[HN Gopher] Japan tested a giant turbine that generates electric...
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Japan tested a giant turbine that generates electricity using deep
ocean current
Author : jdmark
Score : 123 points
Date : 2022-06-04 16:55 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thesciverse.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thesciverse.com)
| beefman wrote:
| 330 tons for 100 kW. Assuming it lasts 20 years (and assuming
| that's short tons), it's about 17 metric tonnes per GWh.
| Comparisons: http://lumma.org/energy/lca/
| isoprophlex wrote:
| So, slightly better than offshore wind. No bad imo.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Out of sight, out of mind. The Ocean has been a dumping ground
| for a long time. Do we know what kind of impact this might be
| having where this might be built. Close to shore is where most of
| the Ocean life resides due to more light reaching in the shallow
| water. There were proposals to build wind turbines in the middle
| on the Great Lakes. Not sure what happened to those. Maybe it can
| be done so it improves the environment, but that tends to costs
| more.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Ocean currents often carry a lot of life around the ocean
| (https://www.cell.com/current-
| biology/pdf/S0960-9822(17)30077...). Hesitation is warranted,
| imo.
| samwillis wrote:
| For a data point, the UK has a large number of offshore wind
| farms that contribute 13% of our electricity supply. On shore
| is 11%.
|
| It's proving cost effective and sustainable. In some ways we
| are fortunate as we have a long history of offshore engendering
| with North Sea oil, the expertise there has translated well to
| offshore wind.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms_in...
| quantified wrote:
| Hope those don't create whaleburger or giant squidburger. Which
| will be out-of-sight-out-of-mind unlike the visible bird deaths
| aboveground.
| [deleted]
| asien wrote:
| France tried years ago.
|
| Incredibly expensive and inefficient.
|
| I love the concept but it just cant compete with Solar , Nuclear
| or Fossil Fuel...
| samwillis wrote:
| Just because something has been "tried before" in the past for
| something as critical as energy sustainability, particularly
| with the backdrop of climate change, doesn't mean we shouldn't
| try it again. If anything it puts us in a better position, with
| grater knowledge, in order to improve are chances of making it
| work.
|
| As Edison put it about trying to invent the lightbulb: "I
| haven't failed - I've just found 10,000 that won't work".
| g42gregory wrote:
| The laws of physics would dictate that this energy would come
| from somewhere. If enough power is generated, it will
| significantly alter the ocean flows dynamics. Deep ocean flow
| currents can very much affect the climate. Did anybody researched
| that this would be Ok?
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Persistent deep ocean currents exist in large part thanks to
| temperature gradients (cf. AMOC and thermohaline circulation).
| Climate warming, melting ice and reducing these gradients, has
| much more drastic effects on ocean currents (cf. Gulf Stream
| weakening) than a turbine could ever have.
|
| Paradoxically, we would effectively be saving those currents
| using a fraction of the energy in those currents themselves.
|
| Using these turbines would be a drop in the ocean and a smart
| move if it helps us tackle the big offender. We should get on
| it soon though, if we let it get to a point where thermohaline
| circulation falls apart using currents this way may no longer
| be an option.
| mintyDijon wrote:
| I aggree with the necessity of haste, but I hope these
| turbines can be developed in a way to have minimal impact on
| all the ocean life that uses these currents aswell, there's
| already so much damage thats been done to the ocean
| ecosystems already.
| wcoenen wrote:
| The same could be said about wind power.
|
| Ultimately, wind and ocean currents are driven by the 170,000
| terawatts of solar irradiance continuously hitting the
| earth[1]. Human civilization uses about 17 terawatt[2], so we
| still have a ways to go before we get in the same ballpark.
|
| (On the other hand, give it a few centuries of exponential
| growth and let's see where we end up.)
|
| [1] https://news.mit.edu/2011/energy-scale-part3-1026
| https://www.theworldcounts.com/stories/current_world_energy_...
|
| [2]
| https://www.theworldcounts.com/stories/current_world_energy_...
| user3939382 wrote:
| Just to point out, we would be harvesting a lot more than we
| use because of inefficiencies in capturing, storage, and
| transmission strategies. Also note that the amount we use is
| lower than it would otherwise be if we had access to more
| energy, industry is energy-constrained.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| In the case of something like PV, would that matter too
| much? The inefficiency doesn't mean the rest is lost, just
| that it stays in the local environment rather than get
| transmitted away somewhere else on a wire.
