[HN Gopher] NRC Certifies First U.S. Small Modular Reactor Design
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NRC Certifies First U.S. Small Modular Reactor Design
Author : g0xA52A2A
Score : 564 points
Date : 2023-01-20 18:40 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.energy.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.energy.gov)
| beders wrote:
| I'm not convinced this will solve anything.
|
| According to this:
|
| https://cleantechnica.com/2023/01/18/the-nuclear-fallacy-why...
|
| building intentionally small is not a good idea if you need to
| convert heat to electricity. And creating more nuclear waste is
| not ideal either.
|
| For the $600m of taxpayer money invested into this, how much
| solar and wind could have been built? (probably around 1GW?)
| b59831 wrote:
| The perfect is the enemy of the good.
| legulere wrote:
| How much waste does it produce per electric energy produced? SMRs
| typically produce even more nuclear waste than big reactors.
|
| How fast can it be regulated up and down? We need solutions to
| step in when neither wind is blowing nor sun is shining.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Ramping down means multiplying the cost per kWh generated while
| ramped down, at a time when that kWh has depressed value. Ever
| turning it off means multiplying the cost of every kWh produced
| while on, in proportion to how much time it spends off.
|
| All this is because absolute cost is not much affected by
| whether it is producing.
| trenchgun wrote:
| Neither of these is an important variable.
|
| Nuclear waste is in general mostly a solved problem. A bunch of
| barrels less or more over the lifecycle of the plant in the
| storage site does not move a needle much, economically or
| otherwise.
|
| Initial investment dominates the equation. It mostly does not
| make sense to ramp nuclear power up and down, because of
| economical reasons. Gas costs are mostly dominatd by the fuel,
| so there ramping up and down makes sense. Nuclear costs are
| dominated by the initial investment.
|
| But even without ramping up and down, still nuclear power helps
| integrate variable renewables, since it is providing valuable
| inertia to keep the grid stable.
| TheRealNGenius wrote:
| [dead]
| einpoklum wrote:
| > Nuclear waste is in general mostly a solved problem.
|
| It's mostly solved - solved for most of the waste material,
| just not for a few bits which, dag nab it, seem to radiate
| out of those barrels.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| The solution in many countries basically amounts to letting
| future generations deal with the problem. A lot of nuclear
| waste is being stored in temporary places awaiting a
| permanent solution that does not yet exist. That solution is
| going to be expensive and nobody is particularly eager to
| have that in their back yard even though the risks are very
| low. So, lots of countries have been deferring solving that
| problem and only talk in terms of hypothetical solutions that
| could work that somebody else (i.e. future generations) might
| want to pay for.
|
| Only a few countries (e.g. Finland) have permanent storage
| underground for nuclear waste. But that was only opened
| fairly recently. France actually used to just dump it in the
| ocean. These days they are a bit more responsible. I think
| they are building a storage facility that is supposed to open
| some time next decade. Meanwhile, just like in most other
| places, they just store the waste in sealed containers and
| store those on site.
|
| I would say it's a solvable problem but not a solved problem.
| The solution has a large price tag with absolutely no return
| on investment. And that's a problem that doesn't have any
| solution.
| nerdponx wrote:
| > Nuclear waste is in general mostly a solved problem. A
| bunch of barrels less or more over the lifecycle of the plant
| in the storage site does not move a needle much, economically
| or otherwise.
|
| Storage of nuclear waste was one of several issues that led
| residents around the Indian Point nuclear plant to push hard
| for its shutdown, at which they eventually succeeded.
|
| Other issues included ecological harm to the adjacent Hudson
| River due to discharge of unnaturally warm water, and
| (probably the biggest one) the risk of widespread death and
| injury in the event of an accident or terrorist attack.
|
| Indian Point is in relatively densely populated area with
| relatively low-capacity highways, and there was a pervasive
| sense that the official evacuation plans would be
| insufficient in case of a disaster.
|
| If the plan here is to make more, smaller, cheaper nuclear
| plants in or near more cities and towns, this means you are
| going to have even more towns putting up the same local
| resistance on those same issues. Advocates of nuclear will
| need to have answers.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _Storage of nuclear waste was one of several issues that
| led residents around the Indian Point nuclear plant to push
| hard for its shutdown, at which they eventually succeeded._
|
| Solar power plants produce zero waste, and those are
| opposed:
|
| * https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/30/its-
| got-...
|
| * https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-solar-expansion-
| stalled-...
|
| Wind farms create no waste, and are also opposed:
|
| * https://www.npr.org/2022/03/28/1086790531/renewable-
| energy-p...
|
| Seems like people are just opposed to building anything
| around them, waste or not.
| nerdponx wrote:
| When is the last time a wind farm was the a target of a
| 30-year shutdown campaign, that succeeded?
| marmetio wrote:
| > Advocates of nuclear will need to have answers.
|
| Not really. Nobody ever wants power generation in their
| backyard. Doesn't matter if it's dangerous nuclear or
| polluting fossil fuel or eye-sore wind. The answer is
| always one of the same two options: do it anyway, or put it
| in someone else's backyard.
| fragmede wrote:
| I'd love a small reactor in my backyard. A nice little 10
| kilowatt system would be lovely. As it stands, solar on
| the roof and a backup battery is the dream, but if it
| were a self-maintaining nuclear system with a battery to
| smooth things out, that would be super cool!
| nerdponx wrote:
| This is nihilistic and disrespectful of the actual humans
| involved.
|
| Resistance is a matter of proportion and intensity. A few
| assholes will complain about wind. A _lot_ of people
| remember Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and wouldn 't
| care about an eyesore wind farm but would worry about the
| effects of an accident at a nuclear plant.
|
| You are basically saying that NIMBYs exist and therefore
| nobody's complaints about nuclear power are valid. Good
| luck with that attitude.
| [deleted]
| marmetio wrote:
| That's not what I said. I even called nuclear dangerous,
| so how did you conclude that I invalidated concerns
| besides NIMBYism?
|
| Every option has downsides. Every proposal faces
| opposition. Every project is decided individually.
|
| The nuclear advocates don't need a special extra
| requirement to convince everyone in the world to choose
| nuclear. They're going to go through the same process as
| everyone else every time.
|
| I said something neutral about nuclear and you invented a
| personal attack on yourself and reprimanded me for it.
| Good luck with that attitude, I guess?
| nerdponx wrote:
| > Not really. Nobody ever wants power generation in their
| backyard. Doesn't matter if it's dangerous nuclear or
| polluting fossil fuel or eye-sore wind. The answer is
| always one of the same two options: do it anyway, or put
| it in someone else's backyard.
|
| This is what I responded to. It sounds pretty absolute to
| me.
| grecy wrote:
| > _A bunch of barrels less or more over the lifecycle of the
| plant_
|
| So, ah, where are those "few" barrels getting stored?
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/18/nuclear-waste-why-theres-
| no-...
| todd8 wrote:
| There is a lot of discussion here about renewables. I recommend a
| recent paper published in _Nature Communications_ titled
| "Geophysical constraints on the reliability of solar and wind
| power worldwide"[1]. It considers mixes of Solar and Wind, with
| or without excess capacity, and storage facilities zero, 3, or 12
| hours. The paper's model (it looks like the code is available on
| GitHub) makes optimist assumptions (e.g. no transmission losses
| within a single country and feasibility of 12hrs of storage for
| the whole country). Nevertheless, the results are interesting.
|
| Figure 3 (see[1]) indicates how much power outage must be
| tolerated across the entire country for different mixes renewable
| capacity and storage depending on the country:
|
| US -- Generation 1.5 times the capacity needed, 12 hours of
| storage, wind and solar have a power supply gap of 15% when the
| goal is to tolerate 10 hours of power outage.
|
| Germany -- Generation 3 times the capacity needed, 12 hours of
| storage, wind and solar have a power supply gap of 60% when the
| goal is to tolerate 10 hours of power outage.
|
| The larger the power supply gap, the more additional dispatchable
| power that must be provided.
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| Considering Germany alone doesn't make much sense. Any
| realistic solution would be European.
| lazide wrote:
| Until folks in Europe stop liking each other again.
|
| You think it's bad when Russia plays with Gas supplies, wait
| until France/Germany/North/South start using power (literal)
| plays to mess with each other.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Let me tell you about an entity called the EU.
| melling wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post in the flamewar style and please don't
| break the site guidelines with complaints about downvotes,
| tendentious generalizations about the community, etc. All of
| this noticeably lowers discussion quality.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| einpoklum wrote:
| > In other news, it's too late to limit the temperature
| increase to 1.5 C
|
| And you would argue that is due to preferring solar and wind
| over nuclear? Perhaps that is why you get downvoted. (I have
| not downvoted you though.)
| walnutclosefarm wrote:
| I don't object to using nuclear for grid power, but it's really
| not a great complement for solar and wind. What you want to
| complement those variable sources is something that ramps up
| and down easily, when you hit extended reduced production
| periods in the variable sources. Something like nuclear, which
| is inherently a baseline source, which has basically no storage
| utility, and which is already far more expensive per unit of
| energy produced, even when run at high utilization, misses the
| boat.
| loeg wrote:
| > it's really not a great complement for solar and wind.
|
| I mean, vice versa: volatile wind and solar are not a good
| match for demand.
| pfdietz wrote:
| A renewable heavy grid leaves no place for nuclear.
| Renewable looks at nuclear and says "This is not a 'me'
| problem, this is a 'you' problem."
| loeg wrote:
| And vice versa, right? That's the problem and source of
| conflict between nuclear and solar/wind advocates.
| pfdietz wrote:
| No, not vice versa, because people are buying and
| installing the renewables. It's the nuclear people who
| are complaining. Talk to the hand, nuclear stan.
| walnutclosefarm wrote:
| Yep. And if nuclear advocates had a plausible story about
| what a path to zero-carbon, nuclear powered grid that
| produces affordable power, deals with its own waste issue,
| and doesn't scare the shit out of the population, we should
| be looking at that as an option. Seen any evidence of that?
| I haven't.
| timerol wrote:
| Nuclear is very bad at ramping all of the way off, but
| NuScale's reactors can go from full power to 25% of output
| power in 1 hour. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h--
| FAVoAQvk&t=59s
|
| Nuclear power is used as base load because of economics, not
| physics or regulations. France's nuclear fleet is used for
| load-following. See "Load-following with PWR nuclear plants"
| in https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-
| pr.... (SMRs are easier to use for load-following, since you
| enable and disable reactors, as opposed to using the "grey
| control rods" mentioned in the linked article.)
| pfdietz wrote:
| Technical ability to ramp is not the issue, it's the
| economic cost of ramping. A nuclear plant must operate with
| as high a capacity factor as possible or else the cost per
| kWh inflates. Almost all the costs are fixed.
| walnutclosefarm wrote:
| Exactly. To be useful to fill the dips in renewal
| production, you have to run your the baseline
| contribution of nuclear at a low power, so you've got
| headroom to expand into when needed. That makes nuclear
| kwh, already inherently expensive, prohibitively so.
| locallost wrote:
| The true reason why nuclear does not ramp up and down easily
| is that you need to run it all the time to make it even
| remotely economical. Otherwise it won't recoup the upfront
| costs even in 50 years.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Your post mentions "hours of power outage" without a context of
| which interval this is within. I think it is annually from
| looking at your citation, so "hours of power outage per year"
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Also what is the shortfall? How many watts are missing?
|
| Taking in mind for example demand response which I do not see
| mentioned in the paper, and of course would be a critical
| part of a renewable grid.
|
| Another central missing word is "sector coupling".
| Gwypaas wrote:
| That study is useless from a system standpoint. Sure it is a
| bit interesting to look at the basic facts, but all energy
| systems are more complicated. For example it only mentions the
| world "sector coupling" once in the discussion, while it is
| central in any renewable system.
|
| HVDC connections are being strung up across Europe. Sweden and
| Norway can together in an hour vary their hydro output by 15
| GW, that is 15 nuclear reactors worth of balancing power backed
| by tens of TWh stored.
|
| The research on 100% renewable systems have long embraced the
| thought of holistic approaches.
|
| > The majority of studies show that a global transition to 100%
| renewable energy across all sectors - power, heat, transport
| and desalination - is feasible and economically
| viable.[5][6][7][8] A cross-sectoral, holistic approach is seen
| as an important feature of 100% renewable energy systems and is
| based on the assumption "that the best solutions can be found
| only if one focuses on the synergies between the sectors" of
| the energy system such as electricity, heat, transport or
| industry.[9]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy
|
| Here is a meta study on everything 100% renewable for the
| interested. The consensus is that it is possible without a
| doubt.
|
| https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Yep, doable and already getting done in lots of places.
| Discussions like this usually devolve into alarmist what ifs
| and vague assertions about needing something called "base
| load" which is a surprising poorly defined notion. There are
| now several places in the world that regularly have
| hours/days/weeks of being exclusively powered by renewables.
| And it's fine. When that happens the cost is low. When it
| doesn't they pay more to import power from elsewhere or they
| switch on some peaker plants. Typically, without any outages
| or downtime.
|
| Applying some system thinking is indeed key. If you look at
| each solution in isolation, they indeed each have issues but
| they are different issues. If you take them altogether, you
| end up with a resilient grid network with much less issues.
| Wind by itself has issues. But together with solar and some
| short term storage, it gets a lot more resilient. There are
| still some issues left when you do that because cold gloomy
| winter days with no wind are a thing and those conditions can
| last for days or weeks in some places. We don't (yet) have
| storage to bridge such gaps. Months is actually unusual but
| weeks is fairly common in places like Germany in the winter.
|
| So, you can't obviously rely on that mix exclusively. Which
| is something nuclear proponents love to point out forgetting
| that turning nuclear plants on and off is really expensive
| and slow and generally not something that is done regularly.
| They kind of suck for backup power. Nuclear peaker plants are
| not a thing. Hence they like to talk about base load because
| that means leaving them on permanently to provide that base
| load.
|
| The alarmist view to this is that without this base load we
| need to have enormous amounts of storage to survive these
| horrendous apocalyptic spells of gloomy days (i.e. winters).
| Exaggerating here but this goes to the core of what nuclear
| proponents advocate: yes it is stupendously expensive but we
| have to have it because we need the "base load". The fallacy
| in that argument is pretending that nuclear is the only
| option for this and ignoring the cost aspect. Also, nobody
| ever specifies how much of this base load is actually needed
| (in gwh). They just assume that we need lots of it.
|
| The system thinking pragmatic real world solution to this is
| realizing that these gloomy conditions are typically
| localized, seasonal, predictable, etc. and that running some
| cables across the continent adds a lot of resilience. Like
| Scandinavian hydro power, or solar power imported from places
| like Spain or Morocco (both of which are a thing). Moving
| power around with cables means you can shape and shift demand
| around as well. Mostly we're not talking about 100% collapses
| in generation but supply and demand variations of more
| reasonable percentages.
|
| And of course the reality is that we have all these legacy
| plants still providing much more base load than is actually
| needed right now. We don't actually need more of that right
| now. It's not an urgent problem (aside from getting rid of
| emissions). And they aren't going to be switched off
| overnight and will be around for quite some time. The mix is
| gradually shifting to more and more renewables, all sorts of
| storage solutions. It's going to asymptotically converge on
| 100%.
| guywhocodes wrote:
| Fusion is also possible
| einpoklum wrote:
| Let me do some cocktail-napkin math here.
|
| US generation capacity in Feb 2022 was 1.2e12 Watts [1]
|
| (let's take that as the value for 2021 as well)
|
| US electricity consumption in 2021 was 3.93e15 Watt-Hours. [2]
|
| Now, 1 Watt over a 365.25-day year is 8766 Watt-Hours. So, US
| capacity for 2021 under our assumption was 8766 * 1.2e12 =
| 1.05e16 . That's 3x capacity over need.
|
| So, those doom-and-gloom descriptions of inadequacy of solar
| and wind seem to rely on a low capacity/need rate.
|
| [1] - https://www.publicpower.org/resource/americas-
| electricity-ge...
|
| [2] - https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/use-of-
| elect...
| roomey wrote:
| Would love to know about expected failure modes or this reactor
| type. Is there any info on this?
| alexb_ wrote:
| You can read the safety evaluation here:
| https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/smr/licensing-acti...
| cratermoon wrote:
| https://thebulletin.org/premium/2021-07/can-small-modular-re...
