5 ms·

My favorite example is the hydrogen fuel cell. It was invented before the lead acid battery back in the 1800s. PEM gave it a boost around the Apollo era, but t

My favorite example is the hydrogen fuel cell. It was invented before the lead acid battery back in the 1800s. PEM gave it a boost around the Apollo era, but that wasn't enough to make it widespread either. Lead-Acid went through its whole 100+ year character arc and hydrogen fuel cells still haven't found product market fit. Sometimes that's how it is.

jacquesm 3y ago
There are plenty of commercial applications of hydrogen fuel cells though. The biggest issue has been pretty much a constant over the time since it has been invented: keeping the membranes free from impurities is hard. But there are all kinds of transportation devices using hydrogen in production today.
- Turskarama 3y ago
  Sure, but the point is that they hardly caused a revolution in energy storage. If fuel cells didn't exist, for the average person life would be exactly the same. Revolutionary tech does change normal peoples lives, and sometimes very rapidly, but a lot of stuff that looks revolutionary just kind of never works out. I'd say nuclear power is probably the prime example of this. It was supposed to bring us electricity too cheap to meter, but it's actually the most expensive form of generation that anyone bothers to build.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Fuel cells are just another transformer like the dynamo, or any kind of motor. They turn one kind of energy into another and in the context of hydrogen (which you could produce out of water using electricity as a means of storing energy) it serves to reverse the storage step. This is nice to have but just like nuclear power it's a variation on stuff that we already have, it is at best a quantitative change (and hopefully an improvement). Room temperature / ambient pressure super conductivity is something we do not currently have. The difference between having that and not having that is a qualitative difference and hence it will enable a whole raft of applications for which we currently do not have a solution.
    - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
      > This is nice to have but just like nuclear power it's a variation on stuff that we already have By that logic a super conductor is just a variation of a conductor. Nuclear power is more distinct from burning coal than any superconductor is distinct from copper wire.
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        > By that logic a super conductor is just a variation of a conductor. No it is not. The difference between 0.1 and 0.0 can't be expressed in orders of magnitude. > Nuclear power is more distinct from burning coal than any superconductor is distinct from copper wire. Nuclear power is an incredible invention. Unfortunately it has some problems that won't go away by wishing it to be so, and there are many similarities with coal (as well as some obviously differences). But this thread isn't about coal vs nuclear. Frankly, if you don't actually see the difference between the relative importance of superconductors vs copper wire and nuclear vs coal then I really don't think I have anything to say that will interest you. Suffice to say that nuclear didn't change the world all that much (except in a weapons sense) but superconductors at room temperature and ambient pressure have the potential to change the world in ways that would be hard to even imagine. Even if true I still don't think it would be in time to help us address some of the more urgent problems we are facing. Neither does nuclear. And come to think of it: if this tech is real (big if) then it will actually probably cause a revolution in nuclear as well because it would allow for nuclear power to be transmitted the world over without the non-proliferation headaches associated with shipping reactors to various countries. It wouldn't solve the waste problem (though there are some interesting reactor designs now) and it won't happen overnight but it would make a difference.
        ClumsyPilot 3y ago
        > superconductors ... have the potential to change the world in ways that would be hard to even imagine. Such as? I do not see how superconductors help with the challenges of Climate Change, food insecurity or danger of nuclear war. What will be the change for the average Joe? Maybe a better electric car?
  - arcticbull 3y ago