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| Pretty much. As an examples, in deserts, there can be a
| modest increase in local IR radiation because of the
| change in albedo from PV panels compared to sand, but the
| overall decrease in IR from avoiding the CO2/etc
| emissions of fossil fuel generation is much, much larger
| than the local increase.
| paulsutter wrote:
| That 170,000 terawatts hitting earth is dwarfed by the 400
| trillion terawatts output by the sun, so we can always build
| some fraction of a Dyson sphere if we start to run short with
| the 170,000
|
| The sooner we stop using these feeble fossil fuels the better
| willis936 wrote:
| Fantasy solutions don't work for real problems. We have the
| capability to make real problems via terraforming.
| hackernewds wrote:
| Terraforming is a fantasy that won't work for real
| problems
| [deleted]
| andai wrote:
| >We have the capability to _make_ real problems via
| terraforming. [emphasis mine]
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Yes, they slightly misread, but it's a fair retort.
| Terraforming is pretty fantasy, but it happens.
| paulsutter wrote:
| We're carbon (de-)terraforming the earth everyday on a
| global scale, haven't you heard? It's very real
| gibolt wrote:
| A Dyson sphere is just as much fantasy as physics, true
| of most of today's technology just 50 years ago.
|
| Solar and wind are needed today, but Starship could bring
| launch costs down enough that some highly optimized space
| solar panels with microwave power beaming could be viable
| within a decade.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Receiving energy that was not supposed for earth will
| increase planet heat output (because electricity in the
| end will heat things). Who knows how that would affect
| the planet.
|
| The only way to preserve the Earth is smart planning,
| reducing energy usage and moving industry to the space.
| IMO Earth should be sanctuary for people to enjoy their
| origins and for some rich people inevitably. Most people
| should move to other planets or space objects where
| pollution does not matter.
| paulsutter wrote:
| How would capturing the beamed energy on earth be any
| easier than capturing sunlight directly?
|
| Maybe illuminate existing solar arrays during nighttime?
| Any other energy receiver would be so far behind PV on
| the price / manufacturing learning curve
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I believe the solar panel part, but not on the microwave
| power beaming; has that been proven to work already? How
| efficient is it? What is the effect on anything flying
| through or being near where said microwaves are received?
|
| Solar panels in space is the believable part; rays of
| concentrated energy being sent back to earth is what I'm
| skeptical about. Besides, solar panels have a limited
| lifetime; I don't believe space solar panels are a cost
| effective solution to solving the energy crisis.
| Tade0 wrote:
| This idea keeps being brought up and people keep
| reminding everyone that for all intents and purposes this
| is the closest to a cartoon supervillain death ray that
| we can create.
| joebob42 wrote:
| Why would we build a solar panel that has a microwave
| emitter instead of just building a mirror?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| And with this one, currents - mainly ebb and flow - are
| caused by the gravity of the moon pulling on the oceans.
|
| But yeah, it will have an effect; the other question to ask
| is, how significant is this effect, and how does it compare
| to other forms of power production, e.g. fossil fuels?
|
| The global warming caused by fossil fuels has a bigger effect
| on the oceans; with decreasing salinity due to the melting of
| ice caps / glaciers, the gulf stream is slowing down and will
| eventually stop, causing distribution of heat across the
| planet to stop, causing the northern seas to cool down and
| the southern ones to heat up.
| jccooper wrote:
| I think this is targeting ocean currents, which are solar-
| powered convection between the tropics and the poles,
| rather than tidal currents.
