if using 1.5kV strings). > I don't understand how you believe the future is "very unlikely to include nuclear". How else do you provide base load requirements? It's naive to think we can transition to a "green grid" without nuclear. Base load is a myth. What matters is being able to provide a joule at the time it is required at a given resource, carbon, and labour cost, if you have surplus joules available at other times for the same cost that's an upside, not a downside. France's continued unreliability or any of the recent western nuclear plants show that the nuclear is an absolute joke from both the time and cost perspective. Whenthe >0.04% concentration uranium mines run out it will also be a joke on the carbon front. There's no need to ban it. Just give all installations that hit a low carbon threshold (without loopholes like CCS or 'biofuel') and net availability the same deal with regard to public insurance, guaranteed loans, decomissioning obligations, and guaranteed electricity prices and see if anyone even considers nuclear.