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Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

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Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#271

Post by ncmncm »

belorn wrote: post #262
ncmncm wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously until there is enough renewable energy capacity to charge up storage, there will not be storage built to charge with it. Posting "storage isn't built out yet" says nothing informative. Before it's built, it hasn't been built.

It is future tech, similar to fusion.

Storage is trivial freshman physics (lift a weight, pump air to displace water under pressure, pump water uphill) except for batteries, which are also perfectly known physics, with numerous chemistries in mass production, a century of universal use, and working prototypes for more exotic chemistries

Thus, literally as different from fusion as is possible to express.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#272

Post by ncmncm »

orwin wrote: post #266
ncmncm wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is diverted from build-out for political and military pressures. Is that "administrative"?

I was talking about mines authorization in Peru (environmental blocks) and in China (administrative blocks). You did not respond to my question. Do you think your argument 'money to nuclear is bad cause it slows down renewables ' is really true? Aren't we close to max production capacity yet? And in this case, why not continue with nuclear instead of building new coal?

Yes, money is in fact fungible. No, we are nowhere near max production capacity, as demonstrated by prices still falling. Nobody is building new coal except China.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#273

Post by ncmncm »

epistasis wrote: post #257
ncmncm wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet, the material cost for such a sphere, today, would be much less than for the equivalent amount of batteries, even at projected prices. It would only ever experience compressive force, which unreinforced concrete is very good at. Lithium is a poor choice for stationary storage, and competing with growth of electric car usage would be bad policy. Probably molten-metal batteries will turn out better for utility use,…

On the prices, I haven't heard much optimistic news, the last I heard was at best, parity with current lithium ion prices: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03605... But that was five years ago, and as a manufactured product perhaps they can achieve better pricing over time. Lithium ion has no disadvantages for stationary storage, and it has one absolutely massive advantage: there are lots of hig…

A storage medium that does not tend to burst into flame emitting vaporized Drano would be a much better choice to pack together by the hundreds of tons. Iron-air is one such chemistry. Liquid metal is another.

But the future is in non-battery storage.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#274

Post by dahfizz »

epistasis wrote: post #248
dahfizz wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of nitpicking terminology, let's talk about the issue directly: What do you do when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing? There isn't enough batteries on earth to even make a dent in the storage you would need. We don't want to burn any more hydrocarbons. What are our other options? Massive pumped hydro might get us there, but that construction is on a similar time horizon to a new nuclear plant a…

Let's talk about this directly: what do you do when the nuclear reactor goes down because it's time to refuel, or because it's heating up the river too much in a heat wave (eg in France), or because some sensor valve froze shut in an decade-frequent cold snap (Texas)? You get the power from some other generator on the grid at a different geographic location. We can easily get to 80%-90% renewables that way, with curr…

> what do you do when the nuclear reactor goes down because it's time to refuel, or because it's heating up the river too much in a heat wave (eg in France), or because some sensor valve froze shut in an decade-frequent cold snap (Texas)?

> You get the power from some other generator on the grid at a different geographic location.

Nuclear has a much better uptime then current renewable tech. In the winter, there is zero sunshine in North America for 10+ hours a day. And it just so happens that we hit peak energy usage while the sun is down.

For nuclear, you only need storage "peaker plants" to smooth out demand. To go all in on renewalable and solar, you actually need to be able to service 100% of demand, for many hours, from storage. It won't be feasible for decades.

I think your estimate for tens of TWh/year by mid 2030s is reasonable. But most of that is for EVs. Tesla has the largest currently running and the largest in-the-pipeline lithium ion battery factories, but all those batteries are going straight into an EV.

Even if we dedicated 100% of batteries we can produce to be grid storage, we wouldn't have enough until ~2040. And, by the way, they all need to be replaced by 2050 because the cells all degrade and become dangerous.

In reality, the spare production capacity we can dedicate to grid storage will always be small. I'm not convinced it can even catch up with our growing energy usage in our lifetime.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#275

Post by belorn »

ncmncm wrote: post #271
belorn wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is future tech, similar to fusion.

