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ThorCon: Cheap, reliable, CO2-free electric power

thorconpower.com

241–246 of 246 posts

Re: ThorCon: Cheap, reliable, CO2-free electric power

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person you're reacting to was correct. They're reacting to someone who is spreading information they well know to be false.

Feel free to show me in what way my comment was false, I'd be very happy if I'm wrong and desert solar is a viable solution.

Two things.

One, I'm not responding to you. Do you know how the internet works?

If I reply to someone else's comment, it's not to you. I'm actually on your side, it turns out. Take your hands off your hips. I'm pro-nuclear. Solar has never worked, and it never will. Germany dumped $1.7 trillion into Energiewende, and failed. Their carbon went up, their power went down, their prices went up, and they drove industry to higher carbon grids. All it did was make the situation worse.

Now take a look at my comment. Who am I actually responding to? What were they saying?

Was it you? Was it pro solar? No?

Then why are you here demanding that I spend my time proving you wrong?

.

Two, "Feel free to show me in what way my comment was false"

Can you please get this out of your body for the rest of your life? You sound like a crank.

It's ANTIVAXXERS who say this "feel free to show me" stuff. Like what, you thought I was on the internet just waiting for your permission?

Do you realize how you sound? "Hey, I'm right until you prove me wrong?"

That's ridiculous. Even though you're right, your ostentatious delivery of an entitled nonsensical position is /still/ setting you back.

I'm on your side, and you've still left me feeling like your position is not defended by any skill or knowledge. If someone who doubted nuclear interacted with you, it seems almost certain that your lack of ability to display your own position, combined with your attempt to make it someone else's responsibility, would actually backfire and cause them to support nuclear less.

This will never do any good. You will never convince anyone this way. You sound confused. This isn't a fight, and you aren't a fighter. You shouldn't be attempting to defeat people this way, and you haven't risen to the standard you're attempting to demand from strangers, when the actual responsibility is yours, not theirs.

Every time you demand someone else prove you wrong, you have immediately and automatically lost.

If you say "2+2 is 4, prove me wrong," everyone watching you thinks you're wearing a Charlie Kirk mask, and arithmetic will try to rewrite itself to distance itself from you.

Please don't sit here like "do work for me because I permit it and deign it good, to amuse me and make me very happy for being wrong."

The amateur nuclear fanboy community really needs to stop taking discussion tips from Youtube flat earth channels. This is not how competence works.

Re: ThorCon: Cheap, reliable, CO2-free electric power

#242
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gravity is an incredibly feeble force; storing large amounts of energy this way requires a lot of rocks and a lot of land.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fengning_Pumped_Storage_Powe... Pushing water uphill is relatively cheap and ~80% efficient. We can build more 2x nuclear power station equivalent "batteries" like fengning fairly easily.

I love when people who have no familiarity with the long and failed history of water batteries assume it's easy

Re: ThorCon: Cheap, reliable, CO2-free electric power

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there many sites with appropriate geology to build any substantial number of pumped storage stations?

How about any of the reservoirs in drought-stricken North America? Water could be pumped to Lake Mead, power generated at Hoover Dam, and then enter irrigation for farmland. Same for almost the entirety of the Snake River and tributaries.

Maybe you weren't aware, but those sites are drying out thanks to climate change, and have some other important responsibilities like drinking water

Hydro is failing worldwide. Look it up before responding please, thanks.

Re: ThorCon: Cheap, reliable, CO2-free electric power

#244
post #237
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you understand the difference between already built-out storage, and preparing to build out storage? If you want to compare like against like, the number of ThorCon reactors deployed is exactly zero (0). Storage is not already built out because it is still obviously better to spend the money building out generating capacity, and will be until its share is much larger. In particular, before storage can be useful, y…

The business model for storage is leveraging the difference in prices at different times (of the day mostly). There is already quite a price difference on energy markets and negative prices happen regularly around the world.

You seem to be talking about storage as a separate business. But the major market for storage will be public utilities that also own generating capacity, and sell power principally to end users. After their storage is full, maybe they sell any extra to the grid, or use it to synthesize liquid fuel for sale.

Negative prices are a very, very temporary phenomenon. Very soon, all surplus generating capacity will be absorbed producing hydrogen and ammonia for sale into an unlimited market.

Re: ThorCon: Cheap, reliable, CO2-free electric power

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can switch turbines on and off , leading water to a turbine or a bypass in minutes

You can, but I wonder do the operating conditions of the river actually allow it for a great number of plants? Or are they hemmed in by needing to always have a certain flow in the river plus/minus 10%.

Usually they require a certain flow, the flow will be the same whether it goes through a turbine or bypass ofc.

Re: ThorCon: Cheap, reliable, CO2-free electric power

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to show me in what way my comment was false, I'd be very happy if I'm wrong and desert solar is a viable solution.

Two things. One, I'm not responding to you. Do you know how the internet works? If I reply to someone else's comment, it's not to you. I'm actually on your side, it turns out. Take your hands off your hips. I'm pro-nuclear. Solar has never worked, and it never will. Germany dumped $1.7 trillion into Energiewende, and failed. Their carbon went up, their power went down, their prices went up, and they drove industry to…

I think you took more offense in that than intended ;)

On your first point, you said

> The person you're reacting to was correct.

So I took "you" to be the parent (godelski) who was responding (=reacting) to ncmncm, who accused me of spreading disinformation. You then continued with

> They're reacting to someone who is spreading information they well know to be false.

I took this "they" to reference ncmncm, who is responding (reacting) to my original comment - which then means that you would've said that I'm spreading misinformation.

Given this new information, the "they" probably referenced "godelski", too - which is the source of our misunderstanding.

To you second point, you're right that this was probably not the best strategic response. That being said, my original comment provided arguments and a (hopefully) valid source, while the responses accused me of spreading knowingly wrong information (well, technically only one did, but as outlined in point 1, I was unaware of that at the time of writing the comment). Proving that I knew what I said was wrong is a pretty high bar, so I decided to ask for only points that were wrong in my original comments.

The comment was a bit salty, I agree, but in the context that I made a good argument (IMO) and the only response was "false" without even a hint to a specific fault, I didn't really see a more reasonable way to respond - but I should've pointed this out more clearly. It was definitely not my intention to make someone work for free to debunk my baseless claims.

And, to end things, just a minor nitpick - I'm actually not a nuclear fanboy at all, I was just responding honestly why desert solar was not an option, since it was something I've looked at before.

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