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU-IlqiP4sU"
|
| Well, it says its a LWR, video says "fuel rods", which means
| solid rods and meltdown risk. Eh.
|
| If it's a solid fuel rod, then if you get a runaway reaction,
| and if circumstances mean the safety systems go offline (see:
| Fukushima) then meltdown.
|
| Contrast this with something like LFTR: the liquid fuel needs
| to stay in a certain shape/containment/vessel to maintain
| criticality. If it starts overreacting/heating, the "plug" at
| the bottom of the containment melts and the liquid flows into a
| shallow distributed pool that, per nuclear physics, is
| impossible to maintain criticality.
|
| That type of system is inherently meltdown-proof, even if all
| the systems go offline, the plug will melt. You know, assuming
| gravity still works.
|
| A pebble bed, where the solid fuel rod is instead a bunch of
| solid pellets, but if they get too hot you can similarly melt a
| plug and the pellets fall into a shape that likewise wouldn't
| stay critical, might also be similarly meltdown-proof, but I
| haven't read nearly as much on pebble bed designs.
|
| But a solid fuel rod? Nope.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Nuclear engineer here. That's not quite how it all works.
|
| Solid vs. liquid fuel is not tied directly to reactivity
| stability, as quantified in the power coefficient of
| reactivity. If it goes up in power, you want the chain
| reaction to naturally go down.
|
| In solid fueled reactors, this is usually accomplished via
| the moderator. If the moderator temperature goes up, it
| reduced in density, thereby reducing the overall neutron
| moderation in the core. Thus, fewer neutrons make it to to
| the energy range that causes fission. Thus, reactivity goes
| down and the reaction stops. This is inherently stable, just
| like fuel density in a fluid fuel reactor going down and
| reducing the overall fission rate.
|
| LFTRs are pre-melted. You melt 100% of the core and then
| bring it critical. That's a lot of pretty mobile fission
| products!
|
| As for the melt plug, that's also a false solution. Given
| that achieving subcriticality is trivial in modern solid and
| fluid fuel reactors, the challenge in an accident is
| afterglow heat removal. As you may know, the plants at
| Fukushima had all rods in and were fully subcritical an hour
| before the tsunami hit). But when they lost afterglow heat
| removal, it still melted some containment barriers. Same can
| happen with fluid fuel, regardless of whether or not you've
| moved it from one tank to another.
|
| Fluid fuel is not the panacea many people want to think it
| is.
|
| Passive afterglow heat removal is the thing that lets
| reactors of any fuel form be safer than today's typical
| reactors, which generally require backup power to run the
| cooling systems. If you use certain molten salt, liquid
| sodium metal, liquid lead metal, etc. cooling configurations
| you can achieve indefinite heat removal without any external
| power. That reduces core damage frequencies by about 100x
| from modern large LWRs. Again, regardless of fuel form.
|
| That said, 100x safer than how safe current nuclear is is
| kind of just playing with very small numbers. Fossil and
| biofuel combustion kills 8 million per year from particulate
| emissions, according to the WHO, and also cause climate
| change. So we should just be building hundreds of regular
| large water cooled reactors now and then switch over to
| fancier cooling ones later, and also breeders that are
| ~infinitely sustainable for the long term.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| So if the moderator fails (like Fukushima and all
| meltdowns) and the active cooling fails, what does the
| passive cooler do to drop the neutron economy/chain
| reaction in the fuel rods? It just keeps the rods cool so
| they don't melt through the floor, and they do that until
| the rods finally drop the economy?
|
| I still don't like it because nothing in the fuel rod
| safety does anything about the continued criticality. What
| are the passive cooling systems, are they big heat sinks
| and pipes? What happens if an earthquake or explosion
| disrupts the heat sinks or heat pipe connection to the
| solid rods? Makes the coolant leak out?
|
| Speed of melt of the plug doesn't seem like a big deal, you
| simply use a thinner plug if you're worried about that.
| Dumping out of the core in a liquid fuel isn't a big deal,
| if the core is intact but a dump-out occurs with a plug you
| simply replace the plug and send the liquid fuel back into
| the reactor.
|
| I mean, liquid fuel reprocessing obviously isn't simple,
| the materials around the liquid fuel and high temperature
| isn't simple.
|
| The bottom line is that you can downvote me, but I'm
| basically an example the first tier of people you need to
| convince for politically viable nuclear. This is what LFTR
| really appeals to me on:
|
| - total fuel use. Yes I know it won't be 0% waste, those
| fission products can be nasty, but ... still total fuel use
| is a big selling point to me
|
| - ability to breed / consume spent fuel waste ... clean up
| the mistakes of the past
|
| - modular : some hope to be economical
|
| - contained on single facility: no transport of waste, no
| disruption of transportation infrastructure, no risk of
| terrorism/hijacking, no Yucca mountain
|
| - closed loop economics: you see the full lifecycle. No
| hiding costs in reprocessing or transportation or storage,
| you have the facility, it's operating cost, and you know.
|
| - safety: you didn't refute that liquid fuels are safer
| than solid rods. No one really knows what at-scale
| processing of MSR fission products involves, so I could be
| wrong, but "mobile" implies "processable" to me.
|
| I've always wondered that even if LFTRs aren't economical,
| they might be an economical cleanup facility: let cheaper
| nuclear designs generate the power, then send the spent
| fuel to a LFTR facility that ... maybe ... melts the spent
| fuel and breeds/processes the products, and at least the
| processing cost is offset by the power you get from the
| LFTR and the useful/valuable products.
|
| The real issue is that nuclear isn't cost competitive with
| solar/wind, and might not be competitive with
| solar/wind+storage. Solar/wind and especially batteries are
| going to go through a decade of nonlinear cost improvement
| in the next decade that ... probably ... drops their cost
| by half.
|
| So nuclear will only be a load leveller tech, and needs to
| compete with hydro (and pumped hydro storage), geothermal,
| whatever comes out of synthfuels/"green" hydrogen.
|
| I'm of the view we need to invest in nuclear research, but
| going all-in on nuclear plants? Nope, the nuclear industry
| should have gotten off its tush 20-30 years ago with a more
| compelling design that addresses full lifecycle and safety
| and economics.
|
| Nuclear should have recognized the enormous opportunity
| global warming represented, but the nuclear industry seems
| full of "green" hostile (from the antinuke conflicts) and
| regulatory hostile people that it couldn't bring itself to
| align with left-wing environmentalism.
| p1mrx wrote:
| > Passive afterglow heat removal is the thing that lets
| reactors of any fuel form be safer than today's typical
| reactors, which generally require backup power to run the
| cooling systems.
|
| NuScale does not require backup power. They solve the
| afterglow heat removal problem by running the reactors
| under millions of gallons of water. By the time it all
| boils away (about a month), passive air cooling is
| sufficient.
| Symmetry wrote:
| For people who don't know this stuff, like myself a few
| years ago:
|
| When a uranium atom is hit by a neutron some of the will
| split immediately releasing new neutrons but some of them
| will go into an unstable state and then split some period
| of time later. If the instantaneous splits are enough to
| keep the reaction going that's called a "prompt critical"
| configuration and usually seen only in atomic weapons. If
| the neutrons released by both the immediate reactions and
| the delayed reactions are enough to keep the reaction going
| that's only "critical."
|
| Because there are many atoms in the reactor that have been
| hit by neutrons and are unstable but haven't split yet a
| reactor continues to release a lot of heat even when it's
| no long critical, somewhere on the order of 10% as much
| power as when it was fully on.
| panick21_ wrote:
| I agree freeze plug isn't magic, passive heat removal can
| be much easier if you can move the fuel into a different
| contaiment with different geometry and different passive
| heat removal features.
|
| However it has to be noted that most of the companies that
| work on molten salt reactors dont use that method.
| Terrestrial Energy, Moltex Energy for example.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Meh, I dunno I think freeze plugs are really falling out
| of favor in general. They take a long time to melt,
| aren't that reliable or predictable, and can spuriously
| actuate, dumping the whole core.
|
| Why make two vessels when you already need one? Just add
| passive afterglow heat removal to the one and you're
| done. Moving stuff around for no reason doesn't add
| anything.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > That's a lot of pretty mobile fission products!
|
| https://gain.inl.gov/SiteAssets/MoltenSaltReactor/Module2-O
| v... (slide 23)
|
| "Gaseous Fission Products Inherently Evolve from Fuel Salt"
|
| "Many FPs have Xe or Kr precursors
|
| - Over 40% of FPs leave core
|
| - Large fraction of cesium, strontium and iodine end up in
| offgas"
| convolvatron wrote:
| I think the point about pebble-bed designs is that the
| density of reactive material in the pebbles is low enough
| that without external control it maintains a moderate
| temperature. low enough to not cause a meltdown under any
| circumstances
| VLM wrote:
| Engineered to cool by convection and gravity, yes. Somewhat
| safer than reactors that melt without continuous active
| cooling. But that comes at a cost: the good parts of low
| power density AND the bad part of low power density, such
| as being "huge" compared to a tiny little submarine reactor
| of similar power level.
|
| Really any reactor "could" be engineered this way but it
| does make them big. And "big" competes against the natural
| desire of engineers to run them at high temps thus high
| pressures to keep efficiency high. But what if lower
| efficiency results in net cheaper and safer electricity;
| its not like they're paying silicon valley prices for the
| land and nuclear fuel is stunningly cheap so burning twice
| as much is still cheaper than coal, LOL.
|
| A lot of the "old school" reactor design was based around
| the nuclear navy where both weight and volume are NOT
| cheap, not cheap at all. I don't think you could ever have
| a pebble bed reactor in an aircraft carrier.
| pfdietz wrote:
| This is one of the things that annoys me about the hype
| about DT fusion reactors. "They can't melt down like
| fission reactors!" "Yeah, if your fission reactor had
| 1/40th the volumetric power density of a PWR it would be
| really hard to make it melt down too."
|
| Sometimes in these discussions you see some precious
| spirit advocating a DT fusion reactor for use in ships.
| gene-h wrote:
| LFTRs involve onsite reprocessing which is politically
| difficult to get approved in the US and may introduce other
| risks.
| p1mrx wrote:
| Here's a presentation on their approach to safety:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhrxFCtCPUo&t=2360s
|
| They estimate that the risk of core damage is 3-5 orders of
| magnitude lower than traditional nuclear plants.
| sklargh wrote:
| I would love to see SMRs deployed at older coal fuel power plant
| sites to replace baseload power these facilities offer. These
| locations are already connected to their respective grids and are
| environmentally degraded.
| lettergram wrote:
| What does "environmentally degraded" mean?
| loeg wrote:
| Full of toxic coal byproducts, which are either radioactive
| or never break down.
| NegativeK wrote:
| I assume they're referring to the immediate local pollution
| that collects around a coal plant.
| dbcooper wrote:
| Any indication of cost per kWh?
| Julesman wrote:
| All nuclear fission for energy production is a bad thing. Full
| stop.
| patientplatypus wrote:
| [dead]
| hackandthink wrote:
| "Why Small Modular Reactors Can't Compete With Renewable Energy"
|
| "So the physics of thermal efficiency are important. So is
| modularity and manufacturability. There's an optimizing curve in
| there that the SMR firms are trying to figure out"
|
| https://cleantechnica.com/2023/01/18/the-nuclear-fallacy-why...
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _The First Small Modular Nuclear Reactor Was Just Approved by US
| Regulators_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32367791 - Aug
| 2022 (229 comments)
|
| _US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor design_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32282632 - July 2022 (742
| comments)
|
| _Developers of small modular reactors hope their time has come_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30787076 - March 2022 (277
| comments)
|
| _First U.S. Small Nuclear Reactor Design Is Approved_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24485962 - Sept 2020 (105
| comments)
|
| _Small nuclear reactors: tiny NuScale reactor gets safety
| approval_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24358850 - Sept
| 2020 (541 comments)
|
| _NuScale's small nuclear reactor is first to get US safety
| approval_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24345288 - Sept
| 2020 (5 comments)
|
| Related a bit more loosely:
|
| _China leads the quest for small modular nuclear reactors-will
| the world follow?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34395892 - Jan 2023 (41
| comments)
|
| _Small Modular Reactors Exacerbate Challenges of Nuclear Waste_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31639398 - June 2022 (268
| comments)
|
| _Next generation nuclear reactor to be built in Wyoming_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27376834 - June 2021 (26
| comments)
|
| _Wyoming site of new nuclear power plant from Bill Gates '
| TerraPower_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27374840 -
| June 2021 (113 comments)
|
| _Small modular nuclear reactors may help polluting industries
| reduce emissions_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25791023
| - Jan 2021 (45 comments)
|
| _NASA completes full-power tests of small, portable nuclear
| reactor_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16984551 - May
| 2018 (124 comments)
|
| _Canada begins Small Modular Reactor strategy roadmap_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16498617 - March 2018 (49
| comments)
|
| _China 's Yanlong: a small nuclear reactor strictly for district
| heating_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15967724 - Dec
| 2017 (60 comments)
|
| _Small Modular Nuclear Reactors Overcome Existing Barriers to
| Nuclear_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11751705 - May
| 2016 (84 comments)
| Animats wrote:
| Well, not exactly the first. Vallecitos, 1957.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn1zESA0V8k
| garbagecoder wrote:
| I am an enormous advocate for nuclear as a transition energy
| source and I know energy geeks love decentralization, but I don't
| think nuclear and decentralization is a good mix.
|
| The basic rationale is that you are risking a few dead spots on
| the planet (Chernobyl, Fukushima, etc.) in exchange for the
| entire planet being destroyed, but that only makes sense if the
| number of places you are risking is quite small.
|
| Ideally, it would be places that are already in use for
| radiological purposes.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| It's easy to get certified. Now they have to get a few hundred
| customers and local planning permissions...
| LinuxBender wrote:
| The first one is going into Lincoln County Wyoming in the city
| of Kemmerer. The city, county and state are all excited to get
| this reactor. They have the full support of the state. This
| state has a very diverse power production profile and provides
| power to most of the western states.
|
| The only people not so happy are the coal miners that are soon
| to be out of work. Kemmerer is also a coal mining city. Some of
| them have already started relocating.
| grecy wrote:
| Interesting that Wyoming is talking about banning the sales
| of EVs [1] to protect the oil and gas industry.
|
| By that logic, a pesky nuclear reactor would surely also
| endanger their precious oil and gas profits....
|
| [1] https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/3815311-wyoming-
| law...
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I think its just virtue-signalling for the people soon to
| be out of work as the coal mines are slowly shutting down,
| also mentioned here [1] That said the state has little
| demand for EV's so probably not too many people noticed.
| Probably also to give some confidence to the oil investors
| but I am not an investment expert.
|
| [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34395111
| puffoflogic wrote:
| > a pesky nuclear reactor would surely also endanger their
| precious oil and gas profits
|
| (A), stop taking obviously unserious legislation seriously,
| it's a bad look.
|
| (B), they can comfortably rely on other jurisdictions
| having their heads shoved way too far up their own assholes
| that those other jurisdictions will not ever adopt nuclear,
| and will therefore remain reliable oil and gas customers.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| That's great. The issue is finding 99 more buyers so this can
| work at scale (the whole point of smr). Then you just have to
| deliver 100 reactors and do so on budget and without any
| defects.
|
| This is why I say the regulation is the EASY part. People
| were amazed when Tesla got off the ground because it was the
| first time anyone had succeeded at starting a new car maker
| in 100 years. This is the same idea, but much harder.
| loeg wrote:
| If other energy sources were regulated like the NRC, they
| would also be more expensive. Coal wouldn't have been built
| at all. Nuclear regulation is not "the easy part."
| LinuxBender wrote:
| You could be right. Time will tell I suppose. I will keep a
| close eye on these and submit articles here as they are
| created and add comments from the locals that end up
| working there.
| gene-h wrote:
| easy? They started the approval process in 2011 and the cost of
| approval was allegedly in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuScale_Power#Corporate_histor
| ...
| coder543 wrote:
| > It's easy to get certified.
|
| Really? How many SMR designs have been certified in the last 20
| years?
| foota wrote:
| Aren't these factory built? Seems like they could start
| building and then work out buyers if they're as promising as
| people make out.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| I think what that person means is that to get this actually
| built, is likely going to take at least 5 to 10 years of
| regulatory and government action. On the local level. That's
| not counting anyone that might throw up roadblocks, such as
| environmental, and safety. That could easily extend this out
| another five or 10 years.
|
| If a company wanted to build this reactor today, speaking as
| a government bureaucrat, you are looking at least 10 years
| before they even break ground.
| justahuman74 wrote:
| Are there places were they'd receive less regulation, such
| as on federal land or a military base?
| giantg2 wrote:
| Federal land and less regulation are closer to antonyms
| than synonyms. Federal government contracts tend to be
| more involved than most.
|
| The military might consider a reactor like this for
| remote installations. I think they've had similar
| ideas/tests in the past. Not sure those ever panned out
| though.
| knute wrote:
| There were nuclear reactors run by the military in
| Antarctica, Greenland, and Alaska in the late 60s and
| early 70s, but they were all shut down.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_Nuclear_Power_Program#
| Lis...
| moloch-hai wrote:
| For reasons.
|
| Not regulation, and not hippies.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _going to take at least 5 to 10 years of regulatory and
| government action. On the local level_
|
| On the coasts, sure. In Wyoming, Texas or New Mexico, much
| quicker [1].
|
| [1] https://www.eia.gov/uranium/production/annual/uemplysta
| te.ph...
| LatteLazy wrote:
| That's fine if you have a few 10s of billions to risk
| building products that might never be bought.
|
| There are 2 key issues here: you have to convince people
| these will work for a decade plus without issue despite being
| new AND you have to convince a large number of people
| (companies, municipalities etc) (>100 to make the factory
| viable and get the economies of scale) who actually have the
| cash to buy them.
