5 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

> 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?

Manuel_D 4y ago
> Nothing bad happens if an electrolyser for fertilizer goes offline for a week. If you can only run your smelters, factories, and chemical plants 9 months out of the year then that's going to cut production by 25%. This is going to drive up commodity prices, which is a cost that needs to be calculated as part of levelized cost of energy. This indirect cost of load shifting is almost always ignored. Furthermore, heating is one of the big uses for non-electric primary energy. And guess when heating demand is at its highest? During the winter, when solar is producing the least amount of energy. Wind may also be producing its lowest amount of energy, it depends on the region. You can't load shift heating unless you're fine with your people freezing. > EVs _are_ a week of storage. No, they are not. You cannot control when people plug in their electric vehicles. No sane grid operator would accept the idea that a large portion of their energy storage might up and leave when people go on vacation for the summer. Plenty of people drive their cars during the day and charge them overnight, and will thus be a burden on energy storage rather than a benefit. > 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. These are promises, not actual production figures. And those promises were made before the cost of lithium jumped 400%. Battery production has already optimized manufacturing costs to ~25% of the total cost of batteries. Thus battery production is rapidly becoming a mineral extraction challenge. > 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. The cost of fuel is mostly in enrichment, not raw uranium. The $4/MWh is mostly comprised of the cost of enriching that uranium to ~20% U235, not extracting raw uranium. > 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. Nuclear fuel is mostly U238, even before it's been burned by nuclear reactors. Most plants are designed to use fuel enriched in the 3-5% range (for civilian power generation, naval reactors a different story). Nuclear plants only burn a small fraction of U235 before fuel is rotated out, because they're designed to work in a narrow enrichment range. The majority of the U325 is unburnt and can be reclaimed. More than 90% of the potential energy in the fuel can be reclaimed through reprocessing [1]. I'll same the same thing to you: please try to understanding the solution you're criticizing. > Now that we've firmly established that PWRs are completely untenable even at the current level of renewable production, You've done nothing of the sort. > Or would you like to acknowledge that electrolysers for long term storage are at least as likely to be scalable as PWRs? In the same vein that fusion is viable. Sure, if it can be made to work. There are presently zero electrolyzer used for grid storage right now. If they're scalable, build them and show me how cost effective they are by pointing to actual operational electrolyzer storage facilities. But instead, it's just wishful thinking. 1. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-nuclear-fuel https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-...

Manuel_D 4y ago

> Nothing bad happens if an electrolyser for fertilizer goes offline for a week. If you can only run your smelters, factories, and chemical plants 9 months out of the year then that's going to cut production by 25%. This is going to drive up commodity prices, which is a cost that needs to be calculated as part of levelized cost of energy. This indirect cost of load shifting is almost always ignored. Furthermore, heating is one of the big uses for non-electric primary energy. And guess when heating demand is at its highest? During the winter, when solar is producing the least amount of energy. Wind may also be producing its lowest amount of energy, it depends on the region. You can't load shift heating unless you're fine with your people freezing. > EVs _are_ a week of storage. No, they are not. You cannot control when people plug in their electric vehicles. No sane grid operator would accept the idea that a large portion of their energy storage might up and leave when people go on vacation for the summer. Plenty of people drive their cars during the day and charge them overnight, and will thus be a burden on energy storage rather than a benefit. > 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. These are promises, not actual production figures. And those promises were made before the cost of lithium jumped 400%. Battery production has already optimized manufacturing costs to ~25% of the total cost of batteries. Thus battery production is rapidly becoming a mineral extraction challenge. > 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. The cost of fuel is mostly in enrichment, not raw uranium. The $4/MWh is mostly comprised of the cost of enriching that uranium to ~20% U235, not extracting raw uranium. > 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. Nuclear fuel is mostly U238, even before it's been burned by nuclear reactors. Most plants are designed to use fuel enriched in the 3-5% range (for civilian power generation, naval reactors a different story). Nuclear plants only burn a small fraction of U235 before fuel is rotated out, because they're designed to work in a narrow enrichment range. The majority of the U325 is unburnt and can be reclaimed. More than 90% of the potential energy in the fuel can be reclaimed through reprocessing [1]. I'll same the same thing to you: please try to understanding the solution you're criticizing. > Now that we've firmly established that PWRs are completely untenable even at the current level of renewable production, You've done nothing of the sort. > Or would you like to acknowledge that electrolysers for long term storage are at least as likely to be scalable as PWRs? In the same vein that fusion is viable. Sure, if it can be made to work. There are presently zero electrolyzer used for grid storage right now. If they're scalable, build them and show me how cost effective they are by pointing to actual operational electrolyzer storage facilities. But instead, it's just wishful thinking. 1. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-nuclear-fuel https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-...