| jameshart wrote:
| Tidal flows are a pretty massive energy reservoir -
| basically you've got all the potential and kinetic energy
| of the moon's orbit to draw from. That's (according to my
| crude Wolfram Alpha based research) about 3e28J of kinetic
| energy plus 7e28J of potential energy, for a total of 10^29
| Joules. Technically a non renewable resource, but you would
| be hard pressed to make a dent in that energy budget with
| any kind of human scale extraction project.
| neatze wrote:
| This with assumption that there is linear relation without
| butterfly effects, even if there are negative effects, most
| likely they are negligible when compared to green house
| effect on the planet, my false intuition tells me that power
| generation from wind and ocean currents would contribute to
| planet cooling, no idea if electricity converted to work will
| radiate heat faster into space then air and oceans passively.
| syntaxing wrote:
| True to a certain extent. People forget that Earth is not a
| zero sum control volume. We get a crap ton of energy from the
| Sun and the sun power most things on Earth in some shape or
| form (minus matter formation or radioactive material). The
| Earth uses around 23,900 terawatt-hours a year. The sun
| generates about 430 quintillion kWh every hour.
| kache_ wrote:
| The energy harvested is only... a drop in the ocean :)
| trebligdivad wrote:
| Maybe that would be good! If hurricanes are powered by hot
| seas, then removing energy from the seas has got to remove
| energy from hurrcianes?
| samwillis wrote:
| Other people will explain why you are wrong to be concerned.
| However your concern is indicative of the concerns of a
| significant, potentially majority, of people. It shows how as a
| society we don't do messaging about this sort of thing well
| enough. I think thats an important take away.
| politician wrote:
| We do a bad job of explaining to residents of our dense
| population centers how much energy is required to run their
| city for a single day, where it comes from, and how much it
| costs to produce.
| fswd wrote:
| The energy comes from the moon orbiting the earth.
| Theoretically speaking, taking too much energy would cause the
| moon to come crashing down to Earth.
| anticensor wrote:
| What about the compromise, the Moon in geostationary orbit:
| would be great for broadcasters (no more broadcast
| satellites, just plant antennas on the moon).
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The tides are already transferring energy from the Earth to
| the Moon, making it go higher over time.
|
| I suspect that adding more drag to the tides could either
| boost this process or reduce it, depending on the timing of
| the energy harvesting.
| nradov wrote:
| The energy in tidal currents comes both from the moon
| orbiting the Earth, and from the Earth orbiting the sun.
| (Technically other heavenly bodies also have some effect, but
| it's negligible.)
| Zababa wrote:
| I've always wanted to have a bigger Moon, this might be a way
| to achieve that.
| samatman wrote:
| This is like worrying that wind turbines will stop the wind.
|
| They won't.
| enchiridion wrote:
| No, it's asking a question about our knowledge of the scale
| and power of the devices and forces involved.
|
| If it is a analog to wind turbines, the math will bear it
| out, but it's a perfectly valid question to ask.
| drieddust wrote:
| Exactly just a few decades ago CFC was a non issue, Lead
| caused no harm, smoking was good for health, and cocaine
| was a refreshing drink. Yet here we are again so full of
| ourselves that asking the question is unsettling.
| politician wrote:
| So we should keep doing the known harmful power
| generation methods (coal) instead of experimenting with
| new methods (deep sea turbines) out of a diffuse fear of
| the unknown consequences?
|
| It's sad that this is such a common argument against
| progress. Where do people learn to think this way? Does
| it come from education? Failures in life?
| mintyDijon wrote:
| Have you ever heard the saying:
|
| "The grass is always greener on the otherside."
|
| I believe that's where this line of thinking comes from.
|
| Have you ever tried to change lanes because yours isn't
| moving, just to find that right after you change to your
| new lane it stops and your old lane picks up again? Man
| that sucks
| manigandham wrote:
| Nobody said that.
|
| The concern is that more information should be discovered
| about the effects, and that is usually done through
| experimentation.
|
| > _"Where do people learn to think this way? "_
|
| Where do people learn to create straw man arguments
| instead of actually replying to what was said?
