551–560 of 818 posts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear...
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Air separation is not a chemical process. It's a physical process, involving compression, heat exchangers, and expanders. You know, just like an energy storage system using cryogenic gases. None of this is magical unknown technology. The components are literally in use today and have been for years. Now, whether LN2 (or LAir) energy storage is practical is another matter. The efficiency seems poor unless you have a s…
Air separation is mostly used for chemical processes [1] to isolate certain gases like oxygen or nitrogen. This is what I wrote in my previous comment: > It's off the shelf technology for chemical processes. It's not off the shelf technology for energy storage. The while point I'm making in these last few comments is that just because a certain technology is effective for one application doesn't guarantee it's effect…
Funny article in that it doesn't discuss lifecycle costs. A side-by-side comparison of the cost of grids powered by nuclear power plant relative to those powered by wind/solar/storage is what I'd expect to see from a 'paper of record' like the NYTimes. Except in some specific cases (Finland, other Arctic regions with long periods of low sunlight) I'm pretty sure this cost comparison comes down firmly on the side of w…
> ... I'm pretty sure this cost comparison comes down firmly on the side of wind/solar/storage. Storage is the main cost barrier for 100% renewable-powered grids, but this is also an area where technological development is possible. Sure, if you handwave the unsolved-at-scale technical problems with grid energy storage and make a series of generous assumptions about future technology, that's probably true. Nuclear te…
> Seawater extraction is an option if that's ever a real concern
Hmmm.... Hand waving unsolved at scale technical problems
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That is more of a what-if. If there was more wind and solar built out there would be enough curtailed energy to run electrolyzers at 43% capacity factor. I am saying today it doesn't make sense because there isn't a lot of over-provisioning taking place. There should be but what investors are going to jump first with a curtailed energy electrolyzer when curtailed energy is low.
It's a demolition of your nonsensical 5% number (which is also what-if).
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Even a superficial glance would tell you that this doesn't make sense. We have had >70 years of peaceful nuclear power. A significant anti nuclear movement has existed for maybe 40 years and it has clearly not been influencial until maybe the last 20 years. So why has the nuclear power industry not solved the issues in the first 30 years? Moreover, why has France which hasn't had a significant antinuclear movement ev…
The storage problem has yet to be solved for the same reason why any nation has yet to solve the issue of pollution from fossil fuels. It cost money and any increase in energy costs is detrimental to growth. The insurance issue is similar identical to other energy sources. Why isn't hydro power insured in the case of accidental flooding? If they were it wouldn't be possible to run them at current energy prices. We do…
The storage problem has not been solved because we do not have the technology. There is no evidence that the technology os possible.
The long term waste (not much in quantity, but it does mount up. A few million litres at the moment I believe ??) has to be stored for periods of time on the order of hundreds of thousands of years.
There is no way we can write a warning sign that we know can be read for that long.
We cannot build a structure that will last that long.
There are no places on this planet that we can be sure are stable for that long.
It is making future generations pay for our current consumption.
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Also, reprocessing "nuclear waste" from nuclear power stations yields a lot of pretty good fuel for "fast breeder" reactors [1]. This also mostly solves the problem of storing the highly active nuclear waste: you may need like 5% of the current storage capacity if you burn the current "nuclear waste" stockpiles. Yes, the process involves production of Pu-239, which is weapon-grade and may raise proliferation concerns…
> Yes, the process involves production of Pu-239, which is weapon-grade and may raise proliferation concerns. Not if you use Thorium breeder reactors.
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We've had breeder reactors for decades, what are you talking about?
We've had demo reactors with various issues, none of which demonstrated they could compete even with burner reactors. I remind you the double standard involved criticizing renewables "at scale", so a few problematic breeder reactors won't dispel the hypocrisy.
Also, the main reason we haven't invested in breeder reactors is that it turns out uranium isn't actually scarce enough to justify it.
For example, let's say you use hydrogen (by far the most promising candidate as of now). You need to build a plant to perform the water electrolysis and a power plant to convert the hydrogen into electricity. Both these plants will work at most half of the time, but in reality, much less. So, whatever capital costs you have for an electrolysis plant, you just double, triple, or multiply by 10. The same for the hydrogen power plant. A hydrogen power plant will cost at least as much as a current natural gas power plant. That is not a lot, but if you multiply by 5, then it becomes a lot.
But what if you could run these plants 100% of the time. Now we are talking. Let's say you build lots of solar capacity in Morocco, run an electrolysis plant year long, liquefy it, ship it to Germany, where it is burned in a power plant 365/24/7. Or make the hydrogen in Australia and ship it to Japan. Or make it in Nevada and ship it to New York and Toronto.
Do you still need nuclear? I'm not 100% sure. But if lots of people who were against nuclear before changed their mind, then maybe they ran the numbers, and it turns out we need nuclear.
But it's certain we need nuclear if we ever want to explore the outer solar system. And if we climb again the knowledge ladder of commercial nuclear fission, then maybe one day we'll be able to make efficient nuclear rockets.
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Air separation is mostly used for chemical processes [1] to isolate certain gases like oxygen or nitrogen. This is what I wrote in my previous comment: > It's off the shelf technology for chemical processes. It's not off the shelf technology for energy storage. The while point I'm making in these last few comments is that just because a certain technology is effective for one application doesn't guarantee it's effect…
So what if it's used for chemical processes? To make it efficient, there is careful transfer of heat from the input stream to the outgoing streams, with compression/expansion to convert the heat energy back to work. Making this efficient involves just the kinds of components that are needed in a cryogenic energy store.
But you can't do this for cryogenic air storage. The whole point is to produce liquid nitrogen (or liquid air) that can be stored and then reheated later to drive an engine to generate electricity. If you ran the liquid nitrogen output through the input stream like in typical air separation, you'd warm the output stream and turn it back into a gas. So even though the two systems both involve cooling systems they're actually substantially different processes. One of them is separating air's constituent gases, and mixes the input and output streams to achieve efficiency. The other is essentially a big liquid nitrogen plant.
Unfortunately the only existing cryogenic air storage plant delivered 15 MWh of storage at a cost of 8 million pounds [1]. That's about $650 per KWh, as compared to ~$130 per KWh for battery storage. Like I said, just because a technology is effective in one application, doesn't mean it's guaranteed to be effective in another one.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryogenic_energy_storage#cite_...
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I don't think that's a common use of "unsolved at scale". We know how to do it, it just doesn't make economic sense right now. I mean, suppose you have hundreds of GW of storage of some form installed. You could just claim it's still not "solved at scale" because the global energy consumption is even higher.
Well nuclear proponents handwave away the massively higher costs, the still unsolved long term storage problem (it's been >70 years of nuclear power and there still does not exist a long term storage facility in the world), and insurance for the case of a disaster.