3 ms·

Yesterday, after wanting it for years, I finally found what looks like a good reference on what makes power plants so expensive. Most fusion-power proposals ar

by kragen 2y ago

Yesterday, after wanting it for years, I finally found what looks like a good reference on what makes power plants so expensive. Most fusion-power proposals are based on using the fusion reactor to provide heat for a conventional thermal electrical power plant; https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost/pdf/capital_cost_AEO2020.pdf https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost... gives a couple hundred pages of details about why those are expensive. As I said in my comment at the time https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42850472 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42850472, the cost of solar panels has dropped in recent years to the point where it's dramatically cheaper to generate electricity with solar than from a thermal power plant.

jodrellblank 2y ago
https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2022/07/22/were-going-to-need-a-lot-of-solar-panels/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2022/07/22/were-going-to-... is a proposal to generate solar (and wind?) power and use it to make synthetic 'natural gas' as the long term energy storage for when the wind is calm and the sunlight blocked. That can go into existing gas storage and pipelines, and be used to drive existing gas power stations.
- kragen 2y ago
  Yes, hydrocarbons have major advantages as a form of seasonal energy storage, and possibly you can burn them in cheaper, less efficient power plants. Round-trip efficiency is inevitably going to be pretty low with electrically generated fuels, but they still ought to be able to outcompete fossil fuels economically once production scales up. Gas has the advantage that gas turbines are less inefficient than conventional steam, though ultra-supercritical steam (mentioned in the EIA paper) could conceivably take that away, and of course it's easier to ship around over short distances.
  - tomsto 2y ago
    Hydrocarbons are great for energy density, but gas turbines are brilliant for power density. That's why we need them (and syn fuels)
    - kragen 2y ago
      What we really need are low-capex thermal power plants with high efficiency so we can turn the gas or kerosene or whatever into electricity in the rare case that we need to, without losing money on having massive amounts of capital investment sitting around idle 95% of the time.
      - PaulHoule 2y ago
        You've got to have the whole fuel production, storage and transportation system ready to go 100% of the time. Raises costs if you do it honestly, if you try to skimp it might not work when you need it.
        kragen 2y ago
        It might be okay if production and transportation only work some of the time if you can store up enough fuel to ride out the outages. That's how it works today for fuel transportation; gas stations commonly go without deliveries for days or weeks at a time when roads are snowed out, for example, and oil tankers and LNG tankers make their deliveries even less frequently. In particular, solar and wind won't produce any fuel at night when no wind is blowing, and may not produce enough fuel during the rainy season or winter.
        PaulHoule 2y ago
        Right now it is solar and wind electricity that is cheap. E-fuel [1] and other forms of chemical storage [2] are a thing but might not be so cheap. Seasonal storage might use methane and avoid the legendary boondoggle that is Fischer–Tropsch [3] but methane is itself a powerful greenhouse gas. A really good methane handling system loses much less but if you lose 1% of it you might as well be burning fossil fuels. Even hydrogen isn't completely benign [4] as it depletes those "negative ions" that were a fad in the 1970s and as a result prolongs the life of other greenhouse gases. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrofuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrofuel [2] https://blog.sintef.com/energy/thermochemical-energy-storage-the-next-generation-thermal-batteries/ https://blog.sintef.com/energy/thermochemical-energy-storage... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_proces... [4] https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-023-00857-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-023-00857-8
- bluGill 2y ago
  We have long known how to my synthetic fuels. Germany with limited access to oil in WWII ran large parts of their war on synthetic fuels. South Africa during their embargo years (because of how bad they treated blacks) wasn't able to get [much] oil and so ran their economy on synthetic fuels. Even today many people use synthetic oil made with the same technology in their cars. The problem has always been cost. It typically costs 5x more than conventional oil. Still oil is a much denser store of energy than batteries and so for many applications it might be worth using it despite the much higher costs.
  - kragen 2y ago
    Right! Long-distance aviation seems like an obvious application, though companies like Joby might take over the short-distance market with battery-powered airplanes. Presumably most of the cost of synfuel has been in the energy inputs, right? And solar will drive the cost of intermittent energy down by at least an order of magnitude and possibly two. As Handmer's post says: > (...) up until this point no-one has considered scaling these up as a fundamental source of hydrocarbons, because doing so would be cost prohibitive. Why? The machinery is not particularly complex, but the energy demands are astronomical.
  - jodrellblank 2y ago
    The article is all about the cost.
  - tim333 2y ago
    The WW2 and SA synthetic fuels were not very green. They were made by processing coal.
    - kragen 2y ago
      Or methane, but that isn't really that important.
ashoeafoot 2y ago
Solar and wind are susceptible to hyperhurricanes though which make them useless near coasts.
- kragen 2y ago
  For those who are wondering: Hypercane From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Redirected from Hyperhurricane) A hypercane is a hypothetical class of extreme tropical cyclone that could form if sea surface temperatures reached approximately 50 °C (122 °F), which is 12 °C (22 °F) warmer than the warmest ocean temperature ever recorded.[1] Such an increase could be caused by a large asteroid or comet impact, a large supervolcanic eruption, a large submarine flood basalt, or "incredible" global warming.[2] There is some speculation that a series of hypercanes resulting from the impact of a large asteroid or comet contributed to the demise of the non-avian dinosaurs.[3] The hypothesis was created by Kerry Emanuel of MIT, who also coined the term.[4][5][3]
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  And so is everything else. Solar and wind are generally much more geographically distributed so are less vulnerable.
  - kragen 2y ago
    Probably if there are hyperhurricanes what you need is not a terrestrial power plant but an O'Neill cylinder.