| [deleted]
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| We're arguing semantics but on a big enough scale they would
| eventually. That's why you don't just line up 100 of them
| directly next to eachother.
| mattnewton wrote:
| Agree that this is effectively arguing semantics, and it is
| taking energy from the wind. But the effect of each _is_
| very small. There are definitely farms with >100 turbines
| close together. This one has >600 and has long runs of them
| close together.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alta_Wind_Energy_Center
| weaksauce wrote:
| while that one produces more electricity, this one has
| about twice as many turbines in close proximity: https://
| en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Gorgonio_Pass_wind_farm
| throw457 wrote:
| kube-system wrote:
| Flowing water has insane amounts of energy even in tiny
| amounts. I would imagine that this affects ocean currents as
| little or less than wind turbines affect weather patterns.
| Mindless2112 wrote:
| "It's so vast that small human actions couldn't possibly have
| an impact" is literally the same wrong-headed reasoning that
| leads people to believe that human CO2 emissions don't
| matter.
|
| There seems to have been a lot of extreme weather in recent
| years. Could it be because harvesting energy from the wind
| alters weather patterns? A lot of people would rather just
| blame it on global warming than ask a question that might
| expose a flaw in our plans to wean ourselves off of fossil
| fuels.
|
| We need to have bit more humility and a bit less dogma about
| what we "know".
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The reason CO2 emissions matter so much is that they
| accumulate over time.
|
| > There seems to have been a lot of extreme weather in
| recent years. Could it be because harvesting energy from
| the wind alters weather patterns? A lot of people would
| rather just blame it on global warming than ask a question
| that might expose a flaw in our plans to wean ourselves off
| of fossil fuels.
|
| Do you have anything other than wild speculation? Because
| in most cases slowing down air currents should calm the
| weather.
|
| And _of course_ this has been asked!
| jeffbee wrote:
| The mechanism by which CO2 raises the steady-state
| temperature of the atmosphere is well understood, and it is
| not because of the awesome power of CO2, it is because the
| Sun is incredibly energetic.
|
| By contrast, there is no known way that wind power
| extraction, which is currently < 1TW globally, could
| possibly be destabilizing the energy system of the rotation
| of the Earth (which is what causes wind). That system
| contains ten billion times more kinetic energy than we
| remove from it annually.
|
| The amount of kinetic energy the moon removes from the
| Earth's rotational kinetic energy every year is larger, and
| has been going on for a long, long time, so if it was going
| to cause fire weather that would already have been a long-
| standing problem.
|
| In short, the amount of CO2 that humans have dumped into
| the atmosphere in the last 200 years is comparable to the
| amount that was in there to begin with. It can't be
| ignored. But the amount of energy we remove from the wind
| is nine or ten orders of magnitude smaller than the total
| amount that exists, and therefore it _can_ be ignored.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| I don't think we will ever see power generation via
| renewables (one industry) approach the scale of anything
| near carbon emissions (all industry)
|
| You could do some very basic napkin math multiplying the
| air displacement per turbine (or whatever metric you
| choose) and multiplying by every turbine that exists, and
| I'd bet that number would be nowhere near total air
| displacement from natural causes.
|
| Human CO2 emissions matter precisely because the math has
| exceeded change from natural causes. And this happens
| because _literally everyone_ is doing it. IF we cover the
| planet in wind turbines the same way we cover it with waste
| C02 then _maybe_ you might have a case.
|
| Not to say renewables aren't without their issues. There
| are likely a whole host of second- and third-order issues
| there that have yet to be discovered, let alone resolved.
| But we would need adoption on a scale far beyond what has
| been proposed to combat global warming to approach that.
| Mindless2112 wrote:
| I'm not saying that CO2 and wind turbines have a
| comparable effect on the climate. I'm saying that "it's
| small so it couldn't matter" is the same flawed thinking.