|
| This is a key moat for a lot of tech: anyone could design a
| decent airliner. Can you convince enough airlines to order
| them to make it viable to mass manufacturer them, despite
| having no name or track record? Hence Boeing and Airbus
| remain the only games in town (and Airbus only got there with
| a lot of state assistance).
| giantg2 wrote:
| Meh, old reactor tech with new "engineered" safety features. I
| would have liked to see stuff more like FAST or slow wave
| reactors with inherent physics based safety features.
| aclatuts wrote:
| Making it smaller does add physics based safety features that
| couldn't be achieved otherwise.
| Retric wrote:
| US's biggest nuclear accident in terms of lives lost was on a
| tiny reactor.
|
| At best the worst case downside is limited, but so to is the
| amount of power generated.
| fr0sty wrote:
| This accident? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1
|
| "Stationary Low-Power Reactor Number One, also known as
| SL-1 or the Argonne Low Power Reactor (ALPR), was a United
| States Army experimental nuclear reactor in the western
| United States at the National Reactor Testing Station
| (NRTS), later the Idaho National Laboratory, west of Idaho
| Falls, Idaho. It experienced a steam explosion on the night
| of January 3, 1961, killing all three of its young military
| operators, and pinning one of them to the ceiling of the
| facility with a reactor vessel plug. The event is the only
| reactor accident in U.S. history that resulted in immediate
| fatalities.
| gpm wrote:
| Personally I'm not worried about the biggest nuclear
| accident so far. I'm worried about the potential future
| very unlikely but very severe nuclear accident that kills a
| non-negligible fraction of the population. An accident that
| makes Chernobyl look small.
| nomel wrote:
| This needs to be balanced with any loss of life from
| global warming. Some would want to consider non-human
| life in that calculation, as well.
|
| (I don't know enough about this to know if nuclear will
| have a large impact, in the grand scheme).
| gpm wrote:
| Sure, it's a risk vs reward thing and my comment was just
| focusing on the risk - a risk that I think is continually
| downplayed because we are bad at appreciating the costs
| of extremely unlikely but extremely bad events that have
| never occurred before.
|
| If the reward is high enough the risk might be justified.
| Personally I doubt it (mostly because economically solar
| + wind + power storage seems like a better bet), but
| that's a whole other discussion.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| A big part of the problem with today's reactors is that they
| are full of water which requires huge heat exchangers (often
| bigger than the reaction vessel but still safety critical) and
| have a huge steam turbine.
|
| Even if heat were free you'd have a hard time making the steam
| turbine powerset competitive in 2023.
|
| Nuclear might be able to compete if we can get rid of the
| water. In Japan they are talking about producing hydrogen
| directly with thermochemistry, no powerset at all. There is
| also talk about coupling fast reactors or molten salt reactors
| to this kind of powerset
|
| https://www.powermag.com/what-are-supercritical-co2-power-cy...
|
| The claimed price of a NuScale reactor isn't going to beat a
| large LWR but it might possibly be able to build at the quote
| that NuScale quotes, whereas the large LWR struggles.
|
| If you want "the power to save the Earth" you have to get costs
| down and reactors that can do that are still a decade + out.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'll have to look up the hydrogen one. I know the only DOE
| work I've heard of in the US is still hydrolysis.
|
| I thought they have small scale modupar FAST reactors. I
| would hope they would be similar on price, or at least quote
| accuracy.
| scythe wrote:
| Thermochemical hydrogen -- solar or nuclear -- has been
| studied for a while. The simulation thermodynamic
| efficiency numbers are excellent (beating electricity
| generation by 1.5-2x), but the reaction cycles in practice
| tend to leak process chemicals or corrode equipment too
| quickly to be sustainable (even losing, e.g., 0.1% of your
| iodine per cycle is unacceptable). I believe Japan is
| considering a reactor made of _tantalum_. Canada started
| such a project in 2010 that was supposed to be online by
| 2016ish but has continued hitting roadblocks.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Sulfuric acid vapor at 850 C is nasty stuff.
| Retric wrote:
| The steam loop is a tiny fraction of current nuclear reactors
| costs. If you didn't need to worry about nuclear safety etc
| then a pure steam loop would be wildly profitable.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Have you seen how big the steam turbine is?
|
| There is a table here that estimates that only 28% of the
| cost is the "nuclear island"
|
| https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-
| aspec...
|
| the steam turbine and other systems that are bloated by low
| temperature overhead comprise much of the rest. Also some
| of the "nuclear island" such as the steam generators is
| also bloated by low temperature overhead.
|
| It is no accident that _we stopped building coal-burning
| power plants at the same time we stopped building LWRs_ and
| that is because gas turbine power plants with much lower
| capital cost became available.
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" Have you seen how big the steam turbine is?"_
|
| If your intuition was correct, I think we'd see a trend
| towards much smaller steam turbines with fewer stages.
| It's a deliberate choice to engineer them at the size
| scale they are: the marginal efficiency gains from
| largest [0], lowest-pressure stages has to justify their
| cost.
|
| [0] https://power.mhi.com/products/steamturbines/lineup/t
| hermal-... (diagram showing relative sizes of HP / IP /
| LP turbine stages)
| Retric wrote:
| 28% of construction costs not total costs. If we are
| assuming magic such that you don't need fuel then you
| also don't need armed security, nuclear decommissioning
| etc etc.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| A story I've been gathering bits and pieces of evidence
| for but haven't put together completely is that nuclear
| decommissioning projects, unlike construction projects,
| frequently end up completed ahead of schedule and under
| budget.
|
| This is even true in cases where the situation is
| unprecedented and people are having to develop new
| techniques.
| Retric wrote:
| As is so often the case it isn't any one issue like
| decommissioning that's the problem alone. It's that
| nuclear has such a wide range of costs that they
| collectively become expensive even if each cost in it's
| own isn't prohibitive.
|
| Aka if we only needed to pay for fuel rods and waste
| management then nuclear would be wildly profitable.
| Similarly if the only cost was a large workforce and
| expensive maintenance then again it would be wildly
| profitable. Being forced to act as base load generation
| with long periods offline for refueling isn't a deal
| killer. If it was just the long construction times and
| NIMBY issues that would be fine. Etc.
|
| Unfortunately because there is such a diverse range of
| costs there isn't a single silver bullet that's going to
| solve all problems with nuclear power. At best by
| addressing individual issues we might increase the
| percentage of electricity generated by nuclear power.
| That's very realistic and IMO a worthwhile goal.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Construction costs are the big cost in nuclear power.
| Uranium comprises between $0.0015/kWh and $0.000015/kWh.
|
| You don't really need armed security, but a couple guys
| with guns in America are a dime a dozen.
|
| Decomissioning is $300-400M after a 30-50Y lifecycle and
| operators are generally allowed to collect that money
| over the plant life. [1] That's compared to the $17B in
| construction costs for Vogtle.
|
| [1] https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-
| sheets/d...
| Retric wrote:
| Uranium costs are the kind of meaningless fact that's
| true and wildly misleading. Fuel rods are not simply long
| sticks of unprocessed uranium.
|
| Refueling is expensive because of many separate costs.
| Even simply being forced to take a power plant offline
| for a long period is inherently expensive. Similarly
| building a cooling pond and equipment to move extremely
| high level nuclear waste is costly. Add up all those
| individual costs and fuel represents a significant
| faction of the total lifetime costs for a nuclear
| reactor.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| We don't actually know what most decommissionings will
| cost. $300M is just a lower bound.
|
| Nukes' fuel cost seems low only in comparison to their
| other very high costs.
| arcticbull wrote:
| > We don't actually know what most decommissionings will
| cost. $300M is just a lower bound.
|
| Of course we do, we've decommissioned plants before.
| About 200 commercial and 500 research reactors. That's a
| sufficient sample size. [1]
|
| > Nukes' fuel cost seems low only in comparison to their
| other very high costs.
|
| $0.0015/kWh is objectively cheap on an absolute scale. I
| don't know if you noticed, but California pays about
| $0.19/kWh, so this would be 0.78% of the delivered cost.
|
| [1] https://world-nuclear.org/information-
| library/nuclear-fuel-c...
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Expectation is that Indian Point will cost $1B, not
| counting finding a home for the on-site waste.
| Retric wrote:
| $0.0015/kWh is actually quite expensive.
|
| That's ~7% of the total cost for solar per kWh and
| doesn't even get you to fuel rods.
| arcticbull wrote:
| The fact it's expensive on a relative scale is irrelevant
| because it's cheap on an absolute scale. In fact the
| price of raw uranium input is 100X lower than _that_ in a
| breeder reactor because more of the fuel is consumed,
| $0.000015 /kWh. Being objectively cheap also allows you
| the flexibility to collect it in more expensive ways, for
| instance seawater extraction (which makes nuclear
| renewable) is only double the price, and falling as the
| technique is improved.
|
| > That's ~7% of the total cost for solar per kWh and
| doesn't even get you to fuel rods.
|
| Which again doesn't matter because it's still
| _objectively_ and on an _absolute scale_ very cheap.
| About 0.8% of the cost you pay for electricity.
|
| Solar is great, nobody, certainly not me, is trying to
| tell you not to build solar.
|
| The reality is the future of the grid is going to be a
| mix of generation sources. That's going to include solar.
| It should, in my opinion, also include nuclear due to
| their different generation characteristics.
|
| > The only thing that matters in economics is the
| relative scale. Nuclear being more expensive compared to
| the alternatives is a deal killer even if it's not that
| expensive per kWh in absolute terms.
|
| I disagree because it has different supply
| characteristics. One supplies a constant amount over a
| long period of time and is difficult to adjust. The other
| varies massively over the course of a day and zeroes out
| at night. Solar alone isn't going to meet needs, you need
| either or both of base load plus storage in addition.
|
| It's disingenuous to compare the price of a kWh of solar
| by itself to nuclear when one works _at night_. If you
| want power at night, which I think many of us do, then
| you need to price into the $ /kWh rate the cost of
| storage. You need to compare like for like.
|
| [edit] In 2021, utility scale solar-plus-storage with a
| capacity of 50 MW/200 MWh is estimated to reach
| $0.085-$0.158/kWh. Nuclear is $0.131-$0.204/kWh. [1]
| They're actually quite comparable, and we have line of
| sight to making nuclear cheaper. Again, nobody is
| advocating for a 100% nuclear grid, it's not possible,
| because it's only suited to providing base load. A 100%
| solar grid is impossible because of the night time.
|
| [edit2] Are you not reading what I'm saying? _Nobody is
| advocating for a 100% nuclear grid_. I am advocating for
| a mixed grid of renewables and nuclear where each
| operates according to its optimal utility function.
|
| [1] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/11/05/utility-scale-
| solar-r...
| Retric wrote:
| The only thing that matters in economics is the relative
| scale. Nuclear being more expensive compared to the
| alternatives is a deal killer even if it's not that
| expensive per kWh in absolute terms.
|
| Again if 7% represented a _total_ fuel costs that might
| be helpful benchmark, but Nuclear's actual fuel costs are
| higher than Solar's total costs.
|
| Yes, that's right even if the only costs where _fuel
| rods_ nuclear would already be more expensive than Solar
| per kWh.
|
| Edit: In response to your edit unsubsidized Nuclear is
| currently more expensive than unsubsidized solar +
| batteries which can not only provide 24/7/365 power but
| actually respond to changing grid demand. Base load power
| isn't a benefit it's a major limitation to adoption
| because demand isn't constant.
|
| A true apples to apples comparison shows a 100% Nuclear
| grid would required vast price increase, while a 100%
| solar grid is roughly the same price as what we pay
| today.
|
| Edit2: "Nuclear is $0.131-$0.204/kWh" that's only for
| base load nuclear costs skyrocket if you want to respond
| to changing grid demand on a 100% nuclear grid. Rough
| estimates are close to 50c/kWh for a pure nuclear grid
| which is why nobody did so and even France was forced to
| import and export a large fraction of their generation
| and useage.
| Retric wrote:
| > [edit2] Are you not reading what I'm saying? Nobody is
| advocating for a 100% nuclear grid. I am advocating for a
| mixed grid of renewables and nuclear where each operates
| according to its optimal utility function.
|
| The point was illustrative. We already have nuclear, the
| only point of advocating nuclear is if you want to
| increase it. Unfortunately, a 35% nuclear grid costs more
| per kWh than a 30% nuclear grid, and I don't think most
| nuclear advocates understand why.
|
| Your 50 MW/200 MWh numbers are basically what it costs
| for a 100% solar grid. So it's not even clear if any
| nuclear would be cost effective in most areas. Alaska and
| Russia clearly can benefit from nuclear power, it's not
| obvious if California, Texas etc will.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| There is no place for nukes, just because because they
| cost _so many times_ more than renewables. They cost, per
| kWh, _even more_ run intermittently.
|
| What you need in backup generation is cheap construction.
| Storage cost is falling even faster than solar and wind.
|
| We already have the combined-cycle gas turbines. Their
| opex falls with duty cycle. Duty cycle falls with
| renewable generation buildout and, eventually, storage
| buildout.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| So why don't they just build a ton of un-safe nuclear
| reactors where they used to test nukes and use long-
| distance high-voltage lines to transfer the power?
|
| If you can test Tsar Bomba somewhere - why can't you build
| a nuclear reactor there that might melt down?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| This is currently a big problem with renewable energy in
| the UK and other places. One reason you see negative
| wholesale costs for electricity in some places is you
| have a lot of generating capacity but no power lines to
| get it to demand.
|
| It turns out the lead time to build long power lines is
| long and it is a politically difficult proposition
| because you have to get permits for a whole line from
| Point A to Point B.
|
| One of the ways where the sticker price of renewables is
| higher than what is quoted is the cost of transporting it
| and one advantage of nuclear is it could be sited closer
| to demand in some cases.
| darraghenright wrote:
| I believe a compounding factor in this problem was a 2015
| decision to ban onshore wind farms in England.
|
| Leading to the somewhat perverse situation where it's now
| necessary to build new or bigger lines from Scotland all
| the way down to the south of England where most of that
| generated energy is needed.
| loufe wrote:
| Nuclear weapons use and nuclear meltdown don't have
| comparable radiation fallout. It's not even remotely
| similar. Nuclear bombs release radiation in a bang
| (usually disappearing in a couple days, IIRC), but
| nuclear melt downs release materials that continue to be
| radioactive (for an eternity).
|
| Think about Chernobyl vs Hiroshima. Chernobyl is
| uninhabitable and will remain so for a very long time.
| Hiroshima was rebuilt in the exact same spot that was
| destroyed and is a healthy, thriving city, by all
| accounts.
|
| Even in some far out place, nuclear fallout in some far
| out place will eventually make its way into the air and
| water of the world, count on it.
| c1ccccc1 wrote:
| Could you expand on why the disappearance time is so much
| faster for a bomb than for a power plant? If 1kg of
| uranium undergoes fission, I would expect there to be a
| little less then 1kg of fission products resulting from
| it. No matter if it were a bomb or a power plant, the
| amount and lifetime of the fission products would be the
| same. There would have to be something else going on,
| like the bomb only splitting a tiny fraction of its
| uranium, or maybe something about the environment of the
| explosion destroying fission products?
| Retric wrote:
| At a very high level bombs are trying to convert as much
| of their fuel into energy as possible. The ideal bomb
| consumes most of the fuel and produces a lot of very
| nasty extremely short lived nuclear waste thus making a
| big detonation over a small fraction of a second. Waste
| products should be short lived isotopes to make them even
| more deadly weapons.
|
| Meltdowns aren't controlled reactions the waste includes
| perfectly useful fuel, short and long lived waste
| products, plus a mix of things such as control rods and
| the walls of the reactor etc.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corium_(nuclear_reactor)
|
| There's a few other effects such as mushroom clouds
| moving material away from the blast location, and
| reactors containing more nuclear fuel.
| c1ccccc1 wrote:
| Do we actually have that much control over what the
| fission products are? My impression was that you hit
| U-235 with a neutron, and you get the same kinds of
| fission products out whether it's a bomb or a reactor.
| It's just determined by physics what kinds of isotopes
| are likely to come out, and my impression was that we
| don't know how to influence it so that only the shorter-
| lived kinds are created. Bombs may be designed to consume
| a very high fraction of the fuel, but that would tend to
| make them worse, since the fission products are more
| radioactive than the starting Uranium, and there will be
| more of them. The mushroom cloud thing does make sense as
| an explanation for why Hiroshima is still inhabited,
| though. And it's clear that Corium wouldn't be able form
| in the middle of a nuclear bomb explosion.
| Retric wrote:
| We don't have direct control over the specific products,
| but as I understand it the extreme amounts of neurons in
| a nuclear bomb destabilize large atoms.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Transmuta
| tio...
|
| I don't understand all the details but apparently this is
| why some types of H-Bombs can be relatively "clean."
| arcticbull wrote:
| They can't even get people to put nuclear waste in Yucca
| Mountain which just so happens to be adjacent to the
| Nevada Test Site. That's one of the most contaminated
| locations in the entire United States. The US government
| detonated 928 nuclear weapons there between 1951 and
| present.
| dylan604 wrote:
| There's a difference of dropping a bomb in the desert vs
| hauling nuclear waste across federal highways through
| people's "land" to get to Yucca Mountain. It's not
| exactly apples to apples of a comparison you're making
| here.