by kragen 2y ago

jodrellblank 2y ago

https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2022/07/22/were-going-to-need-a-lot-of-solar-panels/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2022/07/22/were-going-to-... is a proposal to generate solar (and wind?) power and use it to make synthetic 'natural gas' as the long term energy storage for when the wind is calm and the sunlight blocked. That can go into existing gas storage and pipelines, and be used to drive existing gas power stations.

kragen 2y ago
Yes, hydrocarbons have major advantages as a form of seasonal energy storage, and possibly you can burn them in cheaper, less efficient power plants. Round-trip efficiency is inevitably going to be pretty low with electrically generated fuels, but they still ought to be able to outcompete fossil fuels economically once production scales up. Gas has the advantage that gas turbines are less inefficient than conventional steam, though ultra-supercritical steam (mentioned in the EIA paper) could conceivably take that away, and of course it's easier to ship around over short distances.
- tomsto 2y ago
  Hydrocarbons are great for energy density, but gas turbines are brilliant for power density. That's why we need them (and syn fuels)
  - kragen 2y ago
    What we really need are low-capex thermal power plants with high efficiency so we can turn the gas or kerosene or whatever into electricity in the rare case that we need to, without losing money on having massive amounts of capital investment sitting around idle 95% of the time.
    - PaulHoule 2y ago
      You've got to have the whole fuel production, storage and transportation system ready to go 100% of the time. Raises costs if you do it honestly, if you try to skimp it might not work when you need it.
      - kragen 2y ago
        It might be okay if production and transportation only work some of the time if you can store up enough fuel to ride out the outages. That's how it works today for fuel transportation; gas stations commonly go without deliveries for days or weeks at a time when roads are snowed out, for example, and oil tankers and LNG tankers make their deliveries even less frequently. In particular, solar and wind won't produce any fuel at night when no wind is blowing, and may not produce enough fuel during the rainy season or winter.
        PaulHoule 2y ago
        Right now it is solar and wind electricity that is cheap. E-fuel [1] and other forms of chemical storage [2] are a thing but might not be so cheap. Seasonal storage might use methane and avoid the legendary boondoggle that is Fischer–Tropsch [3] but methane is itself a powerful greenhouse gas. A really good methane handling system loses much less but if you lose 1% of it you might as well be burning fossil fuels. Even hydrogen isn't completely benign [4] as it depletes those "negative ions" that were a fad in the 1970s and as a result prolongs the life of other greenhouse gases. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrofuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrofuel [2] https://blog.sintef.com/energy/thermochemical-energy-storage-the-next-generation-thermal-batteries/ https://blog.sintef.com/energy/thermochemical-energy-storage... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_proces... [4] https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-023-00857-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-023-00857-8
bluGill 2y ago
We have long known how to my synthetic fuels. Germany with limited access to oil in WWII ran large parts of their war on synthetic fuels. South Africa during their embargo years (because of how bad they treated blacks) wasn't able to get [much] oil and so ran their economy on synthetic fuels. Even today many people use synthetic oil made with the same technology in their cars. The problem has always been cost. It typically costs 5x more than conventional oil. Still oil is a much denser store of energy than batteries and so for many applications it might be worth using it despite the much higher costs.
- kragen 2y ago
  Right! Long-distance aviation seems like an obvious application, though companies like Joby might take over the short-distance market with battery-powered airplanes. Presumably most of the cost of synfuel has been in the energy inputs, right? And solar will drive the cost of intermittent energy down by at least an order of magnitude and possibly two. As Handmer's post says: > (...) up until this point no-one has considered scaling these up as a fundamental source of hydrocarbons, because doing so would be cost prohibitive. Why? The machinery is not particularly complex, but the energy demands are astronomical.
- jodrellblank 2y ago
  The article is all about the cost.
- tim333 2y ago
  The WW2 and SA synthetic fuels were not very green. They were made by processing coal.
  - kragen 2y ago
    Or methane, but that isn't really that important.

ashoeafoot 2y ago

Solar and wind are susceptible to hyperhurricanes though which make them useless near coasts.

kragen 2y ago
For those who are wondering: Hypercane From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Redirected from Hyperhurricane) A hypercane is a hypothetical class of extreme tropical cyclone that could form if sea surface temperatures reached approximately 50 °C (122 °F), which is 12 °C (22 °F) warmer than the warmest ocean temperature ever recorded.[1] Such an increase could be caused by a large asteroid or comet impact, a large supervolcanic eruption, a large submarine flood basalt, or "incredible" global warming.[2] There is some speculation that a series of hypercanes resulting from the impact of a large asteroid or comet contributed to the demise of the non-avian dinosaurs.[3] The hypothesis was created by Kerry Emanuel of MIT, who also coined the term.[4][5][3]
bryanlarsen 2y ago
And so is everything else. Solar and wind are generally much more geographically distributed so are less vulnerable.
- kragen 2y ago
  Probably if there are hyperhurricanes what you need is not a terrestrial power plant but an O'Neill cylinder.