|
| > _Human CO2 emissions matter precisely because the math
| has exceeded change from natural causes._
|
| Why? It's the significant detrimental impact of the human
| activity that's important, not how it compares to the
| amount or change from natural causes. (It doesn't even
| matter that it's human activity. If Earth were going to
| become inhospitable by entirely natural causes, that
| would still matter.)
|
| > _then maybe you might have a case._
|
| I'm not making the case that wind turbines are harming
| the environment; that's just the example at hand. I'm
| making the case that casually dismissing (questions
| about) the potential impact of human activities is wrong.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Is this out of the same ballpark as "thermal powerplants will
| boil the atmosphere."
|
| The entire humankind's power consumption is completely
| microscopic in comparison to any natural weather phenomena.
|
| We are 0.0000000000001% of energy the Earth dissipates.
| satokema wrote:
| the other way around is also true, the climate affects the
| flows
|
| seems like an interesting possibility to recapture some of the
| loose climate energy that we want to pare down
| fasteo wrote:
| The same can be said about solar panels. An enormous amount of
| heat is no longer hitting the ground.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| How significant a difference is it that previously it was
| hitting my roof?
| Klinky wrote:
| The same can be said about humans. An enormous amount of heat
| is no longer hitting the ground due to man-made structures in
| general, way more than dedicated solar farms. Very likely
| putting solar on roofs is more beneficial than letting it
| just heat up tiles/shingles, while the building shades the
| ground. You're basically arguing against building
| civilization. However, I think human's effects on ecosystems
| is worthy of investigating, but the "solar panels blocking
| ground heat" concern seems very tangential and likely
| insignificant compared to the concerns of human's overall
| impacts on micro/macro environments.
| deepsun wrote:
| It mostly comes from the Sun. It spews so much energy at Earth
| that all humanity consumption doesn't make a dent in it.
| slight_glitch wrote:
| I like the answers to your questions here. I wonder if in 100
| years or so, our energy consumption won't be what 640K of
| memory (enough for anybody?) was around 1980. Time will tell if
| it will be a drop in the ocean then.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| This is such a tediously nonsensical interjection:
|
| _...laying the groundwork for a promising new source of
| renewable energy that isn 't dependent on sunny days or strong
| winds._
|
| How many times does it need to be said that any reliable energy
| system run entirely on sunlight and wind absolutely has to
| incorporate storage? Storage can be electrical (short-term
| supercapacitors for buffering high-frequency variations in
| windfarms), electrochemical (batteries, and since portability is
| not an issue, there are many options for grid-storage batteries
| besides lithium), chemical (using electrical current to drive the
| formation of hydrocarbons from CO2 and water, aka artificial
| photosynthesis, and similar conversions), or mechanical (pumped
| water storage, rotating heavy masses, air pressure in caverns,
| etc.). That about covers the range of storage options I think.
|
| I don't know what to think about people that trot that one out
| over and over again but to be charitable I'll just assume gross
| ignorance at this point, rather than deliberate deception.
| lostmsu wrote:
| You are clearly in wrong here. There's a reliable energy system
| run entirely on sunlight, that is basically identical to the
| proposed deep ocean currents in the principle: hydropower. In
| short: the storage is built-in - it is in the potential energy
| of that small percentage of the water in the oceans, which is
| still large enough to be absolutely immense.
| [deleted]
| zdragnar wrote:
| Because incorporating storage into the story also means brining
| in the cost. Many of the solutions are not cheap, dependent on
| specific geology, and / or have their own large carbon
| footprint.
|
| The only thing that solar and wind bring to the table is being
| very cheap, but you need to compare apples to oranges for them
| to stand up to other solutions.
|
| Edit: this is regional specific, but wind and solar are
| worthless for one to two months a year where I live - rarely
| much sun or wind. There's simply not enough storage to power
| much of anything for that long, so even with cheap storage,
| it's worth having options that don't rely on weather.
|
| Of course, we are nowhere even close to an ocean, so this tech
| isn't it, but keeping exploring options is nice.
| certifiedloud wrote:
| Storage is kind of the major blocker for those technologies
| currently.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Most countries (if not all?) are still far from the point
| where storage "blocks" solar/wind. But moving forward, more
| storage will be needed. And I am quite optimistic that it
| will be there as soon there is enough energy to store in the
| first place. Some of it will come anyway, as electric cars
| make for great storage. Switching cars to electric doesn't
| only directly reduce CO2 emissions, they are a great way of
| storing surplus electricity and also drive the cost for
| battery storage down.
| potatochup wrote:
| Related, underwater tidal turbines in the Cook Straight, NZ
| https://www.sustainableseaschallenge.co.nz/our-research/ener...
