3 ms·

Almost all of your points also cut against the feasibility of storage, too. What are you going to do when other sources of primary energy are electrified and yo

Almost all of your points also cut against the feasibility of storage, too. What are you going to do when other sources of primary energy are electrified and your 4 hours of storage turns into just 1.5 hours of storage? And again, 4 hours is an exceptionally optimistic figure for storage. Realistic requirements call for days or even weeks of storage. Solar and wind output don't just fluctuate over the course of a day, they have long multi-month periods of diminished output due to seasonal changes. > Last year's battery production would provide 12hrs for 33GW (historic peak of nuclear construction) and current manufacturing base would provide 80GW By comparison, the world's energy demand is 2,500 GW. Do you not see how staggeringly off the scale is between what batteries can provide, and what is required? It'd take 75 years to provide just 12 hours even if we completely halted EV production. In reality, most battery production is going to go to EVs and electronics, not grid storage. And yet again, 12 hours is optimistic. > You can process 250 trillion litres of water and extract the rare minerals for under a quarter billion dollars to bring 1GW of nuclear power online and run it affordably? That's great, we can use the 50000t of lithium you'll find to make 700GWh of batteries. Shortage solved. We don't even need sodium ion. Thanks. This would make batteries prohibitively expensive. Unlike nuclear plants, battery cathode represents 50% of a battery's cost [1]. By comparison, raw uranium is a tiny fraction of nuclear's cost. Seawater extraction is 10-20x more expensive than mining. This would not affect the cost of nuclear power much, but would increase the cost of batteries by 5-10x. > Edit: I just read your source. The exotic polymer you mentioned can gather 10g/kg of Uranium before it wears out. So you're effectively saying just pour 1% of global plastic production directly into the ocean to match current renewable capacity growth, or 10% of global plastic production for 500GW/year (and then continue pouring 40,000,000 tonnes of plastic into the ocean every year). Reprocessing reclaims ~96% of the uranium used [2]. So in reality it's 0.05% of plastic production. The plastic polymer is not continuously poured, it can be reused once the uranium is extracted, "An acid treatment recovers the uranium in the form of a uranyl complex, regenerating the fibers that can be reused many times." 1. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/breaking-down-the-cost-of-an-ev-battery-cell/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/breaking-down-the-cost-of-a... 2. https://www.orano.group/en/unpacking-nuclear/all-about-used-fuel-processing-and-recycling#:~:text=Thanks%20to%20Orano's%20world%2Dleading,research%20purposes%20can%20be%20recycled https://www.orano.group/en/unpacking-nuclear/all-about-used-....

Schroedingersat 4y ago
> Almost all of your points also cut against the feasibility of storage, too. What are you going to do when other sources of primary energy are electrified and your 4 hours of storage turns into just 1.5 hours of storage? And again, 4 hours is an exceptionally optimistic figure for storage. Realistic requirements call for days or even weeks of storage. Solar and wind output don't just fluctuate over the course of a day, they have long multi-month periods of diminished output due to seasonal changes. > By comparison, the world's energy demand is 2,500 GW. Do you not see how staggeringly off the scale is between what batteries can provide, and what is required? It'd take 75 years to provide just 12 hours even if we completely halted EV production. In reality, most battery production is going to go to EVs and electronics, not grid storage. And yet again, 12 hours is optimistic. Nothing bad happens if an electrolyser for fertilizer goes offline for a week. Al smelters can have minor refits to allow +/-30%. EVs _are_ a week of storage. Heat can be stored for months as heat. All the other energy uses are oppprtunities for variable load and reduce the need for storage. And above all you're still somehow claiming that battery production can't grow. 400GWh last year. 1TWh in the immediate future and 7TWh in the pipeline. > This would make batteries prohibitively expensive. Unlike nuclear plants, battery cathode represents 50% of a battery's cost [1]. By comparison, raw uranium is a tiny fraction of nuclear's cost. Seawater extraction is 10-20x more expensive than mining. This would not affect the cost of nuclear power much, but would increase the cost of batteries by 5-10x. Current raw Uranium price is $116/kg. This is about $4/MWh in the current fleet or $1.70 in an APR. Increase it 20-fold and you're barely competitive just on fuel. Lithium batteries are still affordable compared to nuclear at $80/kg. If you could process the same volume of water for the same cost the Uranium would be $5600/kg or $90/MWh At 1 kg of Uranium to 70 kg of lithium you get 70MWh of energy and 1MWh of storage. After 100 cycles you break even on the lithium cost. It's believable that a Uranium specific sorbent may work better than lithium for the same reason it's hard not to get more Vanadium, but your uraniumn specific sorbent would have to make the entire process 5-10x cheaper than a lithium one for it to work. > Reprocessing reclaims ~96% of the uranium used [2]. So in reality it's 0.05% of plastic production. The plastic polymer is not continuously poured, it can be reused once the uranium is extracted. Which is almost all U238 ie. Worthless waste. The 1% Pu and remaining U235 is what matters and that only adds 20% even after repeated cycling. Please at least try to understand the solution you're pushing. Now that we've firmly established that PWRs are completely untenable even at the current level of renewable production, would you like to suddenly change subject to MSRs or LFTRs? Neither of them have ever actually used a full load of fuel and ended up with more (or even used a full load at >1GWd/kg to my knowledge). Or would you like to acknowledge that electrolysers for long term storage are at least as likely to be scalable as PWRs?