|
| While it is definitely full of NIMBYism, there is a bit
| more complexity to the Yucca Mountain decision.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I don't know to what extent the public is aware of it but
| another problem with Yucca Mountain is that used LWR fuel
| is by no means waste and it doesn't make sense at all to
| dispose of it in its current form.
|
| At best the LWR gets 2% of the energy out of natural
| uranium. A fuel cycle that removes the small fraction of
| fission products and feeds plutonium and uranium can
| extract vast amounts of energy from today's "nuclear
| waste". It is the plutonium that is radioactive for tens
| of thousands of years, if you use it as fuel the
| remaining fission products decay quickly and are less
| radioactive than the original ore in less than 1000
| years.
|
| So Yucca Mountain makes no sense from the viewpoint of
| the nuclear industry (it isn't going to fight for it) so
| if some people don't like it there is no point in
| pursuing it.
| Retric wrote:
| Yucca Mountain is irrelevant to the nuclear industry the
| US government has already agreed to deal with the fuel
| it's quite literally not a problem for the industry.
|
| _The Act established a Nuclear Waste Fund composed of
| fees levied against electric utilities to pay for the
| costs of constructing and operating a permanent
| repository, and set the fee at one mill per kilowatt-hour
| of nuclear electricity generated. Utilities were charged
| a one-time fee for storage of spent fuel created before
| enactment of the law._ ... _The Nuclear Waste Fund
| previously received $750 million in fee revenues each
| year and had an unspent balance of $44.5 billion as of
| the end of FY2017._ ... _In late 2013, a federal court
| ruled that the Department of Energy must stop collecting
| fees for nuclear waste disposal until provisions are made
| to collect nuclear waste.[12]_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Policy_Act
|
| Anyway, LWR can extract more than 2% of the energy in the
| fuel it mostly comes down to how enriched the uranium you
| feed them is because the ratio of U235:U238 in reactor
| grade fuel is different than the ratio LWR are burning.
| They can extract far more energy from weapons grade
| uranium, but using it would be a bad idea.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Agreed - in one case you're irradiating the land and air.
| In the other case you're safely trucking low-risk spent
| fuel in safe, secure enclosures and likely retaining the
| ability to reprocess and re-use that fuel in the future.
| Retric wrote:
| Even if you don't care about public safety, worker safety
| is going to be expensive. You can't pay someone enough to
| handle fresh from the core fuel rods by hands because it
| will quickly kill them.
|
| Similarly, you need a design that's likely to last long
| enough to pay back construction costs.
|
| Finally there's logistic issues in locating power plants
| in the middle of nowhere. You need massive quantities of
| water and large massive workforce plus dedicated power
| transmission to someone in need of power etc.
| nickpinkston wrote:
| I guess this would be the logical place for them to start, but
| hopefully it's just a start.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Reminds me of what we humorously learn from The System
| Bible[0]: "When a fail-safe system fails, it fails by failing
| to fail safely."
|
| The book mentions 3-miles island, where a problem in a
| secondary system (an added safety system) spread and caused the
| system as a whole to fail. This is a tongue-in-cheek way of
| illustrating a serious issue when designing systems, though I
| wonder if the interpretation of what happened at 3-miles island
| is a bit of a stretch? (And I may misremember the book.)
|
| "The accident to unit 2 happened at 4 am on 28 March 1979 when
| the reactor was operating at 97% power. It involved a
| relatively minor malfunction in the secondary cooling circuit
| which caused the temperature in the primary coolant to
| rise..."[1]
|
| [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Systems-Bible-Beginners-Guide-
| Large/d... [1]: https://world-nuclear.org/information-
| library/safety-and-sec...
| retzkek wrote:
| > a problem in a secondary system (an added safety system)
|
| "Secondary" in nuclear parlance for a PWR refers to the loop
| of water that cycles through the steam generators and
| turbines, while the "primary" loop cycles through the reactor
| and steam generators.
|
| Not to detract from your point, which is a good one, and the
| pressurizer relief valve that stuck open and through which
| the cooling water escaped was indeed an added safety system.
| p1mrx wrote:
| NuScale's main safety feature is an enormous pool of water, so
| the reactors can cool down without human intervention. That's
| more physics than engineering.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Not really. You have to engineer that water containment,
| delivery, and steam venting. Sure, it's making use of physics
| for some of those aspects, but there are still others that
| rely on how it was designed and manufactured.
| p1mrx wrote:
| I don't disagree that there are more-elegant proposed
| reactors with more-inherent safety, but NuScale has an
| incremental/conservative design with 20 years of effort
| behind it. We need to fight climate change immediately, and
| prioritize "good enough and politically feasible" over
| "technically optimal" solutions.
| credit_guy wrote:
| Plenty of such stuff is going on. [1] is the list of reactors
| designs the Department of Energy is working on.
|
| [2] is the legwork the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is doing
| to prepare for the approval process on non light water reactor
| designs.
|
| As for the slow wave reactors, it looks like that idea was put
| on a back burner. Fast reactors are much more exciting anyway.
|
| [1]
| https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2020/05/f74/Advan...
|
| [2] https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/advanced.html
| pfdietz wrote:
| NuScale recently announced large cost increases at the project
| with UAMPS. The cost per unit of capacity is now on par with the
| new reactors at Vogtle (~$20/W). This is outside the range at
| which the project could be competitive.
|
| https://ieefa.org/resources/eye-popping-new-cost-estimates-r...
| prottog wrote:
| To put in other units: a rise from previous targets of $58/MWh
| to $89/MWh, more than 50%, not including a $30/MWh subsidy (so
| the true cost is actually $119/MWh).
|
| To be fair, it says the cost increases are mainly due to the
| rise in construction material prices as well as financing
| costs; nothing inherent to nuclear power or the novel
| technology itself.
| dv_dt wrote:
| Nothing inherent except that nuclear portions of the plan
| needs needs a higher level of construction to build the (non-
| nuclear) support infrastructure to operate
| Krasnol wrote:
| There is one thing nuclear never runs out of: excuses why it
| gets more expensive and takes longer.
| timerol wrote:
| Producer price index on steel pipe and structural steel are
| bonkers: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCU3312103312100
| and https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCU33231233231211
| cinntaile wrote:
| > To be fair, it says the cost increases are mainly due to
| the rise in construction material prices as well as financing
| costs; nothing inherent to nuclear power or the novel
| technology itself.
|
| The problem is mostly cost. Now that we're entering a higher
| interest environment, the situation is unlikely to improve.
| coder543 wrote:
| To provide more context, wind and solar were both in the low
| $30's/MWh of LCOE (levelized cost of energy) 3 years ago[0],
| with that number predicted to continue falling rapidly.
|
| Combined cycle (natural gas) is a bit higher[1] than solar
| and wind, with that number expected to rise over time, and
| I'm fairly sure the current numbers don't really reflect the
| substantial cost of the carbon emissions, which we will all
| have to pay for sooner or later. Either way, the number
| utilities see is currently much lower than SMRs.
|
| I'm pretty sure every prediction I've ever seen for how
| quickly the cost of wind and solar will fall has
| underestimated the speed in retrospect.
|
| That's the kind of thing these reactors have to compete with.
|
| Grids have also repeatedly been shown to handle more
| renewables than every previous prediction would make, and we
| haven't hit the limit. At this point, fossil fuel sources
| more frequently a source of blackouts than than renewables
| from everything I've seen, despite certain people blaming
| renewables at every turn.
|
| What we _need_ is more energy storage, whether that 's in the
| form of traditional batteries or more novel forms of energy
| storage.
|
| I think nuclear is a fine source of energy if you have it,
| but evidence over the last several decades shows that it is
| virtually impossible to build for myriad reasons. The Vogtle
| nuclear reactors have been one giant boondoggle. New nuclear
| is not cost competitive, unfortunately.
|
| This was also an interesting article yesterday:
| https://cleantechnica.com/2023/01/19/michael-bloomberg-
| backs...
|
| [0]: https://www.eenews.net/articles/doe-heres-where-
| renewable-co...
|
| [1]: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46856
| arcticbull wrote:
| > What we need is more energy storage, whether that's in
| the form of traditional batteries or more novel forms of
| energy storage.
|
| Batteries are a nightmare at grid scale from an
| environmental perspective.
|
| Other forms of storage are needed (pumped hydro for
| example), or nuclear plus renewable on top of a smart-grid
| capable of adjusting demand instead.
|
| It's fundamentally far more difficult and costly to adjust
| supply (or to buffer with storage) than it is to reduce
| demand during periods of low renewable generation. As more
| EVs and their chargers come online, instantaneous load
| reductions become cheap and easy - and possible.
| jrockway wrote:
| I don't know anything about the electric grid, but I'm
| surprised we don't have more pumped hydro. Seems like a
| great way to suck up energy from solar during the day and
| release it when it's needed. Guess capital costs are high
| compared to "oh we'll just borrow some power from your
| electric car if we need it"?
| coder543 wrote:
| Many of the geographically-convenient spots to do pumped
| hydro in are already being used, which makes this hard to
| scale beyond what we currently have.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| There is no hint of a shortage of places good for pumped
| hydro.
|
| What is in short supply is existing hydro-power dams that
| have _not yet_ been retrofitted with pumps.
|
| Retrofitting an existing hydro plant is cheaper than
| building a hilltop reservoir, penstock, turbine, and
| pump. The latter might cost more than other alternatives.
| Anywhere that is true, expect to see one of the others
| used.
| coder543 wrote:
| It's not a question of whether you _can_ , it's a
| question of whether pumped hydro is cheaper than lithium
| ion batteries, and that price is heavily influenced by
| the available geography and water supply. Wherever pumped
| hydro is cheaper, then by all means, we should build a
| bunch of it.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| It is far from clear which will be the cheapest storage
| medium, in each place. Count on people to install
| whatever is cheapest where they are at the time they
| build. Batteries are expensive right now, but costs are
| still falling. It is _conceivable_ that a substantial
| fraction of installed storage will actually end up
| batteries.
|
| My favorite medium, at the moment, is heavy weights hung
| from a disused supertanker moored over a sea trench. Each
| weight would have its own cable reel, with clutch and
| brake, sharing a shaft with the rest, the shaft driven by
| a winch and motor/generator kept out of the weather. A
| net full of ironstone riprap would serve for the weight.
| The winch would be whatever is the biggest available off
| the shelf, with the weights chosen to match the winch.
| Maybe 1000 tons each?
|
| A supertanker is wide enough for multiple shafts, and you
| can rack together multiple supertankers. A smallish one
| can hold up 100,000 tons.
|
| Taiwan has an excellent trench right off the SE shore,
| but there are a lot of near-shore trenches, off SE India,
| SW Mexico, E Korea, SE Japan, and even Monterey and
| Monaco. Probably a deep trench is not even needed for
| viability; 1000 meters is probably plenty.
|
| A supertanker seems to run $50-100M new, probably a small
| fraction as scrap. There will be a _lot_ of supertankers
| to scrap; it is already starting.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| > Batteries are a nightmare at grid scale from an
| environmental perspective.
|
| More tired lies.
|
| Diurnal storage provided via LFP requires around a kg of
| lithium to serve 1kW.
|
| 1kg of natural Uranium can provide around 1kW
|
| The battery lasts 12-20 years. The Uranium lasts 3-6.
|
| Mining a kg of lithium has less environmental impact than
| mining a kg of Uranium.
|
| Meanwhile, in reality, Sodium Ion and Iron batteries are
| fully abundant and far closer to mass commercialisation
| than an SMR or even new traditional nuclear.
| jfengel wrote:
| Plain old combined cycle can handle a lot of the demand
| peaks. We already have that in place.
|
| If they operate 1% or even 5% of the time, we've still
| cut vast amounts of carbon. There would be much lower
| hanging fruit than trying to replace that last fraction
| with nuclear. We have a solution already in place.
|
| That doesn't mean all research on modular reactors should
| stop. It would have a niche if it worked. It's just not
| the thing holding back decarbonization, and not an excuse
| to hold back as much renewables as possible as fast as
| possible.
| pfdietz wrote:
| And if they have to operate 1% of the time, they can do
| that with hydrogen, and the fuel cost will be
| inconsequential.
| coder543 wrote:
| > Batteries are a nightmare at grid scale from an
| environmental perspective.
|
| Which part[0], exactly? I think most people dramatically
| overestimate the level of "nightmare", and battery
| contents are _highly_ recyclable. We don 't have a ton of
| battery recycling right now because there aren't enough
| failing batteries yet to support the necessary
| facilities, but several companies are starting to ramp
| up.
|
| Also worth considering that even after a battery is "too
| old" to use in an EV, it is perfectly fine to use in
| stationary storage applications for quite awhile longer
| ("reuse") even before it is time to recycle and rebuild
| those components into a new battery.
|
| > It's fundamentally far more difficult and costly to
| adjust supply (or to buffer with storage) than it is to
| reduce demand during periods of low renewable generation.
| As more EVs and their chargers come online, instantaneous
| load reductions become cheap and easy - and possible.
|
| I completely agree with this, and most people either
| can't or won't see this point in discussions about
| renewables. The more predictable load that comes online,
| the easier it is to justify more production. Even if that
| production is using so-called "intermittent" renewables,
| when the need arises, asking people to voluntarily avoid
| charging for a day would be equivalent to adding a huge
| amount of production suddenly, just by removing load.
| (And EVs have enough range for a week of normal commuting
| for most people, easily. The few people who _need_ to
| charge desperately would be able to charge without
| problems.) If you pay people for volunteering to
| participate in Demand Response, you will get plenty of
| volunteers.
|
| "Demand response" is a critical part of the grid of the
| future.
|
| [0]: https://cen.acs.org/content/dam/cen/97/28/WEB/09728-
| cover-sc...
| arcticbull wrote:
| > Which part[0], exactly? I think most people
| dramatically overestimate the level of "nightmare", and
| battery contents are highly recyclable. We don't have a
| ton of battery recycling right now because there aren't
| enough failing batteries yet to support the necessary
| facilities, but several companies are starting to ramp
| up.
|
| Lithium mining is horrible for the environment. [1, 2]
|
| We will keep doing it for as long as it remains cheaper
| to extract than to recycle, which is why we don't
| recycle. It's the reason we don't recycle that vast
| majority of what you put into the recycle bin.
|
| [1] https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/02/01/south-
| america-s-li...
|
| [2] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lithium-batteries-
| environmen...
| coder543 wrote:
| All mining is bad for the environment to some degree or
| another. Lithium mining allows us to stop doing other
| harmful forms of mining, and it is infinitely recyclable;
| it isn't being blasted away into the atmosphere like
| gasoline. Eventually, we should have enough in the
| recycling pipeline that mining it becomes relatively
| uncommon.
|
| If people are willing to pay a price premium for it, then
| it is apparently possible to mine lithium from the
| seawater directly:
| https://cen.acs.org/materials/inorganic-chemistry/Can-
| seawat...
|
| The researchers claim it has the potential to be very
| cost effective, but that remains to be seen. Their
| process sounds very environmentally neutral, which is
| always something to strive for.
|
| For it to be an "environmental nightmare", it has to be
| worse than what we're already doing. So, no, a couple of
| articles complaining about lithium mining is not
| equivalent to evidence that this is _worse_ for the
| environment than mining coal and oil, or other things you
| might want to mine instead of lithium.
|
| Nickel and cobalt are more of a problem than lithium
| according to my understanding, but we have some nickel-
| free and cobalt-free battery chemistries that are
| becoming more common, like LFP batteries.
|
| > We will keep doing it for as long as it remains cheaper
| to extract than to recycle, which is why we don't
| recycle. It's the reason we don't recycle that vast
| majority of what you put into the recycle bin.
|
| This is a misunderstanding of the economics, then. The
| batteries involved are huge, so it is very hard to "lose"
| these lithium-rich containers. These are not small coke
| cans which could easily end up in a landfill. But even
| then, more than 50% of the aluminum in coke cans is made
| from recycled aluminum. Recycling giant lithium ion
| batteries should be very profitable for everyone involved
| compared to mining new lithium.
|
| Plastic recycling is unfortunately a bad joke, of course.
| arcticbull wrote:
| > All mining is bad for the environment to some degree or
| another. Lithium mining allows us to stop doing other
| harmful forms of mining, and it is infinitely recyclable;
| it isn't being blasted away into the atmosphere like
| gasoline. Eventually, we should have enough in the
| recycling pipeline that mining it becomes relatively
| uncommon.
|
| I agree, but the choice isn't mine lithium or burn
| gasoline. There are other choices. Nuclear, renewables,
| and a grid that can adjust demand instead of needing to
| adjust supply. Transit. We don't need electric cars if we
| have trains, and trains have pantographs or third rails
| so don't require batteries.
|
| If we're willing to adjust our way of life, then we can
| have a much smaller impact.
|
| Lithium from seawater is definitely interesting. But yes
| to your point other metals are equally or more
| problematic, for instance rare earths, copper, nickel,
| etc.
| coder543 wrote:
| This is a very optimistic take and I like that. It's just
| my experience that it's very hard to convince people to
| make those kinds of changes, but that doesn't mean we
| shouldn't try to do those things.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Yeah, very true. I'm down for whatever helps improve
| things, tbh.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Comparing renewables _without storage_ with a non-
| intermittent source is comparing apples to oranges. Until
| said storage system is developed, renewables have to be
| paired with a dispatchable source - usually fossil fuels.
| Existing batteries are nowhere near the scale required to
| capture and re-release intermittent energy production.
|
| Nuclear power is cheaper when built at scale [1]. When
| dozens of plants were being built of the same few designs,
| costs were less than a quarter of what they are now. Most
| nuclear plant construction is first-of-a-kind in the
| country it's being built. These have always cost more.
|
| 1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S03014
| 2151...
