7 ms·

Wood -> Coal -> Oil/Gas -> Uranium This is the most straightforward way to progress energy generation, increase fuel energy density Renewable energy will find

Wood -> Coal -> Oil/Gas -> Uranium This is the most straightforward way to progress energy generation, increase fuel energy density Renewable energy will find its place after batteries decrease 10x in price

algoatecorn 4y ago
Be careful with physics-backed statements! It seems many in this thread don't appreciate the energy density requirements of modern baseload. Don't want to crush their solarpunk dreams.
- ben_w 4y ago
  Energy density is important for transport, I don't see how current limitations in that can be important for base-load. Cost, sure, but LiIon is already on par with nuclear in that regard despite not being the cheapest storage.
  - algoatecorn 4y ago
    Energy density is important for storage, which transport falls under.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      Context of this thread is nuclear, which isn't useful for most forms of transport.
      - algoatecorn 4y ago
        Aren't you the one that brought up transportation? This is the most pedantic, exhausting thread I've ever seen on HN. So many surface level opinions that I feel like I'm on reddit
        ben_w 4y ago
        The reason I brought transport up was to say that that transport, and not baseload, is the only situation in which density matters. You wrote: > It seems many in this thread don't appreciate the energy density requirements of modern baseload. Density does not matter for baseload. It is a red herring.
  - DisjointedHunt 4y ago
    It’s not one dimensional. Energy density can be both important for transportation and also be important for the ability to accelerate energy production without a proportional growth in mining/resource harvesting that harms the planet. A melon sized chunk of uranium powers an Aircraft carrier of the US navy for over 2 decades while it circumnavigates the globe hundreds of times, launching aircraft off its deck and powering remarkable levels of energy demand from on board systems. For comparison, a single trip around the pacific for a conventionally fueled aircraft carrier costs 125 MILLION GALLONS of fuel. It’s incredibly hard to wrap one’s head around what 20 years x 125 Million Gallons x Num_trips per year looks like.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      > important for the ability to accelerate energy production without a proportional growth in mining/resource harvesting that harms the planet. I agree. > A melon sized chunk of uranium powers an Aircraft carrier of the US navy for over 2 decades … a single trip around the pacific for a conventionally fueled aircraft carrier costs 125 MILLION GALLONS of fuel. Are you sure you didn't add a few zeros in there? I think the real energy density difference there is about a million, but you're at least 200 times more than that, depending on Num_trips? (But yes, to the core point, transport is the one thing where energy density matters, and a nuclear powered aircraft carrier, or sub, is totally a thing where atomic power shines. Subs especially. Just that they're not a major part of the problem, and while this is a fun diversion I had been more interested in baseload here).
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      > A melon sized chunk of uranium powers an Aircraft carrier of the US navy for over 2 decades while it circumnavigates the globe hundreds of times, launching aircraft off its deck and powering remarkable levels of energy demand from on board systems. And how much does a civilian nuclear reactor weigh? Even compare a solar panel (there are panels on the market that produce 50GJ/kg over their life, and it's almost all sand) to the fuel assembly plus a type A storage cask. Even if we accept your ridiculous premise, solar wins.
      - 4y ago
- junofan 4y ago
  There’s also little appetite for degrowth/solarpunk in the global south. I don’t see a path forwards that doesn’t involve use of force.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- logifail 4y ago
  > It seems many in this thread don't appreciate the energy density requirements of modern baseload. It's more about nuclear being too expensive. If nuclear's great value and doesn't need the state to underwrite everything from the disaster liability insurance on downwards, great, go knock yourself out; get finance, get approvals, build a plant, go sell your product on the market. Just don't expect consumers to sign up for a multi-decade deal to guarantee to buy your output at a higher price than any other provider before you'll even pour any concrete.[0][1][2] [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-61519609 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-61519609 [1] https://www.iisd.org/story/the-united-kingdom-is-to-subsidize-nuclear-power-but-at-what-cost/ https://www.iisd.org/story/the-united-kingdom-is-to-subsidiz... [2] https://www.ft.com/content/945d8b79-ba82-4ebc-894e-73eec3892e46 https://www.ft.com/content/945d8b79-ba82-4ebc-894e-73eec3892...