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This energy partly comes from moon-earth oscillations.
| adtac wrote:
| Since geothermal, is this the first form of energy that is not
| even indirectly from the sun?
| hollerith wrote:
| No, we also generate some electricity from tides.
| windows2020 wrote:
| During onboarding, the CEO told a story about how an employee's
| logic error caused a manufacturing plant to shutdown for hours.
| They of course corrected it, and production resumed, but the
| company was on the hook for millions in lost revenue.
|
| Later that evening, the employee got a call from the CEO.
|
| "I suppose you're calling to let me go."
|
| The CEO replied, "Why would I do that after paying for a million
| dollar lesson?"
|
| That's how I feel about nuclear.
| samwillis wrote:
| In 200 years when the planet is on fire our ancestors will look
| at us and won't understand how we could have made such bad
| decisions. Yes, there is a (tiny) risk of nuclear disaster that
| makes an area uninhabitable, but thats (in my view) better than
| the whole plant eventually become so.
|
| (I very much hope this statement is hyperbolic)
| brazzy wrote:
| It's simply a false dichotomy that we have the choice between
| committing to nuclear energy generation, or catastrophic
| climate change.
|
| We don't _need_ nuclear energy. We really, really don 't.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It's a tradeoff in the end, because the current generation
| of renewable energy is so much more expensive and involved
| than the equivalent in a nuclear energy plant.
|
| I mean in my country, the energy grid is at capacity due to
| increases in demand AND production. It's very attractive to
| get solar panels installed on your house, but the grid
| cannot handle the influx of new production.
|
| Whereas attaching a new nuclear plant to the main grid
| would be less of a headache.
| brazzy wrote:
| >the current generation of renewable energy is so much
| more expensive and involved than the equivalent in a
| nuclear energy plant.
|
| This may have been true 15 or even 10 years ago, but
| nowadays the exact opposite is the case.
|
| > It's very attractive to get solar panels installed on
| your house, but the grid cannot handle the influx of new
| production. Whereas attaching a new nuclear plant to the
| main grid would be less of a headache.
|
| How is that supposed to make any sense at all? The grid
| likes nuclear-flavored power better?
| bradlys wrote:
| In order to avoid catastrophic climate change (hard to say
| we even can at this point) - we _need_ anything we can get.
| Nuclear is part of anything we can get.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Following that line of reasoning. Considering we get 3-6x
| as much energy investing in renewables compared to
| nuclear then a single cent in invested into nuclear is an
| enabler of climate change right?
| bradlys wrote:
| You're using a false equivalency fallacy though - that
| economics matter at all in this.
|
| We _need_ anything to get us to lower GHG emissions -
| regardless of cost.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Of course it matters. Money and people available to do
| the work is not infinite. Or do you disagree?
|
| Therefore we have to optimize for the most impact
| possible. Is spending 3x as much as off-shore wind and 6x
| as much as on-shore optimizing for impact? Can straight
| up honestly claim that?
| samwillis wrote:
| My issue is really the lack of progress with and
| utilisation of Nuclear over the last 40-50 years. In my
| opinion the anti nuclear movement resulted in extending
| the time we continued to burn coal. Quite right, at the
| moment the larger impact would be with renewables.