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Your link literally shows reactor costs going up in price
| over 20% per year for reactors finished before TMI, many
| of which were NOAK. Prices only went down before reactors
| had been operated commercially, and that's only because
| the fixes to stop them catching fire or being offline the
| vast majority of time hadn't been invented (and
| retrofitting them to existing reactors cost just as much
| as adding them to new ones).
| coder543 wrote:
| > Most nuclear plant construction is first-of-a-kind in
| the country it's being built. These have always cost
| more.
|
| I don't see how this is relevant. The Vogtle reactors are
| here in the US. The US has plenty of experience building
| nuclear reactors, no? I would love it if nuclear were
| cost effective to build, but I would like to see _any_
| recent examples of that, _anywhere_ in the world. Even
| NuScale is predicting that they won 't be cost
| competitive with Combined Cycle gas plants.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Vogtle 3 and 4 are the first AP1000 reactors built in the
| US. That means most of the parts and components used in
| this plant are the first attempt at building and
| integrating such components. It's a lot cheaper to retain
| all this knowledge and churn out a run of, say, 2 dozen
| steam generators [1] instead of building them as a one-
| off every time. There's many such components where
| there's no market outside of nuclear power plants, and so
| there's no economy of scale to be had if we're only
| building 1 or 2 nuclear plants at a time.
|
| > I would love it if nuclear were cost effective to
| build, but I would like to see any recent examples of
| that, anywhere in the world
|
| South Korea has been consistently building nuclear power
| comparatively cheaply: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucl
| ear_power_in_South_Korea#:....
|
| France did so as well during the Messmer plan: https://en
| .wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Messme...
|
| Of course it's probably not as cost competitive with
| fossil fuels. The whole point is to get _off_ of fossil
| fuels. This is where wind and solar really struggle: they
| 're great at reducing fossil fuel use by ~40% by shutting
| down gas plants when wind and sun are available. But it's
| ultimately still fossil fuels forming the backbone of the
| grid. Nuclear provides a path towards actually removing
| fossil fuel generation entirely, instead of just
| opportunistically supplementing it with intermittent
| renewables.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_generator_(nuclear
| _power....
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Only one model of US reactor has ever gone down in price
| after repeated builds (and then not by much), South
| Korea's 'cheap' reactors are suddenly $10/W net when they
| built one somewhere else and couldn't get creative with
| the accounting. And the Messmer plan reactors turned out
| just great (in addition to going up in price with each
| reactor and having many hidden costs that make them not
| comparable to a privately funded project).
|
| > This is where wind and solar really struggle: they're
| great at reducing fossil fuel use by ~40% by shutting
| down gas plants when wind and sun are available
|
| I love how this number that renewables can't possibly go
| beyond keeps going up every month but is said with the
| same level of ridiculous overconfidence every time
| (you've got to update it to 60% now for NE Brazil, South
| Australia and a few other generation grids, and much of
| Europe has also crossed your 40% threshold too). Any
| realistic analysis puts the limit in the mid 70% range
| with no storage or overprovision and well above the
| threshold where biogas and existing hydro can cover the
| rest once you add diurnal storage and 3 day dispatchable
| loads like EV charging and electrolysis.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > You've got to update it to 60% now for NE Brazil, South
| Australia and a few other generation grids
|
| Most of that is hydroelectricity, not wind and solar. Why
| stop at 60%? Norway produces 100% (or very close to it)
| of its electricity from hydro.
|
| Of course, the answer is that _geographically dependent_
| energy sources aren 't very useful outside places that
| have the right geography. Most places with hydroelectric
| potential are already making use of it. The question is,
| how do we decarbonize the rest of the grid?
| moloch-hai wrote:
| You already know the answer to that, as it has been
| explained to you dozens of times.
|
| Once again: renewables+storage, backed by combined-cycle
| turbines. They will powered by NG until synthetic fuel
| becomes plentiful.
|
| Right now, most storage is at hydroelectric plants built
| in past decades, with small amounts of battery. In the
| future, it will _still_ be small amounts of battery,
| along with plenty of other storage, much of it
| underground hydrogen and hilltop hydro.
|
| There is _no hint_ of any shortage of hills, most places.
| Flat places will use other methods.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Yes it's been explained repeatedly - but almost always in
| vague terms referring to "storage" but carefully avoiding
| any nuanced discussion of what form of storage. When they
| do mention storage, they mention infeasible forms of
| storage. I'm happy to explain the shortcomings of the
| ones you listed:
|
| "Small amounts of battery" are still amounts that would
| take centuries to provision. Again, I don't think people
| realize that 1 day's worth of storage is well over a
| hundred times annual battery production.
|
| Hydroelectric storage requires more than just a hill. It
| requires a reservoir on top of the hill, another
| reservoir on the base of the hill, and access to a lake
| or river to fill these reservoirs. This is a much more
| specific set of geographic features than just "a hill".
|
| And lastly, nobody has successfully operated a hydrogen
| electrolysis storage facility. This is totally unproven
| technology.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| As has been explained to you numerous times, reservoirs
| are _normally_ constructed, not found, and no lake or
| river is needed. So, you really do just need a hill with
| unused top. (Penstocks and turbines are also
| constructed.)
|
| There will be no need for "one day's" worth of batteries,
| but in any case battery production is ramping up fast,
| and that will continue as long as demand increases.
|
| Numerous storage technologies will be used. It is not
| clear yet which will be cheapest. Hydrogen _might not_ be
| among them.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| You need a lake to fill the artificial reservoir. Pumping
| water over long distances is prohibitively expensive. You
| also need a lower reservoir, otherwise how do you refill
| the upper reservoir once it's been drained? Its more than
| just a hill.
|
| Numerous storage technologies are _proposed_. And you 're
| just assuming that one of the proposed solutions will
| work.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| It has been explained repeatedly in very specific terms.
|
| 3 hours of cyclable storage (primarily in the form of
| pumped hydro because the exaggerations about geographic
| limits are another lie, but also in batteries) and a few
| tens to a few hundred of hours per year of high power
| dispatchable generation (again, existing hydro and biogas
| covers the overwhelming majority of this). With a list of
| technologies and insignificant behavior changes that
| assist which make it even easier thas is too long to
| state.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| I was specifically citing the wind and solar share
| delivered to loads on those grids over the last year and
| you know this, this attempt to derail is hilariously
| transparent and pathetic. Additionally South Australia
| has almost zero storage or hydro and is at 69% for the
| year. Their link to the rest of NEM suffered storm damage
| throughout the year so there has been very little
| interconnect, but unlike last time when they relied on
| imported coal, gas and hydro this has not resulted in
| anything remotely like a shortage. This also puts the
| lies about transmission being more precarious with
| renewables to bed.
|
| And why stop at 60 indeed. Feed a little surplus into
| dispatchable loads like EV charging, district heat
| storage and electrolysis, and 80-90% is pretty trivial.
|
| It's very easy to see this as you can just scale up the
| current mix in many grids until curtailment hits 30% or
| so (plus whatever portion can be peak shaved by plugging
| your car in at work, plus the extra during low generation
| for new generation including less-correlated offshore
| wind or vertical solar) and see how much of an obvious
| lie the 40% claim is, and how incapable of critical
| thinking someone would have to be to believe they could
| pass the lie off as anything related to reality.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| China's reactors are cheap in China Bux. But we just got
| to see how 'cheap' South Korea's $2.50/W reactors are
| when they exported one and let slip the 'service'
| contract that put the final price at $10/W (net)
| pfdietz wrote:
| ... in a place where solar is coming in at less than
| $0.014/kWh.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| The most reliable output of the nuke industry is shown,
| _again_ , to be dishonesty. Never trust a figure
| delivered by the nuke industry, or by someone who
| believes the nuke industry.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Shown by what?
| moloch-hai wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34459724
| robomartin wrote:
| > Comparing renewables without storage with a non-
| intermittent source is comparing apples to oranges.
|
| Absolutely correct. There are a lot of magical hand-wavy
| arguments and false stats used when comparing solar to
| nuclear.
|
| My 13kW array went down to 600 W (yes, six hundred Watts)
| peak, not constant, during the last few weeks of rains in
| Los Angeles. I cannot possibly imagine an entire city
| relying on this for energy.
|
| At some point we have to get real. Solar isn't the
| solution. Nuclear is. Solar can help, yet it is very far
| from being a reliable solution.
|
| I'll post power output graphs when I get a moment.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| I like how you're unable to imagine it being windy when
| it rains or transmitting between places that don't rain
| at the same time, but imagining transmission from two
| states over when there's a correlated outage in the local
| nuclear generation (which happens just as often) is fine.
|
| If we did live in this fiction where long term storage is
| impossible rather than simply not being the lowest
| hanging fruit I'd also far rather spend 5% of the next
| century building out renewables and then 5% of the time
| running fossil fuels when the alternative is:
|
| Spend 30% of the next century building reactors whilst
| running fossil fuels, then 30% of the next century
| realising the uranium ran out immediately and we have to
| spend another 30 years building breeders and then finally
| realising that nuclear needs storage and load shifting
| too because correlated outages aren't that rare and
| there's not much demand for energy at 3am.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > which happens just as often
|
| What happens just as often? Two nuclear power plants
| going offline vs it being rainy and not also windy?
| pfdietz wrote:
| Nuclear stans assure us the road to success involves
| standardized reactor designs. Now imagine what happens
| when a terrible design flaw is discovered in that reactor
| type and all must be shut down to fix it.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| In the Nordics, in December we had the 3 largest reactors
| out of 11 out of commission combined with a cold spell.
| That was a nicely expensive week.
| robomartin wrote:
| Here are the graphs, as promised.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/bo0s7b0.png
|
| Yes, these charts are horrific.
|
| I am showing daily energy generation for the last three
| months and the same period 12 months ago for comparison.
|
| I have also added day charts for January 14th through the
| 19th of this year (the period indicated by the red arrow)
| for readers to get a sense of what solar reality looks
| like. I've done this because it is too easy to say "On
| January 17th we generated 42.6 kWh" and fail to
| understand that between 12:20 and 13:15 the system
| dropped from 6.672 kW to 1.632 kW (power, not energy).
|
| Intelligent readers will be able to take these charts,
| play with some very basic numbers and understand the
| significant issues facing solar.
|
| If I wanted to have a system that delivered a reliable,
| usable 40 kWh of energy per day it would likely grow from
| the 13 kWh array I have today to somewhere between 50 kWh
| and 100kWh (if not more). And, on top of that, I would
| probably need somewhere in the order of 400 kWh of
| batteries for storage. In other words, an unrealizable
| monster.
|
| I know people are going to laugh at these numbers. These
| are the folks who never bother to fire-up a spreadsheet,
| run the numbers and reason. Take a look at the daily
| chart for January and tell me how much energy you would
| need to store to be able to have a real 40 kWh per day
| supply and how large the array would have to be. Then
| tell me how you are going to charge that pack in
| December, because it has to be fully charged so you can
| use it in January. That's the reality you need to
| understand. And the only way you will is to do the math.
|
| And, BTW, this is living in Southern California. Almost
| anywhere north of this latitude --places with far more
| weather-- the situation is even worse.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| So your system in perfect weather has a performance ratio
| of around 80% of what an average system optimized for
| total power would produce on average over the month, it
| has terrible low light performance (almost as if it's
| 2010 tech or you picked a bad inverter for your use case
| or it's badly installed), you're pretending transmission
| and wind don't exist and that any suggestion of a mix
| involving solar be exclusively off grid, and that
| dispatchable backup like biomethane and hydro for a few
| hundred hours a year is both impossible and is never
| going to be involved in any nuclear based system?
|
| You're also trying to pretend weather is a 1:1
| correlation with latitude and that wind and solar aren't
| anti-correlated. You know a vertical south facing
| bifacial panel a bit north of Calgary will produce just
| as much power in december as a flat one in singapore
| right?
|
| California already has about 7% hydro and biomass
| capacity. Include 7% dispatchable generation, then adjust
| your stats to match or look up the output of a real
| modern fixed tilt utility (or well designed off grid)
| system with a decent MPPT, adequate low light performance
| and bypass diodes, and you'll be able to see you've
| actually provided fairly strong evidence that 12hr
| storage, 7% dispatch and 100% overprovision (which you
| can use with your 3 day dispatchable load called an EV to
| avoid curtailment if you drive an average amount) on a
| 93% solar system is more than sufficient. Include
| transmission to the other side of a range to get less
| correlated weather and the storage and overprovision drop
| significantly.
|
| Add onshore wind and the requirement for dispatch,
| overprovision and storage plummets.
|
| Add offshore wind and HVDC and 3 hours with 30%
| curtailment into an electrolyser for fertilizer is
| overkill.
| robomartin wrote:
| > So your system in perfect weather has a performance
| ratio of around 80% of what an average system optimized
| for total power would produce on average over the month
|
| Sorry buddy, the level of ignorance you continue to
| exhibit about real-life solar is astounding. The fact
| that you say tuff like this continues to show you are
| what I call a "google search expert". Go build something.
| Learn. Maybe then you'll understand. You also have to
| learn to listen to people who know more than you think
| you know.
|
| Perfect solar only exists in fantasy land. In the real
| world things are different. Nobody has a system on their
| roof that Mets your fantasy specifications. Nobody.
|
| You mentioned Singapore. One of our customers has a 300
| kW solar array there. Care to guess how much power they
| actually generate. Hint: Rain. Lots of rain.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| > Sorry buddy, the level of ignorance you continue to
| exhibit about real-life solar is astounding. The fact
| that you say tuff like this continues to show you are
| what I call a "google search expert". Go build something.
| Learn. Maybe then you'll understand.
|
| Good thing the industry has specific metrics and models
| for all of these things and there is plenty of data
| published for integration studies. GTI on a fictional
| perfect bifacial system on a good day at that latitude in
| January would be 70-80kWh not 50. A real utility system
| in easy transmission range of LA including an 85-90%
| performance ratio is about 50kWh/day in January. You can
| see clearly from the posted graphs that the system has
| poor low light performance, less than ideal tilt and
| that's where the missing energy is. A utility site or
| well sited standalone off grid system (or one wherebthe
| building was designed with solar in mind) would not have
| this.
|
| 3.8kWh/day/kWp in January in california isn't some
| magical ideal. It's completely normal.
|
| > You mentioned Singapore. One of our customers has a 300
| kW solar array there. Care to guess how much power they
| actually generate. Hint: Rain. Lots of rain.
|
| You completely missed the point here and made it for me.
| Weather is not latitude. The idea that solar is useless
| anywhere outside the tropics or that a summer optimised
| system's winter performance is representative of a
| winter-optimized system is a myth made up by insane
| conservatives. Local weather has a larger effect than 50
| degrees of latitude during winter. Tilt is also very
| important -- you do not want to install an off grid
| system (or a system in a saturated market) at the angle
| which maximises annual output, you install it at the
| angle which maximises winter output.
|
| Once Europe saturates summer PV, adding more doesn't
| become useless, you just slap some on a south facing wall
| or use it as a fence in a paddock.
|
| Read. Pay some minimal amount of attention to what you're
| responding to and to new developments. You also have to
| learn to listen to people who know more than you think
| you know.
| robomartin wrote:
| Your google search isn't a substitute for reality. Lots
| of words. No link whatsoever to practical, realizable
| reality.
|
| We've had prolonged back-and-forth on this subject a few
| times. Not interested.
|
| I am more than thrilled to talk to anyone who is actually
| interested in exploring and learning. Just like me. It is
| obvious that you have no experience whatsoever with
| solar. If you did you would not continue to post these
| platitudes. They simply do not make sense to anyone who
| actually owns and operates a non-trivial solar array.
| Zero.
|
| I understand where you are coming from. You don't know
| much about this yet think you do because google allows
| you to post great sounding statement.
|
| As the great race car mechanic Smokey Yunick was fond of
| saying: When all the smoke and bullshit clears out, you
| have to drive the car and win the race. Smoke and
| bullshit = Fantasy. Go build a nice solar array. Run if
| for a few years. Then come back and read some of the
| stuff you are posting. I know exactly what your reaction
| will be at that time.
|
| Anyhow, as I have said in the past. Good luck buddy. Live
| long and prosper.
