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Nonsense. No one's going to use lithium ion batteries for this use case.
Right. It's one of the common anti-renewable canards that batteries would be used for more than diurnal smoothing.
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Those figures cited by Auke are self-reported by Tesla. Not saying that invalidates them but important to consider context. It would seem that emissions associated with battery production vary greatly depending on geography and mix of energy sources. Eg in Germany, emissions from Model 3 battery production are estimated at 11 to 15 tonnes per vehicle: https://eufactcheck.eu/factcheck/mostly-false-electric-cars-...
The 11-15 Tonnes come from the study that you referenced page is disputing? There is a persistent narrative in Germany that diesel cars are better for the environment, and your comment is playing into that. This narrative is wrong and damaging. Why are you doing this?
What am I ‘doing’ exactly, pointing out a fact that there is no ‘free lunch’ when reducing emissions?
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Nuclear power is only dirt cheap if the government/society picks up all the externalised costs for the storage and recycling of waste. Can you tell me which nuclear stations cover all their own costs? As far as I am aware, all nuclear power stations in the world do not bear that cost - it is always picked up by the government. They often figure that the long term cost is worth it for energy stability - not because nu…
The cost of storing waste is miniscule. Because there's so little of it. The entirety of the US's nuclear waste from electricity generation occupies a volume the footprint of a football field and 10 meters high [1]. The government did build a waste storage facility, which was planned to have cost $150 million [2]. Which is tiny compared to the tens of billions that nuclear plants themselves actually cost. The notion…
Then how come that not a single country has yet developed a method for storing their nuclear waste safely and permanently?
From your first link:
> The fuel is either enclosed in steel-lined concrete pools of water or in steel and concrete containers, known as dry storage casks.
> For the foreseeable future, the fuel can safely stay at these facilities until a permanent disposal solution is determined by the federal government.
But from Wikipedia's page on dry cask storage, linked from your second link:
> In the 1990s, the NRC had to “take repeated actions to address defective welds on dry casks that led to cracks and quality assurance problems; helium had leaked into some casks, increasing temperatures and causing accelerated fuel corrosion”.
> With the zeroing of the budget for Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, more nuclear waste is being loaded into sealed metal casks filled with inert gas. Many of these casks will be stored in coastal or lakeside regions where a salt air environment exists, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is studying how such dry casks perform in salt environments. Some hope that the casks can be used for 100 years, but cracking related to corrosion could occur in 30 years or less.
In other words the "safe" temporary storage is not really safe.
From your second link:
> In September 2007, it was discovered that the Bow Ridge fault line ran underneath the facility, hundreds of feet east of where it was originally thought to be located, beneath a storage pad where spent radioactive fuel canisters would be cooled before being sealed in a maze of tunnels. The discovery required several structures to be moved several hundred feet further to the east, and drew criticism from Robert R. Loux, then head of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, who argues that Yucca administrators should have known about the fault line's location years prior, and called the movement of the structures "just-in-time engineering."[80][81] In June 2008, a major nuclear equipment supplier, Holtec International, criticized the Department of Energy's safety plan for handling containers of radioactive waste before they are buried at the proposed Yucca Mountain dump. The concern is that, in an earthquake, the unanchored casks of nuclear waste material awaiting burial at Yucca Mountain could be sent into a "chaotic melee of bouncing and rolling juggernauts".[82]
How sure can we be there are no other fault lines waiting to be found? How sure can we be earthquakes won't cause problems in 100 years, or 500 or 5000 years? The Yucca Mountain repository is supposed to last 10000 years. How do we know it will?
Storing nuclear waste is a huge unsolved problem. What's going to happen is that we're going to put it somewhere out of sight and let future generations deal with it. As other posters said: the nuclear industry externalizes all its difficulties to government, society and even future generations.
Total US sales in 2019: 1502.
It's just not selling.
If you want an hydrogen-powered car, buy a Toyota Mirai. They've been on sale in California since 2016. There are a few hydrogen stations where you can fill it. 5 minute refuel, about 300 mile range. (400 miles in the 2021 model.) The first three years of hydrogen are included with the vehicle purchase. Vehicle price about US$60K. (Expected to be higher for the 2021 model.) Total US sales in 2019: 1502. It's just not…
...and that's the problem. Gasoline, diesel, and electricity are all far easier to find than hydrogen.
(Electrolysis is also extremely inefficient, for those who might be wondering.)