  - Turing_Machine 4y ago
    > nuclear's great value and doesn't need the state to underwrite everything from the disaster liability insurance on downwards, great, go knock yourself out; get finance, get approvals, Every significant solar energy installation in the world was built with massive government subsidies.
  - algoatecorn 4y ago
    Cost is a separate issue/argument from simply being able to provide baseload energy to modern society. Let's imagine we generate enough renewable energy to power modern society. What is the cost of overhauling our grid to dynamically distribute it in a way that avoids rolling blackouts? We're talking about reinventing our society to revolve around several transient energy sources. Nuclear stays on essentially 24/7, has enormous output, and the input cost is so insignificant that even if the cost of uranium increased 5x, it would barely change the cost of energy for consumers.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      > What is the cost of overhauling our grid to dynamically distribute it in a way that avoids rolling blackouts? The upper bound is the cost of a global power grid or a lot of storage, either of which would cost roughly half as much as the current annual spend on just unrefined crude oil. > We're talking about reinventing our society to revolve around several transient energy sources. No, that's just your failure of imagination. > the input cost is so insignificant that even if the cost of uranium increased 5x, it would barely change the cost of energy for consumers. The the reason for that is also why nuclear is the most expensive major power source right now: all the other things in nuclear power are much more expensive than the fuel.
- Gwypaas 4y ago
  > The baseload[1] (also base load) is the minimum level of demand on an electrical grid over a span of time, for example, one week. This 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 low cost, availability and high reliability in any particular market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load "Base load" on the power generation side has only ever been a side effect of economics, not an intrinsic property of the electrical grid.
  - DisjointedHunt 4y ago
    It’s the minimum specification of the grid. Not economic, but functional. For a grid to serve “production traffic” or be used in the real world, there is a minimum amount of power it must reliably deliver 24x7 ;
    - Gwypaas 4y ago
      Exactly, that is demand side. For the generation side coal and nuclear got the label "base load" plants, but that is simply a function of them being inflexible and that they used to be cheaper. Nothing intrinsic to functioning of the grid, simply an economic consequence.
      - DisjointedHunt 4y ago
        <facepalm> It isn’t simply economic. I don’t think you understand the fundamental purpose of an energy grid. It isn’t just a bunch of wires existing on their own. It is the energy delivery infrastructure for all of society. “Baseload” is an attribute of the grid itself that indicates the minimum energy capacity these wires at present carry. Baseload is NOT a constant value or a constant consumption pattern across time of day/day of week alone. Baseload reflects the consumption of energy by society that the grid is DESIGNED to serve at any time. In other words, were one to use your definition, the grid would no longer be considered a functioning grid anymore but one that is broken since it is incapable of meeting its minimum design specifications.
kube-system 4y ago
I doubt chemical batteries will ever be cheap enough for grid scale power. There are other cheaper forms of energy storage that work better in bulk. Batteries are mainly useful for being self-contained and dense. Neither of these are hard requirements for fixed grid-scale installations. Pumped storage is pretty cheap already in the geographies where it works, and geothermal storage has a lot of interest and potential at the moment.
- runarberg 4y ago