| pfdietz wrote:
| You can back up solar with hydrogen at $1/W of generating
| capacity for those rare prolonged outages. Because they
| are rare, the fuel cost is inconsiderable. At the same
| time, the backup generators are 1/10th (or, if you use
| simple cycle instead of combined cycle, 1/20th) the cost
| of building a new nuclear power plant, per unit of
| output.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _back up solar with hydrogen_
|
| There are myriads of better energy-storage solutions than
| hydrogen, particularly at the periphery.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Quite possibly, but to 100% and for use cases with few
| charge/discharge cycles? In any case, hydrogen provides
| an existence proof that renewables can get to 100%, and
| probably more cheaply than nuclear.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > You can back up solar with hydrogen
|
| No, you can't, because nobody is offering hydrogen
| electricity storage. If you're okay with energy plans
| involving heretofore unused technology, then I've got a
| fusion plant to sell you.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Ah yes, your old "if no one is offering it, it cannot
| ever exist" argument.
|
| Yes, I am perfectly comfortable imagining the future will
| be using technologies that we are not currently using.
| Hydrogen is not much of a stretch, as it involves
| integrating technologies that already exist.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Fusion doesn't need non-existent technologies either.
| It's just electromagnets and plasma. We just need to
| integrate these existing technologies to make the fusion
| process more efficient.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Appealing to the immediate practicability of fusion is a
| desperate argument.
| pfdietz wrote:
| His argument is apparently "if there is some technology
| that it is not reasonable to expect will happen, then
| there is no technology that it is reasonable to expect
| will happen."
|
| (Except maybe whatever advances are needed for nuclear
| fission to power the world, I'd guess.)
| moloch-hai wrote:
| By the argument, the fission plants are all built already
| and just want permission to turn on.
| robomartin wrote:
| > Yes, I am perfectly comfortable imagining the future
| will be using technologies that we are not currently
| using.
|
| Sure. OK. The problem is that this is science fiction,
| not reality.
|
| I hear these kinds of arguments from people who have
| never done any construction project of non-trivial scale
| in their lives. Sure, from that perspective anything is
| possible.
|
| Let me tell you about reality in the US.
|
| If you want to build, say, a new instant-on hydrogen-
| based gigawatt-scale power generation plant, you need at
| least four things: - A design - A
| site - Environmental studies - Permits
|
| The design is tightly coupled to the site. The site is
| tightly coupled to the environmental studies and, of
| course, the permits.
|
| It could take 5 to 10 years to find a site and get it
| approved for a specific design.
|
| The permits could take another 5 to 10 years in the
| aggregate. This means you'll get some permits in a few
| years and others will be a battle you will have to fight
| for probably a decade as things are built.
|
| Finally, the construction project will likely take
| somewhere around 20 to 25 years.
|
| You are looking at 20 to 30 years. Just for one power
| plant. And I could be 100% off. It could take double that
| time.
|
| Here's the key:
|
| The clock starts NOW. Which means you have to design it
| with the technology you have NOW. Not dilithium crystals
| or magical hydrogen generators that do not exist. If you
| want the 25 year clock to start ticking today, the only
| way is to design with what you have, not what you wish
| you could have or what you think you might have.
|
| That's the problem with all of these hand-wavy arguments.
| They are fantasy.
|
| If we got our heads out of our collective asses we could
| start building modern nuclear power plants very quickly.
| They are not fantasy. They work. And they are far better
| than most, if not all, of the alternatives.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| We do not, in fact, need to build storage _now_. What we
| need now is renewable generating capacity to displace
| fossil fuel burning.
|
| At a time in the (not very distant) future, when we have
| enough of that _above_ immediate needs to spare enough to
| charge storage, then we will start to need storage.
|
| There is no point in even talking about building nukes.
| Nukes are dead, dead, dead. Not because of regulation, or
| hippies, but because no one with the money would waste it
| building one.
| robomartin wrote:
| > We do not, in fact, need to build storage now.
|
| No, we do. Well, perhaps saying storage isn't quite
| accurate. What we need is reliable power, because solar
| is not.
|
| Perhaps you have not seen the charts I posted from my 13
| kW array showing what we produced in the last three
| months compared to the same period last year?
|
| Here:
|
| https://imgur.com/bo0s7b0
|
| This was caused by rain and weather. The very direct
| implication of this is that solar power requires an
| external reliable power source. Without it you could have
| entire cities go dark.
|
| And so, the question is: If solar cannot work without an
| additional power source capable of delivering 100% of the
| required power for prolonged periods of time, why are we
| insisting on building _two_ power systems, one solar and
| one using a different technology?
|
| > There is no point in even talking about building nukes.
| Nukes are dead, dead, dead. Not because of regulation, or
| hippies, but because no one with the money would waste it
| building one.
|
| Forget I said nuclear then. Solar at scale cannot happen
| without having a reliable power source available to
| support it. If we want to stick with clean sources, the
| only real options are wind and hydro. Nuclear, I would
| highlight, is cleaner than burning stuff to make energy.
| Yet, again, let's not discuss nuclear for the moment.
|
| Because of the characteristics of solar you have to two
| at least two things: - You have to
| grossly over-build by ten times or more -
| You have to have a backup power source that can
| deliver 100% of the required peak power for minutes,
| hours, days and even weeks.
|
| The grossly overbuild part is very easy math to
| understand. Let's take the simplest of them all: No sun
| at night. This means --in very rough strokes-- that if
| you want to store the equivalent amount of energy for
| night-time use, you have to _double_ the system. One half
| of the array supports daytime use while the other half
| charges 100% efficient storage (not a reality) for use at
| night.
|
| That's not the end though. In a practical reality
| (feeding a neighborhood, town, city) you need constant
| power. In a perfect day (no clouds, rain, etc.) the
| output of a solar array looks like an inverted parabola.
| Here's a chart from my system.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/aNnbmDp.png
|
| In order to deliver the same amount of energy as a
| constant-power system of the same peak power output, you
| need to build a solar array 1.5 larger than this. That's
| because the integral of the area under the inverted
| parabola is 2/3 the area of the enclosing rectangle.
| Simple math.
|
| Now we are to having to build a system of 2 x 1.5 = 3
| times larger.
|
| The you have bad days, like this one:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/breTHQd.png
|
| This happens more often than most people might imagine.
| The cause, in this case, clouds. Not ugly dark clouds,
| beautiful white clouds during an beautiful blue-sky day.
| When it comes to solar, clouds are evil.
|
| I won't continue with the math. I'll just say that, when
| you consider all the issues with solar (including
| seasonal output, negative power coefficient and dirt) you
| can easily see that if you want 1 GW of output you better
| consider building a 10 GW array, or more. And this
| requires massive amounts of storage, otherwise you have
| no power at night or during some of the issues I
| presented above. As the other charts show, the last few
| months taught me a lot about what can happen.
|
| Going back to having to build a 100% reliable power
| system that can supply 100% of the power needs to support
| unreliable solar. At some point you have to ask yourself.
| If you are going to build a full duplicate power system,
| just to have solar, does it really make sense?
|
| This is where reality smacks you in the face again. Sure,
| there are places in the world where one could use hydro
| and wind. That isn't going to solve the problem though.
| You can't use these technologies everywhere. Wind also
| has its problems.
|
| This is why I tend to reach for nuclear. I can't think of
| any other technology that can provide 100% power
| availability at nearly 100% of the time. The other
| requirement is that we have to be able to start building
| it now, not in ten years (see above). In the US, it could
| take well over 25 years to build any type of reliable-
| power generation plant. We just don't have the ability to
| move quickly any more. Which means that there's a
| practical limit function to how far we could take solar,
| because it isn't reliable and it requires 100% backup.
|
| Not a simple topic. I obviously believer in solar enough
| to have spent my own money and built a nice 13 kW system.
| I will be expanding it to 20 kW this year. I might
| consider going to 30 kW next year. Why? I can't charge
| enough batteries for the system to deliver power reliable
| enough to support electric vehicles. This is another
| reality. Most of my neighbors have small 3 to 5 kW
| systems. They are all screwed. I talk to them all the
| time. Some regret having solar because it is costing them
| more per month (due to leasing and the rising cost of
| power) than when they put these inadequate systems in.
| Some were told they could charge electric cars with
| solar, which was 100% false.
|
| I love solar. I believe in it. I simply prefer to talk
| about it in real terms and not in a fantasy world where
| the technology is perfect, reliable and has no issues.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| None of what you have posted is surprising. None of it
| changes the equation dictating build schedule. None of it
| favors nukes in _any_ role.
|
| There is _no_ need for "ten times" overbuild. Instead,
| you just need a backup generator you can fuel at need.
|
| Any tropical country can put up a solar farm and start
| exporting synthetic fuel. Until those are built, we can
| burn NG in shortfalls, at radically reduced average total
| carbon output.
|
| Building storage _after_ you have enough renewable
| overbuild to charge it from, in normal conditions,
| incrementally reduces duty cycle on the generator. So,
| for a utility, a 1.5x overbuild and a few hours ' 1x
| storage means they hardly ever run it. A transmission
| line to a neighboring utility cuts the fuel bill more,
| and makes selling excess easier.
|
| At home, with a grid tie-in, you need the generator only
| when a tree takes out the lines, and you can sell excess
| most days. A low duty-cycle backup generator should be,
| above other considerations, cheap. Don't you have one?
| They _are_ cheap.
|
| In the future, 10x overbuild will be much cheaper than
| today, and would reduce your residual backup fuel bill if
| you care enough, and you can sell more power, most days.
|
| The correct course for a public utility is to focus on
| exceeding 1x average renewable generating capacity, and
| then add a bit of very dispatchable and quickly built
| storage--batteries. After that, incrementally overbuild,
| and add cheapest usable storage--not batteries--still
| using the combined-cycle gas turbine at need. The more
| overbuild and storage they add, the better things get.
| Maybe add some fuel synthesis equipment and tankage, and
| sell excess beyond local tankage.
|
| For home, keep your generator and/or grid tie-in ready.
| At 13 kW nameplate, you can usefully add some battery to
| carry you past peak evening price and, with a bit more,
| through most nights.
|
| Your neighbors with 4 kW are substantially reducing their
| power bill. There was no expectation of anything else.
| robomartin wrote:
| I have to ask: Do you have a solar array?
|
| I ask because of comments you have made such as: "you can
| sell excess most days"
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Yes. I have excess in summer.
|
| You can sell excess when you have excess. Some places
| (sadly, not all places), adding battery lets you sell
| excess at a higher price during peak times and maybe buy
| back off-peak.
| robomartin wrote:
| Did you mean "Yes, I have a system" or "Yes, you can sell
| energy". Not clear.
|
| If you do have solar:
|
| What size is your system?
|
| Are you in the US?
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Mine produces 6-8 kW on summer days, in New York. I still
| buy most of my power from the utility, but my roof is
| maxed out.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| The parts exist separately, please put them together.
|
| Turbines able to run with 50% hydrogen already deployed.
|
| https://hydrogen-central.com/ge-new-gas-turbine-help-
| smooth-...
|
| A tiny bit of cash, $12M from DOE to solve 100% hydrogen
| turbines
|
| https://www.ge.com/news/press-releases/ge-doe-
| accelerating-t...
|
| A few tiny companies like Mitsubishi, GE, Siemens, and
| Ansaldo Energia developing 100% hydrogen turbines
|
| https://www.powermag.com/high-volume-hydrogen-gas-
| turbines-t...)
|
| Hydrogen storage being built for green steel in Sweden.
|
| https://www.hybritdevelopment.se/en/hybrit-a-unique-
| hydrogen...
|
| Power-to-x in Denmark, the parts put together!
|
| https://www.offshorewind.biz/2022/12/06/orsted-and-
| danish-pa...
| infoseek12 wrote:
| Solar and wind are great! I'm sure they'll be a huge part
| of the future. However, there are places that don't have
| good conditions for either and applications that they
| struggle with like providing large amounts of power for
| things like refining aluminum or casting steel. Not to
| mention how useful it would be if you fit one in a Super
| Galaxy and power a military base with it or quickly connect
| one and get it pumping power into a grid that's
| experiencing blackouts. Wind and solar will probably be
| cheaper but this kind of tech could still be very useful in
| quite a few places.
| coder543 wrote:
| > Wind and solar will probably be cheaper but this kind
| of tech could still be very useful in quite a few places.
|
| I agree, and I would love to see SMRs succeed. But, the
| latest developments in the cost of NuScale don't get my
| hopes up very high.
|
| Related, I have no idea if UNSC is going to go anywhere,
| but I really like their website[0]. Probably the best SMR
| company website in existence.
|
| [0]: https://www.usnc.com
| infoseek12 wrote:
| Cost estimates for novel nuclear designs have a track
| record of being all but worthless. I wish I could dismiss
| your pessimism but the flip side of the economics, that's
| a large part of what makes this so difficult, is that if
| they do succeed and make SMRs a real thing the cost could
| go down dramatically.
| coder543 wrote:
| This was also an interesting and relevant analysis if you
| want to read more on the subject:
| https://cleantechnica.com/2023/01/18/the-nuclear-fallacy-
| why...
|
| Like I said, I do hope that SMRs succeed, and I want them
| to succeed cost effectively, not just by subsidization.
| garbagecoder wrote:
| There's a lot of pressure on the industry to emphasize
| that the designs are "new" and not like ones that failed.
| Innovation is good, I think, but the reason nuclear is
| even in the conversation now is because it already has
| been done, mostly safely, and could be scaled with
| existing tech. This makes it a decent player for a
| transition energy source. High cost shoot-the-moon future
| designs hopefully will never be necessary.
|
| I say this as an absolutely fervently pro-nuclear person.
| Comparing France and Germany is really all the
| information you need for this kind of case.
|
| But I don't understand this push for small reactors
| outside of niche military applications etc.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Small reactors are being pushed because new big reactors
| in the US are stone cold dead. This is why I call them
| HMRs, "Hail Mary Reactors". They're nuclear's last
| desperate chance in the US.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Without their big constituency in the USDoE mandarinate,
| SMRs would be equally dead.
|
| DoE grants overwhelmingly favor thermal energy sources
| and storage, probably just because thermal conversion is
| what they are trained in.
| garbagecoder wrote:
| I think you're maybe wishcasting. The state and federal
| governments are spending billions to keep Diablo Canyon
| open after a rush of blood to the head thinking they
| could close it.
| pfdietz wrote:
| I meant of new nuclear construction. Keeping existing
| plants open is something different.
| pfdietz wrote:
| If those applications benefit from particularly favorable
| circumstances, then those applications will migrate to
| the places with those circumstances. We don't grow
| bananas in the Yukon; we won't put energy-intensive
| industries in places where energy is more expensive.
| theropost wrote:
| When doing calculations on such costs, we need to consider
| the total cost of operation of the plant, distribution
| costs, load balancing, etc. In the case of intermittent
| power sources, many calculations tend to favour them
| without taking into account the entire operational cycle of
| the power grid. These intermittent sources tend to require
| more hands on deck, additional backup sources, or power
| diversions, stability management, battery storage, and a
| plethora of other indirect costs that are not considered. I
| really do appreciate these efforts, since they generate
| energy, which allows progress and growth. However, we do
| need to ensure our calculations, and accounting for such
| infrastructure is able to consider the system as a whole.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > To provide more context, wind and solar were both in the
| low $30's/MWh of LCOE (levelized cost of energy) 3 years
| ago[0], with that number predicted to continue falling
| rapidly.
|
| This is like comparing cost of water during a flood and
| during a drought.
|
| London water authority can purify rainwater/river water for
| $0.1 per tonne, or can desalinate seawater for $2 per ton.
| Why would they go with expensive desalination?
|
| Obviously when there is a drought there is no rainwater to
| purify, and it has worked out cheaper to install a more
| expensive, reliable source of water, than it was to create
| water storage for all of London to last through the worst
| possible drought.
|
| Water and energy are similar in that, if they really run
| out, people start dying.
|
| They are different because you can easily store a week's
| worth of water in your house, but try store a week's worth
| of energy.
|
| Some countries, like India, Australia and US, can really
| rely on Solar. But northern countries really cannot. In UK
| solar panels give 10x less energy in the Winter than in the
| Summer.
|
| And some countries don't even have good wind sources.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| If you actually look at those northern cloudy countries
| case by case they all have solutions. You can vaguely
| handwave at "not everywhere has hydro resource", "some
| countries don't have neighbors with uncorrelated wind",
| "offshore windns prohibitive in deep water", "some
| countries have cloudy winters" and so on, but where about
| 98% of the world live each negative in one category is
| met with enough positives in the other categories that it
| turns out that VRE is the most cost effective strategy
| and the gaps can he filled with existing known solutions
| like W2E and turbine upgrades on hydro.
|
| Having 2% of the world needing to source 30% of their
| electricity from gas isn't a good reason to put the
| brakes on the 99% of electricity and 80% of other energy
| that can be decarbonized much more quickly with wind and
| solar than any other choice.
|
| Even if it were impossible to decarbonise fully with a
| VRE dominant strategy, pipelining it until it hits around
| 50% curtailed as the emissions it avoids while nuclear is
| being built will be more than funding the nuclear 20%
| sooner and it will remain useful for producing
| hydrogen/ammonia/etc.
|
| In this case the optimal strategy would be fund both
| immediately (which china, india, japan, and france are
| doing), rather than using hypothetical nuclear to attack
| and slow real VRE buildout.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| The biggest differences between electricity and water is
| that water is that water is really hard to transport
| (cause heavy) and droughts can last for years and effect
| giant areas. With solar and wind on the other hand, their
| supply is fairly predictable and variation is mostly
| local (i.e. it sometimes is cloudy in Germany, but
| Germany and Britain have almost completely uncorrelated
| weather). Also it's easy to send electricity 2-4 thousand
| miles with only minor (10%) losses using high voltage DC.
| As such you can build a grid with 60-80% renewables with
| minimal storage. You just make it large to remove local
| variation in weather and use a mix of wind and solar for
| your renewables (which are anti-correlated which gives
| you better reliability). You then can make up any
| renewable shortages with peaker plants that burn fossil
| fuels, but if you have a little extra renewable capacity
| you can keep them from running most of the time.
|
| Edit: Also hydro makes a really good battery for the
| several week timespan. It can't meet 100% of power needed
| but (especially if you bank water) can provide a decent
| percent of total demand for a while.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > I think nuclear is a fine source of energy if you have
| it, but evidence over the last several decades shows that
| it is virtually impossible to build for myriad reasons.
|
| > What we need is more energy storage
|
| If nuclear is impossible despite existing, storage is Even
| More Impossible
| BuckyBeaver wrote:
| Unless renewables can provide ALL of our energy needs, we
| MUST built some power-generation facilities, must we not?
|
| The last I heard, there's no way we can avoid generating a
| bunch of our power. So if not nuclear, what?