Schroedingersat 4y ago

> Almost all of your points also cut against the feasibility of storage, too. What are you going to do when other sources of primary energy are electrified and your 4 hours of storage turns into just 1.5 hours of storage? And again, 4 hours is an exceptionally optimistic figure for storage. Realistic requirements call for days or even weeks of storage. Solar and wind output don't just fluctuate over the course of a day, they have long multi-month periods of diminished output due to seasonal changes. > By comparison, the world's energy demand is 2,500 GW. Do you not see how staggeringly off the scale is between what batteries can provide, and what is required? It'd take 75 years to provide just 12 hours even if we completely halted EV production. In reality, most battery production is going to go to EVs and electronics, not grid storage. And yet again, 12 hours is optimistic. Nothing bad happens if an electrolyser for fertilizer goes offline for a week. Al smelters can have minor refits to allow +/-30%. EVs _are_ a week of storage. Heat can be stored for months as heat. All the other energy uses are oppprtunities for variable load and reduce the need for storage. And above all you're still somehow claiming that battery production can't grow. 400GWh last year. 1TWh in the immediate future and 7TWh in the pipeline. > This would make batteries prohibitively expensive. Unlike nuclear plants, battery cathode represents 50% of a battery's cost [1]. By comparison, raw uranium is a tiny fraction of nuclear's cost. Seawater extraction is 10-20x more expensive than mining. This would not affect the cost of nuclear power much, but would increase the cost of batteries by 5-10x. Current raw Uranium price is $116/kg. This is about $4/MWh in the current fleet or $1.70 in an APR. Increase it 20-fold and you're barely competitive just on fuel. Lithium batteries are still affordable compared to nuclear at $80/kg. If you could process the same volume of water for the same cost the Uranium would be $5600/kg or $90/MWh At 1 kg of Uranium to 70 kg of lithium you get 70MWh of energy and 1MWh of storage. After 100 cycles you break even on the lithium cost. It's believable that a Uranium specific sorbent may work better than lithium for the same reason it's hard not to get more Vanadium, but your uraniumn specific sorbent would have to make the entire process 5-10x cheaper than a lithium one for it to work. > Reprocessing reclaims ~96% of the uranium used [2]. So in reality it's 0.05% of plastic production. The plastic polymer is not continuously poured, it can be reused once the uranium is extracted. Which is almost all U238 ie. Worthless waste. The 1% Pu and remaining U235 is what matters and that only adds 20% even after repeated cycling. Please at least try to understand the solution you're pushing. Now that we've firmly established that PWRs are completely untenable even at the current level of renewable production, would you like to suddenly change subject to MSRs or LFTRs? Neither of them have ever actually used a full load of fuel and ended up with more (or even used a full load at >1GWd/kg to my knowledge). Or would you like to acknowledge that electrolysers for long term storage are at least as likely to be scalable as PWRs?