  Never is a long time. There hasn’t really been any demand for a chemical battery capable of large scale storage with frequent drain-recharge cycles. That is until we build out large scale renewable power plants. So if somebody has ever invented a cheap chemical battery that fulfills grid needs, that invention was ahead of its time and has been lost in obscurity. So even if pumped hydro remains our best technology for large scale storage at the moment, I still remain optimistic that in a decade we will have market ready chemical batteries that rivals pumped hydro in places where geography does not favor the latter. I’m particularly looking at molten salt (or liquid metal) batteries here, with some storage facilities being under construction already.
- joveian 4y ago
  There is a new installation in Oregon that uses solar + wind + lithium batteries. https://www.oregonlive.com/environment/2022/09/north-americas-first-wind-solar-battery-hybrid-power-plant-commissioned-in-oregon.html https://www.oregonlive.com/environment/2022/09/north-america... It seems like there should be better options than lithium batteries but for some reason they decided to use them.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    Yeah, it can store 120 megawatt hours of power, which is pretty big, but the largest pumped storage battery in the US stores 24,000 megawatt hours of power and started operation 36 years ago.
runarberg 4y ago
> Wood -> Coal -> Oil/Gas -> Uranium I’m not sure how these kind of over simplified look at technological progress are useful at all (except as a fun exercise and maybe as a tech tree in a video game). In reality this is never this simplistic, and you actually run the risk of whitewashing history or whole industries. There are still very good use cases for wood energy (and there will be for all foreseeable future) while coal energy is pretty much just legacy at this point and will probably only be used recreationally in a decade or two. Natural gas on the other hand might get a boost with on-site carbon capture technology and might actually end up cleaner [in some cases] then nuclear or renewables + batteries. You also completely skipped hydro-power which has existed longer then coal and is still on a good run.
pfdietz 4y ago
If you go to https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/ and look at the cost of a wind/solar/battery/hydrogen system for producing a cost optimized "synthetic baseload" source (using historical climate data), you will find that a 10x reduction in battery price is not needed to beat nuclear.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  It's true if you pretend wind and hydrogen don't exist and require a solution for northern europe.
hackerlight 4y ago
Renewables don't need a 10x drop in battery price. They're viable right now to make up the large majority of the grid, with no storage, and are far cheaper and faster than nuclear. Variability is not an issue and it never was. You should also look at the cost curve of batteries. It's linear decreasing on a log scale. A lot will change while we wait a decade for nuclear to be built.
- slfnflctd 4y ago
  > Variability is not an issue and it never was This is just... incorrect. Bare minimum, you need massive upgrades to the grid in order to be able to move power around at night from places where the wind is blowing to places where it isn't (I've been told the wind is always blowing somewhere and it's always enough, but I'll believe that when I see it done at scale with no other power source). Keep in mind we'll likely be seeing a significant increase in night time power use to charge EVs as well. In the absence of such grid capability (i.e. our situation today), on a windless night your renewable production is zero-- so you either need massive batteries, fossil fuels or nuclear. Also, the fact that batteries have been getting cheaper isn't a guarantee this curve will continue, especially with lithium battery demand going through the roof and supply chain bottlenecks being likely. There are promising signs of lower costs with some of the larger, heavier battery types, but that's still in very early R&D stages and who knows how it will pan out. If we're not adding more fission generation, I don't see how we can avoid burning a whole lot more fossil fuels for a longer time unless we make our peace with regular blackouts. Every other solution seems to involve banking on tech we don't have yet and don't know when or if we will.
  - hackerlight 4y ago
    See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33205318 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33205318 We may need some gas peaker plants to occasionally run in the short-term, but they wouldn't be a significant fraction of energy generation. And the implication of that isn't that renewables leads to more fossil fuel usage than nuclear. You've also go to factor in that we can build out renewables a lot quicker.
bergenty 4y ago
No, renewables are already here but nuclear is good too.