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Renewables do, in fact, generate power.
|
| We have combined-cycle gas turbines already, that will
| not be torn down. They will just be fired up only at
| need. Eventually they will burn synthetic fuel. At need.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Renewables can provide all of our energy needs. The only
| question is cost. So in the worst case, it's a financial
| bet, not an existential one.
| api wrote:
| That question isn't without consequence. If the cost is
| too high there will be a populist revolt and return to
| "roll coal!"
|
| You can't impoverish people today to prevent a future
| catastrophe like severe climate change that can only be
| argued for on the basis of science many people don't
| understand... not unless you are in a North Korea level
| dictatorship and can just shoot people who disagree.
| ttul wrote:
| Surely if given half a chance, the cost of building SMRs
| will also fall? Comparing wind and solar pricing to the
| pricing of SMRs when this is the first one to ever have
| been approved, never mind built, is pretty unfair.
| coder543 wrote:
| SMRs are the original nuclear reactors, more or less:
| https://cleantechnica.com/2023/01/18/the-nuclear-fallacy-
| why...
|
| So, this is not _really_ the first try at SMR.
|
| But, I can only speak to the numbers NuScale is
| providing. As I have said several times around this
| discussion, it would be awesome if SMRs were cost
| effective, and I hope NuScale can prove they're up to the
| challenge, but the same people who are trying to sell the
| technology keep announcing that it's going to cost more
| than expected, which does not make me confident.
| Hopefully things turn out better than expected.
|
| I agree that scaling up production would be helpful for
| cost, if they avoid getting tangled in a regulatory
| quagmire. But will it be enough to reduce the cost by
| more than half?
| evancox100 wrote:
| Sorry but it is very misleading to say that fossil fuels
| sources are a bigger cause of blackouts than renewables.
| Without dispatchable generation, like nat gas plants but
| also hydroelectric, the grid would black out every single
| night.
|
| Yes dispatchable generation may fail to materialize at
| times, but renewables "fail" to provide consistent power
| every single day, when the sun stops shining at night or
| wind stops blowing. Future battery deployments may be able
| to smooth these out over long enough timescales, but we are
| nowhere near that point right now.
| coder543 wrote:
| >> Grids have also repeatedly been shown to handle more
| renewables than every previous prediction would make, and
| we haven't hit the limit.
|
| > Yes dispatchable generation may fail to materialize at
| times, but renewables "fail" to provide consistent power
| every single day, when the sun stops shining at night or
| wind stops blowing.
|
| As I said. You're just repeating the old arguments.
| People thought that small percentages of renewables would
| destabilize the grid, then that didn't happen, so then
| they said a slightly larger percentages would do it, and
| it didn't. This tired theme has been repeated ad nauseam
| for the last decade or two.
|
| I agree that you need some amount of Base Load, but
| renewables haven't been the problem yet, and energy
| storage _is_ the solution, long term, along with Demand
| Response. Small amounts of grid energy storage have been
| shown[0] to have disproportionately high effects on
| improving grid stability. We might need less than you
| predict.
|
| As it is, since we are still successfully adding more and
| more renewables to the grid, and renewables _aren 't_
| being the source of blackouts, SMRs have to compete with
| renewables on cost, and they simply don't. SMRs also
| don't compete with Combined Cycle plants in terms of cost
| either, so which one are utilities going to choose?
|
| Peak demand for the grid is in the late afternoon / early
| evening, so the amount of battery storage needed to
| "shift" solar production by a few hours is not as much as
| you would think.
|
| Wind power produces more power at night than during the
| day, and it produces more in winter than summer, which is
| quite convenient given how solar produces more in the
| summer and during the day.[1] They make quite a
| complementary pair of power sources.
|
| There are seasonal concerns, which is where some combined
| cycle plants come into play, even if they don't operate
| for most of the year, but that's _also_ not SMRs.
| Combined Cycle is way cheaper than these nuclear SMRs. If
| you over-build on wind and solar, you can go a long way
| even in times of year with "less" wind and less
| sunshine, and with the low cost of wind and solar... lots
| of people are looking to overbuild as a partial solution
| that doesn't require batteries.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserv
| e#Benefi...
|
| [1]: https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1368867
| Manuel_D wrote:
| The _overwhelming majority_ of electricity demand is base
| load. Usually on the order of 70-80% [1]. We don 't need
| "some" base load, almost all our demand is base load.
|
| Electricity storage is nowhere near the scale required to
| make a dent in the electricity grid. To put this in
| perspective, the US alone uses about 500 GWh of
| electricity every hour. Worldwide this figure is about
| 2,500 GWh per hour. The storage facility you linked to
| was the biggest facility in the world when it was first
| constructed, and it stored only 129 MWh of electricity.
|
| At our current rate of battery production it'd take us a
| century of dedicating 100% of our battery output to grid
| storage to reach 1 day's worth of storage. Battery
| production is expected to increase, but it's unclear
| whether raw material inputs can keep up with
| manufacturing demands [2].
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load
|
| 2. https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| So it's supposed to be impossible to get the 3 hours or
| 9TWh (12 years of 2022 production) of battery needed to
| shift the grid to >99% renewables (including biogas from
| waste plant matter, planned HVDC, and existing hydro for
| dispatch) with the much larger than current lithium
| production that is already pipelined, but scaling Uranium
| production and the entire reactor and enrichment supply
| chain 10x with no significant pipelined expansion is
| trivial?
|
| What happens when the known Uranium resources run out 12
| years after that?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > So it's supposed to be impossible to get the 3 hours or
| 9TWh (12 years of 2022 production) of battery.. but
| scaling Uranium production and the entire reactor and
| enrichment supply chain 10x with no significant pipelined
| expansion is trivial
|
| Yes, that is exactly right!
|
| Energy density of natural, raw, unenriched uranium is
| 1,000,000 MJ/KG, and energy density of a lithium battery
| is 0.46 MJ/KG.
|
| 1 kilo of uranium gives you 1,000 times more energy than
| a kilo of lithium will be able to 'process' over the
| entire 10-year life expectancy of the battery.
|
| You will need 1,000 fewer excavators, dump trucks and
| people involved in mining if you choose uranium.
|
| If price of uranium increases 3x nobody cares, fuel is
| like 5% of cost for nuclear. If price of lithium
| increases 3x it's a disaster, the entire transition to
| electric vehicles will fail.
|
| We don't even have enough batteries for vehicles, the
| grid needs another solution, either hydro + hydrogen
| storage or nuclear.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Now do it again with the electricity output of fuel
| cycles that actually exist and the amount of lithium in a
| new battery.
|
| The only density here is that required to mindlessly
| parrot factoids about the theoretical thermal energy
| content fertile material as if they were relevant to
| electricity output of fissile content.
|
| > If price of uranium increases 3x nobody cares, fuel is
| like 5% of cost for nuclear. If price of lithium
| increases 3x it's a disaster, the entire transition to
| electric vehicles will fail.
|
| If the price of Uranium triples, the raw Uranium becomes
| as expensive as renewables' LCOE in one year rather than
| 5. If the price of lithium triples, it's still irrelevant
| because PHES still exists and so do Sodium Ion, Zinc
| Bromide and Iron batteries.
|
| > We don't even have enough batteries for vehicles, the
| grid needs another solution, either hydro + hydrogen
| storage or nuclear.
|
| The amount of batteries required for >90% renewables is
| tiny compare to the amount needed for overly large EVs
| everywhere. If you're going to change one of these
| variables to stop climate change faster, far better to
| unban light electric vehicles in countries with mandatory
| monster trucks and spend a few percent of that nuclear
| reactor money on transit, low speed roads and
| pedestrianisation.
| lazide wrote:
| 1) not that it would happen, but if it did, they won't
| just run out.
|
| 2) There are vast Uranium deposits in the Southwest and
| Canada that were identified and either mined a little, or
| left untouched after WW2 - because we had so much, we
| didn't need them.
|
| Early lithium was 'hard to find' until it wasn't, and now
| there are vast reserves.
|
| Lithium is harder to extract per power unit though, as
| Uranium is incredibly power dense.
| pfdietz wrote:
| (2) is already included in the "resources" figure.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| > Lithium is harder to extract per power unit though, as
| Uranium is incredibly power dense.
|
| Y'all just love making up lies out of whole cloth. This
| is incredibly wrong and you didn't even consider the idea
| of checking before deciding it was true. Stanning for
| nuclear does involve incredible density but it's not
| power or energy density.
|
| Weight for weight, the amount of lithium you need for a
| 1kW renewable system with diurnal storage (80-160g/kWh
| for 8-12kWh to provide for 1kW) and the amount of Uranium
| you need for 1kW of nuclear reactor (45-60MWd/kg @ 32%
| thermal efficiency with a 7.4:1 tails/fuel ratio with a
| 3-6 year fuel cycle) are about the same: Roughly 1kg.
|
| The lithium battery will last 2-4x as long as the Uranium
| fuel (12-20 years vs 3-6).
|
| At 1-7% the lithium ore is 1-2 orders of magnitude more
| concentrated than the 0.01-0.7% of most Uranium deposits
| (Canada's untapped high yield deposits are about the same
| as good lithium ore but they are deep underground,
| unique, and only a tiny fraction of what would be
| needed). The typical ore mined in a mass expansion
| scenario (0.01-0.03%) would have an energy density
| between that of coal and crude oil.
|
| Mining for the uranium would involve around 100-1000x the
| quantity of mined or leached ore and tens to hundreds of
| times as much leaching chemical.
|
| The Uranium extraction process doesn't end at the mill.
| Enrichment is just as involved as brine extraction. The
| end product of the Uranium fuel costs twice as much as an
| LFP grid battery and has about the same embodied energy
| per joule delivered (or double if from an underground or
| deep open pit mine).
|
| Diurnal lithium battery storage is irrelevant where good
| pumped hydro is available, and is far more than is needed
| to reach 85-90% VRE (which can be done with 3 hours).
|
| Early uranium was also hard to find, then tens of
| billions were spent trying to find more. There are fairly
| reliable methods of estimating how much hasn't been found
| based on the rate of finding it vs. the effort spent and
| the answer is there's not a lot undiscovered at
| concentrations that make fuel affordable. It's also
| largely irrelevant because any you find after you open
| your 3-8TW of nuclear plants (which are somehow built in
| 12 years) is not going to be developed before they all
| run out.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Thank you for the detailed responce, am I correct in
| understanding this is for once-through fuel cycle? I was
| not able to find figures for total burnup once fuel
| reprocessing is taken into account. I think analysing
| large-scale transition to nuclear only makes sence with
| reprosessing.
|
| > The typical ore mined in a mass expansion scenario
| (0.01-0.03%) would have an energy density between that of
| coal and crude oil.
|
| This is really interesting, because I have seen a lot of
| hand-wringing about lithium mining, describing it as
| physically impossible.
|
| We seem to be mining 8.5 billion tons of coal a year, and
| 100k tons of lithium a year. Assuming 2% for lithium,
| that puts us at 4 million tons of ore.
|
| So we need 2000 times less earthmoving equipment to
| achieve the quantity of lithium we currently consume?
|
| I am assuming here that 'Coal' is the name for stuff
| that's dug out of the ground, so comparing 'coal' and
| 'ore' is correct for estimating earthmoving required.
|
| > Diurnal lithium battery storage is irrelevant where
| good pumped hydro is available
|
| To me the entire point of this scenario is, what do I do
| if my country doesn't have it. That's going to be the
| dilemma facing half the world.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| > So we need 2000 times less earthmoving equipment to
| achieve the quantity of lithium we currently consume?
|
| Both metals have a variety of mining methods including
| extraction in liquid form, and both need a leaching step
| in large amounts of chemicals if dug up whole (with the
| exception of canadian ore which is high purity) but
| that's the general gist of it. The Lithium requires
| between 1 and 3 orders of magnitude less
| space/industry/chemicals and a bit less energy for the
| same target use. Nickel, manganese, copper and phosphorus
| also have significant impact but still about the same
| total impact as the Uranium for a 90-95% grid
| decarbonization use case up front (but longer lived and
| recyclable for the battery ingredients). Building a mix
| of solar and onshore wind to cycle the battery requires a
| subset of the ingredients of a reactor like an EPR (with
| maybe a bit more concrete, zinc and steel depending on
| wind capacity factor, but much less chromium and a number
| of other higher impact materials).
|
| Offshore wind is about the only renewable technology with
| significantly larger mining impact. It is better than
| fossil fuels or delay but does need to come down (Iron
| Nitride should help here, but there is still a lot of
| steel and copper -- although an order of magnitude less
| than the nuclear and fossil fuel interests will tell
| you).
|
| > Thank you for the detailed responce, am I correct in
| understanding this is for once-through fuel cycle? I was
| not able to find figures for total burnup once fuel
| reprocessing is taken into account. I think analysing
| large-scale transition to nuclear only makes sence with
| reprosessing.
|
| Reprocessing does very little without a positive breeding
| ratio. Unless you create more Pu239 than you consume U235
| it's just a small boost in U235 efficiency. You can
| verify this by looking at the isotope mix of waste for
| your reactor of choice and the isotope mix and burnup of
| MOX. An APR has a breeding ratio around 0.6 and consumes
| 60% of the bred Pu without reprocessing. A PHWR has the
| advantage of (in principle) being able to extract the
| last 5-15% of energy without plutonium extraction (which
| is incredibly polluting and expensive), but it doesn't
| result in much of an increase in net output, nor does it
| reduce the amount of Pu240, Pu241, Am242 and Am241 (the
| very bad high level long lived alpha emitters) that must
| be dealt with by more than 20%.
|
| Breeders have a host of technical barriers, and a
| breeder-heavy strategy is actually impaired by spending
| money and the fairly finite easily accessed startup
| fissile material on PWRs. The net result of most
| proposals is about 10x the burnup (as fertile material is
| notnplannednto be recovered and multiple roundsnof
| breeding and reprocessing result in problems that don't
| have proposed solutions), but there is no plutonium
| separation process that is either affordable or
| environmentally sustainable if scaled to the TW level.
|
| > To me the entire point of this scenario is, what do I
| do if my country doesn't have it. That's going to be the
| dilemma facing half the world.
|
| Sodium ion batteries are a commercial technology now at
| the 1-5GWh level with a massive scale up being completed
| in June (100s of GWh/yr), and use all abundant materials
| (Iron, sodium, carbon, water, aluminium). Pumped hydro is
| also far less limited. Other chemistries that are in
| scale up include Zinc Bromide (there is a process that
| can retrofit existing lead acid production being scaled
| among others), Iron, and Vanadium (often available as a
| side product of Uranium in greater quantities at about
| 1-3hrs of storage per year of uranium fuel), but
| generally not valuable enough to extract). The main
| geopolitical danger is access to silver, and building a
| local industry.
|
| Also buying lithium on the open market has far fewer
| opportunities for geopolitical domination than systems
| dependent on fossil fuels or U235 as there are many low
| quality deposits and the bottleneck is largely
| extraction. Your country could spend $3-10k per US-
| citizen-of-primary-energy on imported batteries or
| $300-1k on imported lithium once then develop domestic
| recycling and manufacturing and then you are done for
| decades (maybe replacing 5% of it per year once the kWh
| per kg of Li stops improving).
| defrost wrote:
| > I have seen a lot of hand-wringing about lithium
| mining, describing it as physically impossible. While
| cost remains to be seen, it is clear the amount we need
| to mine is much lower than that of coal.
|
| Very little mining or extraction is actually physically
| impossible, just as safes are rated not as "impossible to
| crack" but "takes an expert with best tools 16 hours to
| open", known measured resources are ranked by _economic
| feasibility_ .. how much effort will it take to produce
| the end product (and is that cost worth it).