    > It was supposed to bring us electricity too cheap to meter, but it's actually the most expensive form of generation that anyone bothers to build. Hardly, coal is much more expensive if you price in the externalities. We just pretend they don't exist for coal, and we staple anything that moves to nuclear. Coal kills 25 people per TWh generated, and the actuarial cost of a death is about $10M as used by the nuclear industry, not to mention the environmental costs. That means the all-in cost of coal is much much higher than the LCOE - about 16c/kWh according to the Government of Canada. [1] The 2019 US EIA LCOE for nuclear is about 7.7c/kWh. [2] Nuclear is cheaper than coal and costs around the same as solar/wind + storage - less, depending on the desired level of equivalence between the two. It has high up-front capital costs and a long payback period so the cost depends primarily on cost of capital. Fuel costs are $0.015/kWh to $0.00015/kWh in uranium. There are places that get lots of cheap, reliable no-carbon power from nuclear. For instance Ontario, at about $0.10CAD/kWh ($0.075USD/kWh), delivered. [3] [1] https://natural-resources.canada.ca/sites/www.nrcan.gc.ca/files/energy/energy-resources/Why_Account_for_the_Full_Costs_of_Energy2.pdf https://natural-resources.canada.ca/sites/www.nrcan.gc.ca/fi... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla... [3] https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/provincial-territorial-energy-profiles/provincial-territorial-energy-profiles-ontario.html https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/pr...
    - olddustytrail 3y ago
      Can you give me an example of a nuclear power station that was built entirely without taxpayer subsidy by a private company, and manages to sell electricity to the grid cheaply and make a profit?
      - arcticbull 3y ago
        > Can you give me an example of a nuclear power station that was built entirely without taxpayer subsidy by a private company, and manages to sell electricity to the grid cheaply and make a profit? Why is that a goal? Zero-carbon electricity is a goal, so that we don't all sink. Profit isn't. If ever there were a job for taxpayer dollars, IMO, this is it. "Yes the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders."
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    > It was supposed to bring us electricity too cheap to meter, but it's actually the most expensive form of generation that anyone bothers to build. That's not a technical issue though. Cost efficiency of nuclear energy has actually declined over time...which, unless science is devolving, should tell you something hinky is happening.
    - Turskarama 3y ago
      The reason is pretty obvious and doesn't require any kind of conspiracy. Nuclear can be done safely, we know this, because every single time there has been an accident it's because an operator did something wrong. The problem is that nobody has yet designed a reactor that a sufficiently amoral operator could not make unsafe. Even if you have completely automatic and passive safety features, a bad operator could disable them if a false positive happens even once and costs them money. For this reason nuclear has a LOT of regulation and red tape. It has far more than any other kind of energy, because even though the risk of accident is low the outcome of an accident is worse than any other kind of energy except hydro. Hydro has fewer things that can go wrong that are cheaper to check however, so regulations there tend to not be as expensive.
      - bbojan 3y ago
        > The problem is that nobody has yet designed a reactor that a sufficiently amoral operator could not make unsafe. That's not true. There are many designs (e.g. molten salt reactors) where the operator cannot do anything to cause the reactor to fail. The reason we're stuck with water reactors is mainly politics, and somewhat laziness.
        Turskarama 3y ago
        Molten salt reactors manage to be expensive for perfectly normal engineering reasons though. The salt is highly corrosive, meaning you need tons and tons of extremely expensive piping that can withstand extremely high temperatures and extremely corrosive environments. There's a reason none of _those_ have been built either. No amount of red tape would make them unviably expensive if the end product was cheap enough to run, but it isn't. Also I should mention, part of what makes them passively safe is there is a plug at the bottom that melts if the reactor overheats. This is easy to bypass, put something over the plug that won't melt.
  - throwawaymobule 3y ago
    Fusion, specifically, is meant to be the one 'too cheap to meter'. The thought being it'd be ready soon, and grouping both kinds of nuclear together worked as better branding for getting govt. funding.
- eru 3y ago
  Well, the other 'biggest issue' is that hydrogen is only a terrible battery. You need an energy source to make hydrogen (eg out of water, or you make it via fossil fuels etc). When you use up the hydrogen, you get some energy back out. A lot less energy, to be honest. So it's equivalent to a battery. Not to an energy source.