algoatecorn 4y ago

Be careful with physics-backed statements! It seems many in this thread don't appreciate the energy density requirements of modern baseload. Don't want to crush their solarpunk dreams.

ben_w 4y ago
Energy density is important for transport, I don't see how current limitations in that can be important for base-load. Cost, sure, but LiIon is already on par with nuclear in that regard despite not being the cheapest storage.
- algoatecorn 4y ago
  Energy density is important for storage, which transport falls under.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    Context of this thread is nuclear, which isn't useful for most forms of transport.
    - algoatecorn 4y ago
      Aren't you the one that brought up transportation? This is the most pedantic, exhausting thread I've ever seen on HN. So many surface level opinions that I feel like I'm on reddit
      - ben_w 4y ago
        The reason I brought transport up was to say that that transport, and not baseload, is the only situation in which density matters. You wrote: > It seems many in this thread don't appreciate the energy density requirements of modern baseload. Density does not matter for baseload. It is a red herring.
- DisjointedHunt 4y ago
  It’s not one dimensional. Energy density can be both important for transportation and also be important for the ability to accelerate energy production without a proportional growth in mining/resource harvesting that harms the planet. A melon sized chunk of uranium powers an Aircraft carrier of the US navy for over 2 decades while it circumnavigates the globe hundreds of times, launching aircraft off its deck and powering remarkable levels of energy demand from on board systems. For comparison, a single trip around the pacific for a conventionally fueled aircraft carrier costs 125 MILLION GALLONS of fuel. It’s incredibly hard to wrap one’s head around what 20 years x 125 Million Gallons x Num_trips per year looks like.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    > important for the ability to accelerate energy production without a proportional growth in mining/resource harvesting that harms the planet. I agree. > A melon sized chunk of uranium powers an Aircraft carrier of the US navy for over 2 decades … a single trip around the pacific for a conventionally fueled aircraft carrier costs 125 MILLION GALLONS of fuel. Are you sure you didn't add a few zeros in there? I think the real energy density difference there is about a million, but you're at least 200 times more than that, depending on Num_trips? (But yes, to the core point, transport is the one thing where energy density matters, and a nuclear powered aircraft carrier, or sub, is totally a thing where atomic power shines. Subs especially. Just that they're not a major part of the problem, and while this is a fun diversion I had been more interested in baseload here).
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    > A melon sized chunk of uranium powers an Aircraft carrier of the US navy for over 2 decades while it circumnavigates the globe hundreds of times, launching aircraft off its deck and powering remarkable levels of energy demand from on board systems. And how much does a civilian nuclear reactor weigh? Even compare a solar panel (there are panels on the market that produce 50GJ/kg over their life, and it's almost all sand) to the fuel assembly plus a type A storage cask. Even if we accept your ridiculous premise, solar wins.
    - 4y ago
junofan 4y ago
There’s also little appetite for degrowth/solarpunk in the global south. I don’t see a path forwards that doesn’t involve use of force.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
logifail 4y ago
> It seems many in this thread don't appreciate the energy density requirements of modern baseload. It's more about nuclear being too expensive. If nuclear's great value and doesn't need the state to underwrite everything from the disaster liability insurance on downwards, great, go knock yourself out; get finance, get approvals, build a plant, go sell your product on the market. Just don't expect consumers to sign up for a multi-decade deal to guarantee to buy your output at a higher price than any other provider before you'll even pour any concrete.[0][1][2] [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-61519609 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-61519609 [1] https://www.iisd.org/story/the-united-kingdom-is-to-subsidize-nuclear-power-but-at-what-cost/ https://www.iisd.org/story/the-united-kingdom-is-to-subsidiz... [2] https://www.ft.com/content/945d8b79-ba82-4ebc-894e-73eec3892e46 https://www.ft.com/content/945d8b79-ba82-4ebc-894e-73eec3892...
- Turing_Machine 4y ago
  > nuclear's great value and doesn't need the state to underwrite everything from the disaster liability insurance on downwards, great, go knock yourself out; get finance, get approvals, Every significant solar energy installation in the world was built with massive government subsidies.
- algoatecorn 4y ago
  Cost is a separate issue/argument from simply being able to provide baseload energy to modern society. Let's imagine we generate enough renewable energy to power modern society. What is the cost of overhauling our grid to dynamically distribute it in a way that avoids rolling blackouts? We're talking about reinventing our society to revolve around several transient energy sources. Nuclear stays on essentially 24/7, has enormous output, and the input cost is so insignificant that even if the cost of uranium increased 5x, it would barely change the cost of energy for consumers.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    > What is the cost of overhauling our grid to dynamically distribute it in a way that avoids rolling blackouts? The upper bound is the cost of a global power grid or a lot of storage, either of which would cost roughly half as much as the current annual spend on just unrefined crude oil. > We're talking about reinventing our society to revolve around several transient energy sources. No, that's just your failure of imagination. > the input cost is so insignificant that even if the cost of uranium increased 5x, it would barely change the cost of energy for consumers. The the reason for that is also why nuclear is the most expensive major power source right now: all the other things in nuclear power are much more expensive than the fuel.
Gwypaas 4y ago
> The baseload[1] (also base load) is the minimum level of demand on an electrical grid over a span of time, for example, one week. This 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 low cost, availability and high reliability in any particular market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load "Base load" on the power generation side has only ever been a side effect of economics, not an intrinsic property of the electrical grid.
- DisjointedHunt 4y ago
  It’s the minimum specification of the grid. Not economic, but functional. For a grid to serve “production traffic” or be used in the real world, there is a minimum amount of power it must reliably deliver 24x7 ;
  - Gwypaas 4y ago
    Exactly, that is demand side. For the generation side coal and nuclear got the label "base load" plants, but that is simply a function of them being inflexible and that they used to be cheaper. Nothing intrinsic to functioning of the grid, simply an economic consequence.
    - DisjointedHunt 4y ago
      <facepalm> It isn’t simply economic. I don’t think you understand the fundamental purpose of an energy grid. It isn’t just a bunch of wires existing on their own. It is the energy delivery infrastructure for all of society. “Baseload” is an attribute of the grid itself that indicates the minimum energy capacity these wires at present carry. Baseload is NOT a constant value or a constant consumption pattern across time of day/day of week alone. Baseload reflects the consumption of energy by society that the grid is DESIGNED to serve at any time. In other words, were one to use your definition, the grid would no longer be considered a functioning grid anymore but one that is broken since it is incapable of meeting its minimum design specifications.

