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Geothermal energy could outperform nuclear power
31–40 of 78 posts
Re: Geothermal energy could outperform nuclear power
#32Near everything outperforms nuclear power. Nuclear power is unfathomably expensive. Come back when it is in the same league as renewables or CCGTs.
We don't do nuclear because it's expensive, and that's why it stays expensive. No economies of scale, minimal opportunities to iteratively improve designs. Solar was expensive until we started building a lot of it (often due to heavy subsidisation)
We tried tons of nuclear power. It peaked at 18% of the global electricity mix in the 90s.
Comparatively solar sits at 5.5% today but is rapidly increasing.
If 18% of the global electricity mix is not trying hard enough then the technology did not work out.
The cost savings never materialized, it’s always been a case of negative learning by doing.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...
Re: Geothermal energy could outperform nuclear power
#33[dead]
Re: Geothermal energy could outperform nuclear power
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much nuclear waste would be generated, across 100 years of American levels of energy use, per person? I'll save you the effort, it's about one chicken egg, maybe as large as a tea cup. For your whole life, all the energy you'll use across all sectors. Over 100 years you don't think we capable of finding a space to safely fritter away a chicken egg? Or even 300 million chicken eggs? And even more amazingly, that "…
The problem is not how small the waste is, it is the effects. High level radioactive waste can cause Goiânia like outcomes, or leach into the groundwater. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident It is quite intellectually dishonest to try frame it as pixie dust rather than the true problem it poses.
If, and only if, you store it stupidly. There's plenty of ways to safely store it for millennia. It's not a truly difficult problem.
And I'm just doing my best to present the facts as they are -- no fud.
Re: Geothermal energy could outperform nuclear power
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much nuclear waste would be generated, across 100 years of American levels of energy use, per person? I'll save you the effort, it's about one chicken egg, maybe as large as a tea cup. For your whole life, all the energy you'll use across all sectors. Over 100 years you don't think we capable of finding a space to safely fritter away a chicken egg? Or even 300 million chicken eggs? And even more amazingly, that "…
Nuclear waste slowly leaks into the groundwater and river water. Also, waste is only one of the two major concerns I noted. Comparing it with coal is 100% disingenuous. Coal is never an option going forward.
Nuclear waste leaking into the groundwater? Sure, if someone is being absurdly callous. But if we're going to invent a villain with no morals as just dumps the stuff then we might as well do the same for any other form of energy.
I prefer to assume we're comparing competent operators of any energy type in our portfolio. Saying it leaches into the groundwater is like saying "dams break and destroy towns". Yeah, it does happen I guess, but not often. And we've got lots of systems to prevent it.
Re: Geothermal energy could outperform nuclear power
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nuclear waste slowly leaks into the groundwater and river water. Also, waste is only one of the two major concerns I noted. Comparing it with coal is 100% disingenuous. Coal is never an option going forward.
Nuclear waste leaking into the groundwater? Sure, if someone is being absurdly callous. But if we're going to invent a villain with no morals as just dumps the stuff then we might as well do the same for any other form of energy. I prefer to assume we're comparing competent operators of any energy type in our portfolio. Saying it leaches into the groundwater is like saying "dams break and destroy towns". Yeah, it doe…
> Sure, if someone is being absurdly callous.
Firstly, the containers are known to develop leaks over decades. Secondly, there are accidents on site every year, causing tritium leaks if not also uranium. There is also a baseline level of tritium leakage that's considered normal, but it isn't actually normal for the fishes in the river.
> I prefer to assume we're comparing competent operators
Please see the list of leakage incidents at each nuclear power plant. There is one almost every year at almost every site. The local environment pays the price for it. If they were competent, these events wouldn't happen.
None of this is an issue with solar, for example. The radius of the possible damage is minuscule.
Re: Geothermal energy could outperform nuclear power
#37Near everything outperforms nuclear power. Nuclear power is unfathomably expensive. Come back when it is in the same league as renewables or CCGTs.
For anyone else who didn't know that CCGT is a euphemism for gas:
> A combined cycle power plant is an assembly of heat engines that work in tandem from the same source of heat, converting it into mechanical energy. On land, when used to make electricity the most common type is called a combined cycle gas turbine plant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_cycle_power_plant)
Re: Geothermal energy could outperform nuclear power
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Our gyrotron-powered drilling platform vaporizes boreholes through rock and provides access to deep geothermal heat without complex downhole equipment. Based on breakthrough fusion research and well-established drilling practices, we are developing a radical new approach to ultra-deep drilling." This company looks promising in the geothermal space. They are looking to be able to create 10km boreholes in 100 days. Th…
Bhauth wrote an analysis of this idea, and tldr is that trying to get an energy payback on literally vaporizing such a long cylinder of rock is brutally difficult, probably enough to make the economics of the plan unworkable. https://www.bhauth.com/blog/flawed%20ideas/microwave%20drill...
It makes it all sound like a problem of engineering, not of physics.
It's really hard to vapourize all that rock and suck it out to the surface with a vacuum. But it's really hard in the sense that the vaporised rock might recondense and stick to the sides of the hole, not in the sense that vaporising the rock costs more energy than you get out of the hole in its 30-year lifetime.
Re: Geothermal energy could outperform nuclear power
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much nuclear waste would be generated, across 100 years of American levels of energy use, per person? I'll save you the effort, it's about one chicken egg, maybe as large as a tea cup. For your whole life, all the energy you'll use across all sectors. Over 100 years you don't think we capable of finding a space to safely fritter away a chicken egg? Or even 300 million chicken eggs? And even more amazingly, that "…
Nuclear waste slowly leaks into the groundwater and river water. Also, waste is only one of the two major concerns I noted. Comparing it with coal is 100% disingenuous. Coal is never an option going forward.
> waste slowly leaks into the groundwater
You say that as if it's a given that it will always leak slowly. What % of the spent fuel actually ended up being leaked across the couple decades of storage we have had now? What effects did it have? How does the human cost stack up against mining activities we would need for the massive amounts of wind turbines and solar panels when we cut out nuclear's base load function completely?
(Recently saw this documentary about mine tailings aka chat; didn't know those existed tbh as someone not from a country with much mining activity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soGOu5NZ5S0 - or in text form https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picher,_Oklahoma)
Obviously we'll need both energy sources to reach net zero, but it's not that one is inherently clean and the other inherently dirty
Re: Geothermal energy could outperform nuclear power
#40I wish the best for the geothermal industry, but the phrase “could outperform” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Geothermal thermal has essentially zero growth, in the US, in the last 20 years. And there is basically no growth planned in the near future, or at least nothing on the EIA’s or FERC’s upcoming generation list. I’m skeptical that geothermal will ever make a significant impact in the US. Though it might make…
"Our gyrotron-powered drilling platform vaporizes boreholes through rock and provides access to deep geothermal heat without complex downhole equipment. Based on breakthrough fusion research and well-established drilling practices, we are developing a radical new approach to ultra-deep drilling." This company looks promising in the geothermal space. They are looking to be able to create 10km boreholes in 100 days. Th…
How are "mm waves" helping them drill?