Storage is trivial freshman physics (lift a weight, pump air to displace water under pressure, pump water uphill) except for batteries, which are also perfectly known physics, with numerous chemistries in mass production, a century of universal use, and working prototypes for more exotic chemistries Thus, literally as different from fusion as is possible to express.

Fusion is trivial freshman physics. It is just plasma heated up. Kids play with plasma lamps as toys. Getting energy from it is just as simple as hooking it up to a steam engine.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#277

Post by bryanlarsen »

dahfizz wrote: post #274
epistasis wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's talk about this directly: what do you do when the nuclear reactor goes down because it's time to refuel, or because it's heating up the river too much in a heat wave (eg in France), or because some sensor valve froze shut in an decade-frequent cold snap (Texas)? You get the power from some other generator on the grid at a different geographic location. We can easily get to 80%-90% renewables that way, with curr…

> what do you do when the nuclear reactor goes down because it's time to refuel, or because it's heating up the river too much in a heat wave (eg in France), or because some sensor valve froze shut in an decade-frequent cold snap (Texas)? > You get the power from some other generator on the grid at a different geographic location. Nuclear has a much better uptime then current renewable tech. In the winter, there is z…

> Nuclear has a much better uptime then current renewable tech. In the winter, there is zero sunshine in North America for 10+ hours a day. And it just so happens that we hit peak energy usage while the sun is down.

A renewable energy grid would be anti-fragile. We would know we could handle an outage because we'd encounter them regularly. Unlike nuclear, which goes down so infrequently that outages cause real problems.

We don't hit peak energy usage when the sun goes down. We hit peak energy usage when solar power is about 30% off peak and wind energy is at peak.

> For nuclear, you only need storage "peaker plants" to smooth out demand. To go all in on renewalable and solar, you actually need to be able to service 100% of demand, for many hours, from storage. It won't be feasible for decades.

It's feasible today. These guys are doing it: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/inside-8minute-...

> I think your estimate for tens of TWh/year by mid 2030s is reasonable. But most of that is for EVs. Tesla has the largest currently running and the largest in-the-pipeline lithium ion battery factories, but all those batteries are going straight into an EV.

Tesla barely makes the top ten even if you count the Nevada factory as theirs. You shouldn't, because Panasonic makes the batteries in the Nevada gigafactory. CATL is by far the biggest battery manufacturer.

> Even if we dedicated 100% of batteries we can produce to be grid storage, we wouldn't have enough until ~2040. And, by the way, they all need to be replaced by 2050 because the cells all degrade and become dangerous.

You don't put 10 year batteries into storage facilities. LiFePo4 batteries are cheaper, last a lot longer and degrade a lot more safely. They're heavier so aren't commonly used in cars outside of China, but storage uses don't care about weight.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#278

Post by simion314 »

ncmncm wrote: post #255
simion314 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean Germany has enough storage now that is unused and would also be enough to cover the case where gas is replaced with solar? Any numbers that show this , including say 1 winter week for residential and industry consumption?

What you wrote does not make sense.

OK, we can see in winter this storage put to good use then and in spring you can be happy proving me wrong with statistics that show that in fact Germany managed to replae all gas and nuclear production with solar and batteries.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#279

Post by gcanyon »

xorcist wrote: post #182
Sharlin wrote: post #54

Some context: The Green Party had long been diametrically opposed to nuclear, to the extent that they have twice exited a coalition government in protest of granting additional reactor permits. Over the past ten years their position has gradually shifted though, thanks to STEM-oriented Greens in particular, as it has become obvious that AGW is a bigger threat than nuclear. This in spite of several setbacks: – Obvious…

That reactor is on one of my favourite wikipedia articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_buildin...

No offense to Finland, but I was not expecting Finland to have three entries on the “most expensive buildings” list…

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#280

Post by ncmncm »

belorn wrote: post #275
ncmncm wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Storage is trivial freshman physics (lift a weight, pump air to displace water under pressure, pump water uphill) except for batteries, which are also perfectly known physics, with numerous chemistries in mass production, a century of universal use, and working prototypes for more exotic chemistries Thus, literally as different from fusion as is possible to express.

Fusion is trivial freshman physics. It is just plasma heated up. Kids play with plasma lamps as toys. Getting energy from it is just as simple as hooking it up to a steam engine.

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