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Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

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Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#441

Post by moloch-hai »

panick21_ wrote: post #435
moloch-hai wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and would be in the position France is in now, with a fleet of obsolete contraptions that will cost further billions to decommission, and with nothing on the horizon to replace them.

France fleet is not obsolete. They can survive for another 40 year easy. Sadly the French 2nd generation pissed away all the great work the first generation did and neglected the fleet they had. They are treating the fleet lie the giving tree. Ironically because the French were so blessed with so many reactors, they were one of the few nations that didn't use their reactors very well. The Germans were actually better…

Yet, in just a few years all the French reactors will be mothballed because they cost several times as much to operate as buying off the grid.

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#442

Post by pezezin »

fomine3 wrote: post #293
pezezin wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People seem to forget that Japan is not only Kanto and Kansai. I live in Aomori and here everybody needs a car. I have to drive around 500 km per week, and I would really appreciate if my car would have better mileage.

On your use case, you just need to plug in everyday, instead of go to gas station every week. Who often drive above 100km per day is rare in Japan even in rural area.

Well, the only problem is that I don't have where to plug it, but sure, it is feasible. My neighbor drives a Nissan Leaf, and we had a co-worker with a Tesla, so I know it is possible.

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#443

Post by vt100 »

barrysteve wrote: post #406
entropicgravity wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The attraction to hydrogen by the automotive companies of Japan is that it would preserve their balance sheets. An ICE car produces various revenue streams for auto makers. First, the sale price, then the oil changes, and plenty of ongoing maintenance. While a straight up EV would shrink an automaker's balance sheet tremendously. The motor has one moving part that is very resilient. The motor doesn't require a transm…

BMW is considering charging for heated seats in a subscription model. "No maintainence" EV cars are just platforms for subscriptions. Hydrogen vs battery isn't about farming dollars and cents, that can be done other ways.

Have they considered ad-supported seat heating? Along with crypto mining?

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#444

Post by kortilla »

credit_guy wrote: post #126
XorNot wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You absolutely could lay a cable that long, and IMO we should . There is no reason not to export abundant renewable energy today while we can, and figure out the long term storage issues as we go. Hydrogen can be manufactured anywhere you have seawater and electricity, so it would be a much better use of resources to lay a subsea superconducting cable once and let Japan store power by generating hydrogen locally.

One large LNG carrier of class Q-Max carries 260000 m3 of liquefied gas. If we stitch to hydrogen, that contains 2.2 million gigajoules of energy, which is 614 GWh, or a bit more than 25 GWd. If we assume a conversion efficiency of 60%, then that's about 15 GWd of electricity after taking into account all the losses. If one carrier arrives every 15 days, then this can produce a sustained 1 GW of electricity, which is…

4 carriers is not enough if you need this to be reliable. That’s a long trip across an ocean on a route that gets some bad weather.

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#445

Post by kortilla »

moloch-hai wrote: post #352
Ensorceled wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It feels like the "save the planet" movement, or at least some shards of it, come with a very specific notion of how exactly it is ok to save the planet, and what fails on style points. This has always been a pain point for me. If you feel the world is facing an existential crisis (and I do), then it seems weird to go down the list of possible ways of avoiding utter catastrophe like you're at a sushi bar: Solar: Ah…

It is not "tone policing". That is an accusation guaranteed to derail any discussion. Nukes and geothermal simply cost more than solar and wind: nukes, many, many times more. Spending a billion dollars gets you N GW of solar or wind, and N/M, M>>1, of others. Generally, if you need a steam turbine to keep working, you will trail behind anything with zero opex. Hydrogen has a plausible place in long-term (i.e. strateg…

Solar and wind are variable. Putting them in the same category as nuclear without including the storage costs is disingenuous. This is a super basic issue and you tut-tutting with this deeply flawed by oft-repeated talking point is why this comes across as “tone-policing”.

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#446

Post by Schroedingersat »

kortilla wrote: post #445
moloch-hai wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not "tone policing". That is an accusation guaranteed to derail any discussion. Nukes and geothermal simply cost more than solar and wind: nukes, many, many times more. Spending a billion dollars gets you N GW of solar or wind, and N/M, M>>1, of others. Generally, if you need a steam turbine to keep working, you will trail behind anything with zero opex. Hydrogen has a plausible place in long-term (i.e. strateg…

Solar and wind are variable. Putting them in the same category as nuclear without including the storage costs is disingenuous. This is a super basic issue and you tut-tutting with this deeply flawed by oft-repeated talking point is why this comes across as “tone-policing”.

https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/CountryDetails....