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The cost of storing waste is miniscule. Because there's so little of it. The entirety of the US's nuclear waste from electricity generation occupies a volume the footprint of a football field and 10 meters high [1]. The government did build a waste storage facility, which was planned to have cost $150 million [2]. Which is tiny compared to the tens of billions that nuclear plants themselves actually cost. The notion…
> The cost of storing waste is miniscule. Then how come that not a single country has yet developed a method for storing their nuclear waste safely and permanently? From your first link: > The fuel is either enclosed in steel-lined concrete pools of water or in steel and concrete containers, known as dry storage casks. > For the foreseeable future, the fuel can safely stay at these facilities until a permanent dispos…
They have. Finland has built a disposal site: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_re...
The US built the Yucca Mountain, but then Congress blocked its usage. This was done due to political posturing not technical concerns. Burying it in an area with no groundwater is a foolproof method of disposal short of hyperbolic scenarios involving societal collapse followed by a future people digging in an area with no resources for an inexplicable reason. Yucca mountain is not in a geologically active area, so the concern about earthquakes is moot.
> How sure can we be there are no other fault lines waiting to be found? How sure can we be earthquakes won't cause problems in 100 years, or 500 or 5000 years? The Yucca Mountain repository is supposed to last 10000 years. How do we know it will?
After 10,000 years the uranium is no more radioactive than it was when it was dug out of the ground. And when Yucca mountain is filled the entrances are blocked by meters of concrete - even if canisters are somehow get compromised the uranium still needs to magically get through several meters of rock and concrete to get out into the environment.
It is a solved problem, but politicians have decided not to use the solution. In the US that is, Europe has it's dig in Finland continuing as planned.
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Understand the the "controversies" section on Wikipedia includes concerns that are addressed. In fact you even quoted the explanation that tectonic deformation is not a concern.
And if it does get into the groundwater it will be detected. Do you realize that Uranium is a naturally occurring element? It's a contamination concern even where there is no waste disposal: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150716094840.h...
We're acting like uranium is some magic kryptonite, when it's 40 times as common as gold. We know how to detect uranium in water, because naturally occurring uranium gets in it.
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The issue of charging was also there with BEVs, until Tesla straight up built a huge network of superchargers. The players in hydrogen say they will do the same. But for personal vehicles, hydrogen won't math out, it's greatest advantage is its energy density for trucks. It's for long range trucks that we will see hydrogen first. Green hydrogen will act as energy storage, big renewables grids can dump excess into gre…
> The issue of charging was also there with BEVs, until Tesla straight up built a huge network of superchargers. The players in hydrogen say they will do the same. The fact that EV players actually delivered and built charging networks should offer plenty of proof as to which technology is more viable. It took decades to build out the network of gas stations across countries. The reason it took much less to build out…
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Feedstock is the problem here: there's simply not enough net primary productivity on the planet, and humans already appropriate ~20%. There are some marginal gains possible, but on the order of single-digit percentages of present fossil fuel consumption. Maybe low double-digits. The US had a largely biofuel based transport system in 1900. Horses consumed 20% of all US grain production, the population was under 100m,…
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. has 434,164,946 acres of “cropland”—land that is able to be worked in an industrial fashion (monoculture). This is the prime, level, and generally deep agricultural soil. In addition to cropland, the U.S. has 939,279,056 acres of “farmland.” This land is also good for agriculture, but it’s not as level and the soil not as deep. Additionally, there is a vast am…
A decade ago biofuels were my first thought. The maths simply don't add up. Our options are far less energy per person, far fewer people, other sources of energy, or, most likely, some combination of these.
The highest claimed yields are for algae, at a rather improbable 1,000 gal/(acre * year):
[Y]ou might consider floating the algae offshore, along the Pacific and Atlantic costs. It's roughly 1,300 miles from San Diego, CA to Port Angeles, WA, and 1,800 miles from Homestead, FL to Lubec, ME. Dividing our 443,000 square miles by those two added together, we find we'd have to extend our grow region some distance off-shore. That is, 143 miles off-shore. The full length of both coasts.
Or perhaps you'd prefer to re-purpose the Gulf of Mexico. Its total area is about 600,000 mi2, we'd need about 3/4 of it dedicated to algae growth.
https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2cvap7/the_int...
Tom "Do the Math" Murphy:
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/11/the-biofuel-grind/
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/08/garbage-in-garbage-out/
The late David MacCay's Alternative Energy Without the Hot Air gives a comprehensive breakdown for the UK of alternative energy options. Again, the picture is bleak.
The takeaways are we use a lot of energy and there are a lot of us.
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Right. It's one of the common anti-renewable canards that batteries would be used for more than diurnal smoothing.
I think you missed the point: even for diurnal storage the scale required amounts to a decade's worth of global battery production just to create capacity equal to 1/4th of just the US's daily electricity usage.
https://cleantechnica.com/files/2019/04/2019-Q1-Growth-in-Gl...