kube-system 4y ago

I doubt chemical batteries will ever be cheap enough for grid scale power. There are other cheaper forms of energy storage that work better in bulk. Batteries are mainly useful for being self-contained and dense. Neither of these are hard requirements for fixed grid-scale installations. Pumped storage is pretty cheap already in the geographies where it works, and geothermal storage has a lot of interest and potential at the moment.

runarberg 4y ago
Never is a long time. There hasn’t really been any demand for a chemical battery capable of large scale storage with frequent drain-recharge cycles. That is until we build out large scale renewable power plants. So if somebody has ever invented a cheap chemical battery that fulfills grid needs, that invention was ahead of its time and has been lost in obscurity. So even if pumped hydro remains our best technology for large scale storage at the moment, I still remain optimistic that in a decade we will have market ready chemical batteries that rivals pumped hydro in places where geography does not favor the latter. I’m particularly looking at molten salt (or liquid metal) batteries here, with some storage facilities being under construction already.
joveian 4y ago
There is a new installation in Oregon that uses solar + wind + lithium batteries. https://www.oregonlive.com/environment/2022/09/north-americas-first-wind-solar-battery-hybrid-power-plant-commissioned-in-oregon.html https://www.oregonlive.com/environment/2022/09/north-america... It seems like there should be better options than lithium batteries but for some reason they decided to use them.
- kube-system 4y ago
  Yeah, it can store 120 megawatt hours of power, which is pretty big, but the largest pumped storage battery in the US stores 24,000 megawatt hours of power and started operation 36 years ago.

runarberg 4y ago

> Wood -> Coal -> Oil/Gas -> Uranium I’m not sure how these kind of over simplified look at technological progress are useful at all (except as a fun exercise and maybe as a tech tree in a video game). In reality this is never this simplistic, and you actually run the risk of whitewashing history or whole industries. There are still very good use cases for wood energy (and there will be for all foreseeable future) while coal energy is pretty much just legacy at this point and will probably only be used recreationally in a decade or two. Natural gas on the other hand might get a boost with on-site carbon capture technology and might actually end up cleaner [in some cases] then nuclear or renewables + batteries. You also completely skipped hydro-power which has existed longer then coal and is still on a good run.

pfdietz 4y ago

If you go to https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/ and look at the cost of a wind/solar/battery/hydrogen system for producing a cost optimized "synthetic baseload" source (using historical climate data), you will find that a 10x reduction in battery price is not needed to beat nuclear.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
It's true if you pretend wind and hydrogen don't exist and require a solution for northern europe.

hackerlight 4y ago

Renewables don't need a 10x drop in battery price. They're viable right now to make up the large majority of the grid, with no storage, and are far cheaper and faster than nuclear. Variability is not an issue and it never was. You should also look at the cost curve of batteries. It's linear decreasing on a log scale. A lot will change while we wait a decade for nuclear to be built.

slfnflctd 4y ago
> Variability is not an issue and it never was This is just... incorrect. Bare minimum, you need massive upgrades to the grid in order to be able to move power around at night from places where the wind is blowing to places where it isn't (I've been told the wind is always blowing somewhere and it's always enough, but I'll believe that when I see it done at scale with no other power source). Keep in mind we'll likely be seeing a significant increase in night time power use to charge EVs as well. In the absence of such grid capability (i.e. our situation today), on a windless night your renewable production is zero-- so you either need massive batteries, fossil fuels or nuclear. Also, the fact that batteries have been getting cheaper isn't a guarantee this curve will continue, especially with lithium battery demand going through the roof and supply chain bottlenecks being likely. There are promising signs of lower costs with some of the larger, heavier battery types, but that's still in very early R&D stages and who knows how it will pan out. If we're not adding more fission generation, I don't see how we can avoid burning a whole lot more fossil fuels for a longer time unless we make our peace with regular blackouts. Every other solution seems to involve banking on tech we don't have yet and don't know when or if we will.
- hackerlight 4y ago
  See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33205318 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33205318 We may need some gas peaker plants to occasionally run in the short-term, but they wouldn't be a significant fraction of energy generation. And the implication of that isn't that renewables leads to more fossil fuel usage than nuclear. You've also go to factor in that we can build out renewables a lot quicker.

bergenty 4y ago

No, renewables are already here but nuclear is good too.