| However my original comment was not only in reference to
| decisions we are making now but also those of the last 50
| years. If we had concentrated on using Nuclear, and not
| succumbed to the fear about it, we would be in a much
| stronger position now than we are.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| It is simply economics. The anti-nuclear movement is
| insignificant but a very handy scapegoat. If nuclear made
| sense on a cost basis it would have pushed through
| somewhere globally. It's quite telling that not even
| authoritarian states, or very centrally controlled like
| France have managed that.
|
| I agree that nuclear would have been preferable to fossil
| energy. But today renewables is way cheaper than either
| alternative.
| bradlys wrote:
| You're using very poor arguments. A lot of whataboutism.
|
| A meteor is coming to destroy the entire world. Do you
| sit around and wonder, "Is spending money on this really
| in the best interest of our shareholders for this
| quarter?"
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Consider your example. You have two options proven to
| work by prior knowledge. Either renewables or nuclear at
| 3-6x the cost. What do you pick?
|
| There's a statement in the previous paragraph doing most
| of the heavy lifting: "proven to work". This means no
| risk, why double invest?
|
| We've already diverted meteors using both renewables and
| nuclear. Both work. Choose the cheaper option since it's
| not an one off event, it's an incremental change.
|
| Every nuclear plant or wind turbine is negligible in
| itself. But the effect is quantifiable and known.
| liketochill wrote:
| A robust electricity grid needs a variety of energy
| sources, wind and solar are great until it isn't windy or
| sunny for a week. Are week long outages acceptable to
| you? Not to me. It is not inconceivable that a weather
| system results in calm weather with clouds for an
| extended period of time.
|
| So other energy sources are necessary. Nuclear is another
| practical low carbon energy source and it is worth
| considering as part of the energy mix. There are many
| nuclear plants operating and under construction in the
| world. That they are uneconomic in some countries speaks
| more to those countries than to nuclear.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| 1. Geographical decoupling. HVDC connections are barely
| even newsworthy anymore.
|
| 2. Smart consumers. Electrified transports are perfect
| where you can shift the charging to any point in time
| it's not actively driven. This without having to pay the
| round trip efficiency loss since charging the battery is
| valuable work.
|
| 3. Better utilize hydro to compensate for the last bits
| of intermittency left.
|
| We're so far from a grid where large scale storage would
| be necessary that dwelling over it and putting forth
| nuclear as the only solution is ridiculous. You could
| make hydrogen from your renewable energy and then later
| burn it and still come out ahead of nuclear. That's how
| uncompetetive nuclear is.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Does that include the batteries we'd need to have
| renewables take over the grid?
|
| But we should be dumping lots of research dollars into
| both, even if we want 95% of the construction budget to
| be renewables.
|
| Except scaling up starts to cost a lot more when you push
| it too fast, so we probably should be spending more than
| 5% on nuclear because it can work in parallel.
| [deleted]
| ruined wrote:
| sometimes the lesson is "don't concentrate radioactive
| isotopes, you haven't developed the institutional incentives to
| contain them reliably, and will eventually experience terrible
| disaster"
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _The CEO replied, "Why would I do that after paying for a
| million dollar lesson?"_
|
| That's a variation of something supposedly said by IBM's Thomas
| J. Watson, Sr.: "Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire
| an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000.
| No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I
| want somebody to hire his experience?" [0]
|
| [0] https://blog.4psa.com/quote-day-thomas-john-watson-sr-ibm/
| (which doesn't include a source for the quote)
| mrexroad wrote:
| Hmm, a few years late per SeaQuest's timeline... I just hope we
| have a SeaQuest 4600 class sub handy to sacrifice in order to
| plug the lava flow when the turbines cause the ocean floor to
| break apart!
|
| Ironically, in the SeaQuest timeline, SeaQuest DSV itself would
| have been abducted by an alien ship just a few weeks ago. Maybe
| there's still hope that Mark Hamill is actually our first contact
| with an alien species?
|
| Makes me want to go rewatch 90's sci-fi: Babylon 5, Space Above &
| Beyond, SeaQuest (season 1 at least), TekWar, TimeTrax, etc.
