471–480 of 709 posts
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If workable (obviously crucial point!), I like the idea of using renewables, e.g. offshore wind farms, to produce hydrogen. This would solve storage issues, vehicles could be refilled pretty much the way they are now, gas boilers could be swapped for hydrogen, no need for polluting batteries, no major upgrades of electric grid, etc.
Hydrogen, or ammonia. Ammonia is more practical for transport in tankage.
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If workable (obviously crucial point!), I like the idea of using renewables, e.g. offshore wind farms, to produce hydrogen. This would solve storage issues, vehicles could be refilled pretty much the way they are now, gas boilers could be swapped for hydrogen, no need for polluting batteries, no major upgrades of electric grid, etc.
Not workable. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and is found in great abundance in all galaxies. It is particularly present in the Sun, which is problematic because it is not very accessible to us :) On Earth, there is also a lot of hydrogen in water and in hydrocarbons. However, it does not exist in free form, i.e. just hydrogen. It is always associated with something else, for example with oxyge…
I'm thinking a key metric is the efficiency of it all.
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It doesn't have to be batteries, it can be pump storage plant or similar installations. Problem that those don't work aren't technical. There are often legislative in nature or the infrastructure for energy transportation is inadequate. We don't know how feasibly we can get Uranium. The market is unstable right now because of political problems. The topic is very complex, there are disadvantages with every form of en…
There isn't a single existing pump storage plant in the world that charge with renewables energy and resells it when demand is high. There exist a few proof of concepts, but the only commercial one that I know off do so by charging it from fossil fuel power plants. It act as a large subsidized grid stabilizer for when different fossil fuel power power down. When there are articles about pumped storage plants the usua…
Hydroelectric power and pumped storage have synergies, they aren't competing.
Stored power isn't overcapacity. Investors care about expensive energy and renewables are the cheapest and cleanest option.
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This presupposes that economics are the most important thing. That isn't really the case. It doesn't matter how much money you have when the climate burns to the ground around you, while energy sources that work when they want to fail to provide for your needs.
It is funny how the same people (the nuclear lobby) who used to argue against solar due to economics (too expensive) are now arguing we should not consider economics anymore. The thing is though, at the moment most countries still produce significant portions of their elecricity from fossils. So if we want to remove them as quickly as possible, we should use the solution that gives us the highest capacity for a fixed…
There is this idea that nuclear is not being deployed because people have a wrong perception of risks. However, the main reason is the economy. The costs of solar, wind and batteries are dropping exponentially but the costs of nuclear are not improving. We can blame regulation and the hypothetically wrong public perception about safety, but the reality is that costs cannot go down easily because of the innovation dyn…
> A nuclear reactor cannot be shipped Have you ever heard of nuclear aircraft carriers and submarines?
There is this idea that nuclear is not being deployed because people have a wrong perception of risks. However, the main reason is the economy. The costs of solar, wind and batteries are dropping exponentially but the costs of nuclear are not improving. We can blame regulation and the hypothetically wrong public perception about safety, but the reality is that costs cannot go down easily because of the innovation dyn…
This is wrong. Nuclear energy is very cheap, green, and reliable. The problem with nuclear is the very large initial investment required, which delays the time to profit. In other words, there is no problem with nuclear energy. The problem is with our economic system that demands short-term profits.
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And, if you could, it would still be massively more expensive. For the price you get many times as much renewable generation.
The market is free to make their decisions. With a global ban on fossil fuels in the European grid countries should choose for themselves if they want to build multiple cheaper renewables or build more expensive nuclear. Voters will then say theirs. Countries can always trade with each other so that which ever strategy end up as a winner will spread to the others. Everything is a win-win scenario as long fossil fuels…
For nuclear powers, a civilian nuclear industry is a strategic asset that sharply brings down the cost of maintaining nuclear weapons/subs/carriers. This is partly through skills exchange and partly due to the presence of a shared industrial ecosystem.
For certain non nuclear powers (sweden, iran, south korea) an overpriced civvie nuclear industry is kind of like buying an option on quickly becoming a nuclear power which theyd like to keep in case of geopolitical emergency.
Countries that dont see a necessity for MAD and arent nuclear powers almost universally cant be bothered with the expense and will just build something else.
This is why the nuclear industry/the US government are so keen to coopt the green movement to support throwing more subsidies after nuclear plants in the name of solving global warming. Also why theyre so keen to foment a split between the traditionally united antinuclear and green groups.
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The solar panel argument is very weak, at best. There are some minor challenges with solar. And they are really very minor. Quite different to "don't touch the nuclear waste for the next few million or so years". Nuclear has several problems. The main one of which is simply its cost. It is complex technology that involves dangerous materials that need protective measures against both technical failures and security m…
Wait, there is more. Nuclear needs water to cool, hot water then goes into rivers. This, until the river becomes too hot for the life in the water, then you cannot use your plant anymore (or you can, at the risk of killing all life in the area). Also water evaporates when it's hot and vapor is a greenhouse gas even worse than carbon dioxyde. This might sound like a minor problem in the short term but it might be a hu…
Can you back that up? From what I understand most of the cooling happens in the cooling towers by evaporation?
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Sadly nuclear plants cannot run without cooling water from rivers or sea.
True, but again there is Palo Verde nuclear plant that is located in the middle of the desert in Arizona and is cooled by sewage water from nearby cities. Some new fast reactor designs don't even need water for cooling. Also, China has built an experimental thorium reactor in Gobi desert which also doesn't need water for cooling. I believe a lot if interesting stuff is coming in a few years.
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I don't really want wind turbines and solar panels to cover the whole planet. I used that to calculate some numbers for canada, and we'd need about 64k average offshore wind turbines, and 3200 square kilometers of solar farms.
Canada is comprised of 9,984,670 km^2. I don't think that your 3200 km^2 is going to make that much of an impact.