jacquesm 3y ago

There are plenty of commercial applications of hydrogen fuel cells though. The biggest issue has been pretty much a constant over the time since it has been invented: keeping the membranes free from impurities is hard. But there are all kinds of transportation devices using hydrogen in production today.

Turskarama 3y ago
Sure, but the point is that they hardly caused a revolution in energy storage. If fuel cells didn't exist, for the average person life would be exactly the same. Revolutionary tech does change normal peoples lives, and sometimes very rapidly, but a lot of stuff that looks revolutionary just kind of never works out. I'd say nuclear power is probably the prime example of this. It was supposed to bring us electricity too cheap to meter, but it's actually the most expensive form of generation that anyone bothers to build.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Fuel cells are just another transformer like the dynamo, or any kind of motor. They turn one kind of energy into another and in the context of hydrogen (which you could produce out of water using electricity as a means of storing energy) it serves to reverse the storage step. This is nice to have but just like nuclear power it's a variation on stuff that we already have, it is at best a quantitative change (and hopefully an improvement). Room temperature / ambient pressure super conductivity is something we do not currently have. The difference between having that and not having that is a qualitative difference and hence it will enable a whole raft of applications for which we currently do not have a solution.
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    > This is nice to have but just like nuclear power it's a variation on stuff that we already have By that logic a super conductor is just a variation of a conductor. Nuclear power is more distinct from burning coal than any superconductor is distinct from copper wire.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      > By that logic a super conductor is just a variation of a conductor. No it is not. The difference between 0.1 and 0.0 can't be expressed in orders of magnitude. > Nuclear power is more distinct from burning coal than any superconductor is distinct from copper wire. Nuclear power is an incredible invention. Unfortunately it has some problems that won't go away by wishing it to be so, and there are many similarities with coal (as well as some obviously differences). But this thread isn't about coal vs nuclear. Frankly, if you don't actually see the difference between the relative importance of superconductors vs copper wire and nuclear vs coal then I really don't think I have anything to say that will interest you. Suffice to say that nuclear didn't change the world all that much (except in a weapons sense) but superconductors at room temperature and ambient pressure have the potential to change the world in ways that would be hard to even imagine. Even if true I still don't think it would be in time to help us address some of the more urgent problems we are facing. Neither does nuclear. And come to think of it: if this tech is real (big if) then it will actually probably cause a revolution in nuclear as well because it would allow for nuclear power to be transmitted the world over without the non-proliferation headaches associated with shipping reactors to various countries. It wouldn't solve the waste problem (though there are some interesting reactor designs now) and it won't happen overnight but it would make a difference.
      - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
        > superconductors ... have the potential to change the world in ways that would be hard to even imagine. Such as? I do not see how superconductors help with the challenges of Climate Change, food insecurity or danger of nuclear war. What will be the change for the average Joe? Maybe a better electric car?
- arcticbull 3y ago
  > It was supposed to bring us electricity too cheap to meter, but it's actually the most expensive form of generation that anyone bothers to build. Hardly, coal is much more expensive if you price in the externalities. We just pretend they don't exist for coal, and we staple anything that moves to nuclear. Coal kills 25 people per TWh generated, and the actuarial cost of a death is about $10M as used by the nuclear industry, not to mention the environmental costs. That means the all-in cost of coal is much much higher than the LCOE - about 16c/kWh according to the Government of Canada. [1] The 2019 US EIA LCOE for nuclear is about 7.7c/kWh. [2] Nuclear is cheaper than coal and costs around the same as solar/wind + storage - less, depending on the desired level of equivalence between the two. It has high up-front capital costs and a long payback period so the cost depends primarily on cost of capital. Fuel costs are $0.015/kWh to $0.00015/kWh in uranium. There are places that get lots of cheap, reliable no-carbon power from nuclear. For instance Ontario, at about $0.10CAD/kWh ($0.075USD/kWh), delivered. [3] [1] https://natural-resources.canada.ca/sites/www.nrcan.gc.ca/files/energy/energy-resources/Why_Account_for_the_Full_Costs_of_Energy2.pdf https://natural-resources.canada.ca/sites/www.nrcan.gc.ca/fi... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla... [3] https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/provincial-territorial-energy-profiles/provincial-territorial-energy-profiles-ontario.html https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/pr...
  - olddustytrail 3y ago
    Can you give me an example of a nuclear power station that was built entirely without taxpayer subsidy by a private company, and manages to sell electricity to the grid cheaply and make a profit?
    - arcticbull 3y ago
      > Can you give me an example of a nuclear power station that was built entirely without taxpayer subsidy by a private company, and manages to sell electricity to the grid cheaply and make a profit? Why is that a goal? Zero-carbon electricity is a goal, so that we don't all sink. Profit isn't. If ever there were a job for taxpayer dollars, IMO, this is it. "Yes the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders."
- paulddraper 3y ago
  > It was supposed to bring us electricity too cheap to meter, but it's actually the most expensive form of generation that anyone bothers to build. That's not a technical issue though. Cost efficiency of nuclear energy has actually declined over time...which, unless science is devolving, should tell you something hinky is happening.
  - Turskarama 3y ago
    The reason is pretty obvious and doesn't require any kind of conspiracy. Nuclear can be done safely, we know this, because every single time there has been an accident it's because an operator did something wrong. The problem is that nobody has yet designed a reactor that a sufficiently amoral operator could not make unsafe. Even if you have completely automatic and passive safety features, a bad operator could disable them if a false positive happens even once and costs them money. For this reason nuclear has a LOT of regulation and red tape. It has far more than any other kind of energy, because even though the risk of accident is low the outcome of an accident is worse than any other kind of energy except hydro. Hydro has fewer things that can go wrong that are cheaper to check however, so regulations there tend to not be as expensive.
    - bbojan 3y ago
      > The problem is that nobody has yet designed a reactor that a sufficiently amoral operator could not make unsafe. That's not true. There are many designs (e.g. molten salt reactors) where the operator cannot do anything to cause the reactor to fail. The reason we're stuck with water reactors is mainly politics, and somewhat laziness.
      - Turskarama 3y ago
        Molten salt reactors manage to be expensive for perfectly normal engineering reasons though. The salt is highly corrosive, meaning you need tons and tons of extremely expensive piping that can withstand extremely high temperatures and extremely corrosive environments. There's a reason none of _those_ have been built either. No amount of red tape would make them unviably expensive if the end product was cheap enough to run, but it isn't. Also I should mention, part of what makes them passively safe is there is a plug at the bottom that melts if the reactor overheats. This is easy to bypass, put something over the plug that won't melt.
- throwawaymobule 3y ago
  Fusion, specifically, is meant to be the one 'too cheap to meter'. The thought being it'd be ready soon, and grouping both kinds of nuclear together worked as better branding for getting govt. funding.
eru 3y ago
Well, the other 'biggest issue' is that hydrogen is only a terrible battery. You need an energy source to make hydrogen (eg out of water, or you make it via fossil fuels etc). When you use up the hydrogen, you get some energy back out. A lot less energy, to be honest. So it's equivalent to a battery. Not to an energy source.