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| Space Above and Beyond is very underrated. Still sad it only
| got one season. If they wanted to redo something they could
| chose something much worse. It might be a little too pro-
| American and pro-military for 2022?
| tomc1985 wrote:
| The ending of the pancakes episode is still one of my
| favorite moments of 90s TV ever
| swayvil wrote:
| What are the upsides/downsides of water currents vs air currents
| here?
|
| Is one more consistent than the other?
|
| I imagine that water has more chunks to filter.
|
| Water requires a smaller turbine.
|
| ..?
| Qworg wrote:
| Water carries (IIRC) ~375x the energy of air per speed/unit
| volume.
|
| Depending on the turbine design, you don't need to filter
| anything. The currents (gyre power) are far more consistent
| than wind turbines.
|
| If not for the difficulties of siting, permitting, and
| maintaining subsea equipment, gyre power systems are far
| superior.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Another company in a similar space, although focused on tidal
| currents is Minesto.
|
| The problem with wind vs. water is the extreme harshness of the
| environment. The only industry which has truly manage to tame
| the ocean is the oil and gas industry, and that at huge costs
| offset by the high value of what they produce. Not likely we
| will ever see anything like that in the renewable field.
|
| No affiliation but an old colleague works there so see them pop
| up from time to time
|
| https://minesto.com/
| belorn wrote:
| Salt, water, very strong forces, and a lot of things want to
| stick to it and build up layers of sand and organic material.
| And getting trained professionals that can operate in that
| environment is costly, slow and dangerous.
|
| Beyond those, are there any additional problems from the
| environment?
| Gwypaas wrote:
| The places with strong tidal currents have a tendency of
| limiting construction to ebb and high tide, in other words
| lot of expensive waiting around.
|
| Regarding the environment, under the sea it is quite fine
| compared to stationary platforms operating in the north sea
| or Mexican gulf(hurricanes) year around, so that should be
| easier.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Water is stronger than air. This is a double edged sword; IIRC
| most tidal power projects have failed because the greater wear
| and tear is worse than the additional power generated. I would
| imagine the deep ocean magnifies this problem.
|
| Not to mention, we do enough environmental damage to our oceans
| as it is.
| samwillis wrote:
| Predictability, with tidal power you know exactly (more or
| less) how much you will generate every moment of every day.
| zwayhowder wrote:
| I've seen companies use wave energy before (1) but not ocean
| currents, but as someone else pointed out, the currents are a
| lot more powerful and consistent than winds so it makes sense.
|
| I know Carnegie (2) talk up the fact that submerged equipment
| very rarely gets damaged by storms etc compared to floating or
| land based systems. (As long as they can keep fishing trawlers
| away and ban boat anchors in the area.).
|
| 1: https://www.offshore-energy.biz/carnegie-preps-new-ceto-
| desi... 2: https://www.carnegiece.com/
| gehsty wrote:
| The turbines are very interesting, these demonstrator projects
| seek to answer questions like how do you even make one, how do
| you install it and how do you maintain it... a very interesting
| piece of hardware required to scale this up (in deep water
| anyway!) is a subsea substation to up the voltage from the array
| to export voltages...
| cmroanirgo wrote:
| The article mentioned 100-160ft from the surface, so i'm not
| sure where the "deep" part mentioned in the headlines comes in.
| Perhaps their ultimate plan is for deep & this demo didn't try
| to address the deep part? That said, if 100ft below had enough
| forces to produce 100kw (ecological issues aside) that sounds
| pretty fantastic, even if just a demo.
| martyvis wrote:
| I imagine the "deep" aspect is that it seems to be well below
| surface waves that seem to reek havoc on other projects. That
| depth is still pretty difficult to service as install without
| pretty sophisticated planning I would think.
| nothingisconvex wrote:
| suyash wrote:
| Kudos to Japanese scientists, always pushing the boundaries!
| mrfusion wrote:
| Could this disrupt the migrations of species like clown fish and
| sea turtles?
| rnjesus wrote:
| even if it does, all they have to do is just keep swimming
| sieabahlpark wrote:
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