There is not a single reactor on this list with an operation factor (proportion of hours delivering any energy) over 85%.

Storage, backup, and overprovision are part of any system. 24/7/365 nuclear is a myth.

Once you acknowledge that reality it becomes a calculation of total costs vs. total emissions abated. VRE is about 5x as effective by this metric without even using any strategy other than minor overprovision, existing w2e/hydro, and fossil fuel methane backup, because generating even the mythical 100% green energy starting in 20 years is far worse than generating >80% green energy starting in 2 years.

Even if the long term plan is all nuclear (this doesn't work with commercial technology, there's not enough U235) it's still optimal to max out the VRE pipeline first. The VRE will pay back before your nuclear reactor is done just by the money saved on coal and gas.

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#447

Post by eru »

jojobas wrote: post #278
eru wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydrogen isn't really anything you'd be more keen to sit on top than other batteries, or is it?

Hydrogen by itself has the energy density of zero. Batteries are nearing the energy density of high explosives (and for some types, such as Li-S, exceed it), and, unlike hydrogen, have all the components required for energy yield within micrometers of each other.

> Hydrogen by itself has the energy density of zero.

Not sure how you measure that? Oxygen from the air is plentiful.

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#448

Post by Panzer04 »

slackfan wrote: post #317
Panzer04 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? It costs more per kwh than renewables. If you are going to store electricity, it may as well be from renewables (which also benefit the most from storing power in a practical sense)

What's the total ROeI (return on energy invested) to engineer, build, deploy any piece of renewable? Multiple decades. What is is with nuclear? A day? A few weeks at most? That's why I point out the physics bit. This isn't about the cost, this is about being able to generate energy, not just try to build what is in essense a perpetual motion machine.

It’s on the order of a few years for solar and wind, if I recall.

It sounds hilariously optimistic to me that ROEI for nuclear would be days/weeks. The amount of infrastructure required to support a nuclear plant is huge.

Regardless, so long as ROEI is reasonably positive, then cost is all that really matters (and regardless cost should include the effects of ROEI anyway)

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#449

Post by Schroedingersat »

slackfan wrote: post #317
Panzer04 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? It costs more per kwh than renewables. If you are going to store electricity, it may as well be from renewables (which also benefit the most from storing power in a practical sense)

What's the total ROeI (return on energy invested) to engineer, build, deploy any piece of renewable? Multiple decades. What is is with nuclear? A day? A few weeks at most? That's why I point out the physics bit. This isn't about the cost, this is about being able to generate energy, not just try to build what is in essense a perpetual motion machine.

The EPBT of new solar (New onshore wind is about 6 months.

The nuclear plant is a few months to a couple of years, but each load of fuel is up to 3 months in every six years depending on where it comes from and how it is enriched.

All are firmly in the category of "you're lying and spreading fossil fuel propaganda".

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#450

Post by Schroedingersat »

Panzer04 wrote: post #448
slackfan wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the total ROeI (return on energy invested) to engineer, build, deploy any piece of renewable? Multiple decades. What is is with nuclear? A day? A few weeks at most? That's why I point out the physics bit. This isn't about the cost, this is about being able to generate energy, not just try to build what is in essense a perpetual motion machine.

It’s on the order of a few years for solar and wind, if I recall. It sounds hilariously optimistic to me that ROEI for nuclear would be days/weeks. The amount of infrastructure required to support a nuclear plant is huge. Regardless, so long as ROEI is reasonably positive, then cost is all that really matters (and regardless cost should include the effects of ROEI anyway)

Look up an LCA or fermi estimate it yourself. It's roughly on par with solar (4mo-2yr depending on just how unreliable it is).

The biggest part they don't usually include is a couple thousand people driving to and from and working for 20 years, but even that is tiny.

The mines (especially in a mass expansion scenario) are a little worse. Each fuel load takes up to a few months to pay off from a low yield open pit mine. The industry always uses Ranger or Cigar Lake for comparison which are anomalously high yield.

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