|
| Lithium | Uranium | Copper | etc .. there are pros, cons,
| issues and problems all the way through any mineral
| extraction process - the one solution not proposed nearly
| enough is for populations to just consume less.
|
| Re: Lithium specifically:
|
| > Let us consider, for example, electric cars. To give an
| idea of this effect, producing a battery weighing 1,100
| pounds emits over 70% more carbon dioxide than producing
| a conventional car in Germany, according to research by
| the automotive consultancy Berylls Strategy Advisors.
|
| > Furthermore, lithium mining requires a lot of water. To
| extract one ton of lithium requires about 500,000 liters
| of water, and can result in the poisoning of reservoirs
| and related health problems.
|
| These are our trade offs.
|
| [1] https://phys.org/news/2023-01-paradox-lithium-net-
| zero-emiss...
| lazide wrote:
| No safes I'm aware of are rated to '16 hours with tools',
| though I imagine some engineer somewhere promised a
| particular customer that.
|
| Best normal ratings are TL-60 (aka tools for an hour), or
| TR-60 (tools and a torch for an hour). A big, big
| difference.
| defrost wrote:
| If you lean back and look up there's a chance you might
| see the point that you missed.
|
| Assume I said "X hours" if that makes you more
| comfortable.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Also thank you for maintaining civility and expressing
| genuine curiosity. It's easy to forget that not everyone
| who is a fan of nuclear is just using it as a tool to
| attack anything that threatens fossil fuels just hecause
| those ones are the loudest my distaste towards some of
| the other commenters caught you in the crossfire and I
| apologise.
| lazide wrote:
| Bwaha, 1kg of uranium produces 8.64 x 10^13 joules of
| energy when fissioned. That's ~ 24 MWH per _gram_ , not
| per KG. You're off by ~ 3 orders of magnitude.
|
| So what are you talking about? Because your math at the
| start is so far off, it's pretty hard to tell here.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| You haven't understood his post, he is correct under
| worst-case scenario for nuclear -> once through fuel
| cycle achieves 5% burnup, that's 4 million MJ/KG, or
| roughly 60MWd/kg
|
| Enrichment requires that we throw away most of uranium as
| depleted uranium, that's what he means by "7.4:1
| tails/fuel ratio" That's gives us ~20 years of power at
| 1KW, but we have are converting to electricity, so it
| really only gives us 6 years or so.
|
| The main flaw with his argument is, in my understanding,
| he assumes a once-through fuel cycle, whereas France and
| others reprocess nuclear fuel. It also discards reactors
| that work on un-encirched uranium like CANDU.
|
| I am not sure about the ores, but I am greatfull for the
| detailed writeup
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Reprocessing doesn't turn fertile material into fissile.
| It mostly just costs money and pours more fission
| products into the nearest body of water than Fukushim
| released. It also extracts the dregs of Pu239 and U235 to
| get another 5-15% of final energy out. CANDU +
| reprocessing is a bit better than a PWR, but still
| significantly under 2x the energy in the original U235.
|
| Closed fuel cycles are a myth so there is no need to
| specify 'once through'.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Just gonna double down on the 'it's so dense' myth huh?
|
| Do it with a real fuel cycle, real turbine efficiencies
| and stop trying to conflate the fertile content with the
| fissile.
|
| Here's a hint to get you started: the reactor fleet uses
| about 67500 tonnes of raw Uranium and produces about
| 2650TWh each year. New reactors are about 1.8x the
| average and most SMR proposals are worse. The world
| produced 760GWh of batteries from around 75,000 tonnes of
| Lithium.
|
| Also note that 2650TWh / 760GWh is 3500 which is less
| than the number of cycles an LFP battery will last.
| lazide wrote:
| If you're going to throw out bullshit numbers, don't be
| surprised when you get called on it.
|
| If de-rating, show your math. Which you didn't.
|
| This whole thing is hilarious anyway, as I'm far from a
| nuclear advocate. Just pointing out you're not actually
| telling the truth while going on your rant.
|
| And it's all clearly apples to oranges with no sense.
|
| Lithium is not destroyed when used in these battery
| systems, it can be recycled indefinitely if we cared. It
| also doesn't produce any actual power, it's storage.
|
| Uranium is burned/fissioned, and actually is gone. And
| actually produces power.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Wow. You got triggered hard by that. My comment was in
| response to the pearl clutching over the imagined
| requirement of Lithium mining as a component of a system
| that generates electricity from wind and solar.
|
| If we take diurnal storage being provided by lithium
| batteries as a given, then a VRE system producing 1kW
| >95% of the time using existing commercial technology
| requires roughly 1kg of lithium in 6-12kWh of batteries
| which needs to be recycled or replaced every 12-20 years.
|
| A system producing 1kW of electricity from fission 85% of
| the time using existing commercial technology requires
| fuel made from 1kg of mined Uranium. The Uranium needs
| replacing at least every 6 years. You can calculate this
| easily from burnup (25-60MWd/kg thermal), thermal
| efficiency (30-38%), and the Uranium required to make a
| unit of fuel (~8kg per kg of fuel).
|
| Hence the pearl clutching is revealed as disingenuous
| nonsense and the proposed alternative to the terrors of
| Lithium mining is revealed to be worse, and why you are
| triggered.
| cycomanic wrote:
| To quote the Wikipedia article you cited:
|
| > This demand can be met by unvarying power plants,[2]
| dispatchable generation,[3] or by a collection of smaller
| intermittent energy sources,[4] depending on which
| approach has the best mix of cost, availability and
| reliability in any particular market.
|
| Renewables are baseload. They mainly compete with other
| traditional "base load" power plants, i.e. coal and
| nuclear, all of which rely on dispatch able generation
| for evening out the peaks and trowths. Your calculation
| also doesn't make sense, you never need storage to cover
| the whole electricity generation in all of the US. It's
| like saying in an all nuclear scenario we need to build
| plants to cover twice the peak demand because all plants
| could be under maintenance at the same time. You don't
| build with 100% redundancy.
| coder543 wrote:
| > The overwhelming majority of electricity demand is base
| load. Usually on the order of 70-80% [1]. We don't need
| "some" base load, almost all our demand is base load.
|
| The article you linked doesn't really back this up, at
| least in the way this discussion means it. It shows that
| with flexible production, you can drastically scale back
| on "traditional" base load power sources, and that is
| representing a _real_ power grid in Germany. Nothing
| about the graph actually says "this is as much
| renewables as you can pack into this power grid".
|
| If you look at the graph closely, you'll notice that
| solar is big during the day, and wind is big during the
| night. With greater installed wind production capacity,
| the fossil fuel lines would drop drastically in the
| graph. It's that simple. We would still need to have
| "peaker plants" available until there is enough grid
| energy storage capacity, but combined cycle natural
| plants work fine for that. We can keep pushing down the
| time they need to on by building more renewables even
| without batteries.
|
| > The storage facility you linked to was the biggest
| facility in the world when it was first constructed, and
| it stored only 129 MWh of electricity.
|
| I specifically linked that one because it talks about how
| ridiculously profitable it has been, and how much of an
| impact it has had on the local grid. If it can save money
| for a traditional grid, then it is a no-brainer for
| utilities to install bigger and bigger grid batteries.
| More demand for batteries means more battery production
| facilities, increasing global production capacity over
| time.
|
| However, the world is also transitioning to Electric
| Vehicles, and most EV manufacturers are offering V2G
| (vehicle to grid) solutions, so millions of EVs can
| contribute a portion of their battery capacity to the
| grid in the future, and the grid can compensate them for
| their contribution.
|
| > Battery production is expected to increase, but it's
| unclear whether raw material inputs can keep up with
| manufacturing demands [2].
|
| Lithium is not exactly rare or hard to extract, you can
| even extract lithium from saltwater, so this argument
| seems specious. But, various alternative chemistries are
| being explored which could help in different ways.
|
| > At our current rate of battery production it'd take us
| a century of dedicating 100% of our battery output to
| grid storage to reach 1 day's worth of storage.
|
| How did you determine that we need a full day's worth of
| energy storage? We can drastically decarbonize the grid
| (and lower electric costs for consumers) with a lot less
| than that, based on what I've seen, but this is a highly
| speculative part of the discussion so it's interesting to
| hear how that number came to be.
| pfdietz wrote:
| We can get a handle on how much storage needed by
| optimization based on real weather data, minimizing costs
| based on various assumptions on cost of wind, solar,
| batteries, and long term storage. This web site lets you
| do that to obtain "synthetic baseload", the equivalent of
| what a nuclear plant could provide:
|
| https://model.energy/
|
| If we do this for Germany with 2030 cost assumptions and
| 2011 weather data, 6 hours of batteries are needed and
| 289 hours of hydrogen storage. Hydrogen storage is quite
| cheap, if nowhere near as efficient. It's very useful
| here, reducing the optimal cost by nearly a factor of 2.
|
| For the US as a whole, the optimum solution uses 6 hours
| of batteries again, but 106 hours of hydrogen. For just
| Texas, 2 hours of batteries and 254 hours of hydrogen.
| California alone is 16 hours of batteries and 70 hours of
| hydrogen (likely due to wind optimizing to zero under
| those assumptions.)
| Manuel_D wrote:
| I plugged this in with existing storage technologies and
| existing energy demand for just the USA (500 GW). It
| turns out we'll only need... 6,000 GWH of battery
| storage!
|
| https://imgur.com/TGRMOBw
|
| By comparison, the entire world only produces ~400 GWh of
| batteries each year. So it'd _only_ take a decade and a
| half of _global_ battery production to satisfy the
| storage demands of _just_ the USA. The rest of the world
| would be left with zero EV or electronics production for
| a decade and a half and no grid storage to show for it.
|
| Thanks for the site: it's a good tool to demonstrate just
| how unfeasible energy storage really is.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Obviously production would have to be scaled up. It's
| dishonest to present this as some sort of insurmountable
| barrier, for all potential battery chemistries or other
| storage modes.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Batteries are not transistors. Their input costs are
| skyrocketing, and sure enough the end costs of batteries
| are now starting to rise, too [1]. It's dishonest to
| pretend that continued exponential growth is guaranteed.
|
| The cost of an automobile shrank from a million dollars
| inflation adjusted to a hundred thousand over the course
| of the 1900s. Assembly line manufacturing continued to
| shrink this down to $10,000 by 1920. Would it be safe to
| assume that a car would cost $1 by the end of the century
| given the past rate of a 10x drop in price every two
| decades?
|
| The reality is that most products are not transistors.
| They don't get better when you make them smaller. A car
| will always contain a certain mass of metal, and will not
| cheaper than the cost of that input. Manufacturing
| already accounts for under a quarter of a battery's cost.
| The rest is dominated by cathode and anode material [2].
| Battery manufacturing had already become a resource
| extraction problem.
|
| 1. https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-
| prices-...
|
| 2. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/breaking-down-the-
| cost-of-a...
| coder543 wrote:
| You could not be more wrong about batteries. You made a
| huge error about the cost percentage that lithium makes
| up. It's possible -- just possible -- that other people
| have researched batteries too, and maybe they have a
| better sense of where the industry is going.
|
| It makes no sense to assume that we've reached "peak
| battery", at all.
|
| Continuing this argument is pointless, and really does
| seem like you're choosing to ignore reality. I'm done
| with this conversation.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > You made a huge error about the cost percentage that
| lithium makes up.
|
| Care to explain? I'm always intrigued by commenters
| asserting that an error has been made, yet neglect to
| explain the error.
| coder543 wrote:
| I already responded to you elsewhere. Perhaps you ignored
| it? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34460846
|
| Cathodes are not a giant chunk of elemental lithium, as
| you believe.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| But lithium still dominates the cost of the cathode. Iron
| is not the main driver of battery expenses.
| coder543 wrote:
| 13% is not 50%. It makes a huge difference in the cost
| scaling under discussion.
|
| In fact, nickel dominates the cost of the cathode, in
| case you missed what I had posted. But there are nickel-
| free chemistries out there.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| And for those nickel-free battery chemistries, what
| inputs are the main cost drivers? And as per my response,
| nickel is also experiencing shortages and cost spikes.
|
| My core assertion remains true regardless of the fact
| that different chemistries require different inputs:
| battery production has become a resource extraction
| problem, rather than a manufacturing problem. Unless we
| find a way to somehow make mining exponentially more
| efficient, we're not going to be seeing exponential
| growth in battery production.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Your core assertion _remains false_ because (1) lithium
| is not the only battery chemistry, and (2) batteries are
| not the only, or even cheapest, storage technology.
|
| CAT-L, the biggest battery maker in the world, is today
| ramping up sodium battery production capacity. Will you
| now insist on a sodium supply bottleneck?
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Lithium is the only viable battery chemistry we have
| presently. Lead acid decays after 100-200 cycles. Who
| knows if sodium will be viable, it'd be a lot better to
| argue for its efficacy when it's actually on the market.
|
| The other forms of storage have other shortcomings:
| hydroelectric storage is geographically dependent. Most
| of the other form of storage people are mentioning in
| this tread have never been operated outside of
| prototypes: like hydrogen electrolysis or compressed air.
| Again, technological feasibility and market viability are
| two vastly different things. If compressed air storage
| works, but it's more expensive than nuclear power what's
| the point?
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Lithium is not, _in fact_ , the only viable battery
| chemistry. CAT-L, the world's largest maker of batteries,
| is _today_ ramping up production of sodium batteries.
| Numerous other chemistries are also being fielded, at
| $billions scale.
|
| Pumped hydro storage is not, _in fact_ , geographically
| dependent: there are a _lot_ of hills (which you knew).
| Compressed air is used in production (which you knew).
| Hydrogen electrolysis is operated in the millions of tons
| (which you knew).
|
| Relying on falsehoods is a strange way to argue. It
| depends on your audience remaining ignorant.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| I don't care about company hype and marketing. Get back
| to me when I can actually buy a sodium battery and throw
| it on a test load to see if it's living up to the
| promises. It's not available yet, that's the reality.
| Tech that's 5 years away has a nasty habit of staying 5
| years a way for a lot longer than that.
|
| I got a real kick when you insisted hydroelectricity
| storage is not geographically dependent and immediate
| followed by saying it needs hills. And it requires more
| than just hills. It needs a hill, with a reservoir on
| top, and another reservoir at the base of the hill to
| collect the water, and another body of water to fill said
| reservoirs. The conditions for hydroelectric storage are
| _way_ more specific than "it needs a hill".
|
| I agree, relying on falsehoods are a bad way to argue.
| That's why it's bad to insist that storage is an easy
| problem to solve to try and make the case for
| intermittent sources.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > Get back to me when I can actually buy a sodium battery
| and throw it on a test load to see if it's living up to
| the promises.
|
| Sure, right after you get back to to inform us about the
| approved and operating permanent nuclear waste storage
| facility in the US with all the waste waiting in
| temporary holding facilities having been placed there.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| We already have it. Yucca mountain was built and could
| receive waste, but Congress blocked it legislatively.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| And a nuke plant needs an unused containment vessel.
|
| Betting that the biggest battery manufacturer in the
| world will default on billions of dollars in orders for
| sodium batteries, next quarter, _would_ be a courageous
| position to take. But I doubt you are shorting CAT-L.
| pfdietz wrote:
| And then there are various thermal storage schemes.
| Pumped thermal (reversible thermal cycle with hot and
| cold storage) could have up to a 75% round trip
| efficiency with cheap materials and no geographical
| restrictions.
|
| https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4994054
| Manuel_D wrote:
| And has anyone actually built an _electrical_ thermal
| storage system - not district heating - with 75% round
| trip efficiency? Or is this just more marketing hype?
| coder543 wrote:
| > Thanks for the site: it's a good tool to demonstrate
| just how unfeasible energy storage really is.
|
| It's amazing how clearly you can see the trees without
| realizing there's a forest.
|
| Battery production capacity has been scaling like crazy
| and will continue to scale like crazy:
| https://www.woodmac.com/press-releases/global-lithium-
| ion-ba...
|
| It doesn't matter if battery prices increase some, as you
| have made that the cornerstone of your argument. Many
| many comments ago, I linked to the Hornsdale battery.
| Based on the revenue, you can do the math: the batteries
| could cost a lot more, and it would still have been
| profitable. Batteries also don't make up the entire cost
| of grid scale storage: the inverters, the transformers,
| even the cabinets and control computers cost money.
|
| As it is, mining is a lagging indicator. Once mining
| scales up, the cost of the commodities will naturally go
| back down. While there is profit to be made, too many
| people will open mines, which will bring the
| profitability back down to earth. It's a tale as old as
| supply chains.
|
| This same inability to imagine how quickly solar and wind
| would drop in price led to numerous "experts" making
| absurd claims about solar and wind being economically
| infeasible at _any_ scale. The battery supply chain is
| scaling. There will be price volatility, but the volume
| is growing by leaps and bounds.
|
| It will take years for the world to transition, but it
| also takes years to build and install the necessary wind
| and solar. Battery production won't remain constant, and
| it won't even increase slightly. It has and will increase
| drastically.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Predictions and actual capability are two vastly
| different things. Outside the realm of predictions, back
| here in reality, battery costs are actually increasing
| rather than declining [1].
|
| "Just scale up mining" is easier said than done. Steel is
| a widely used commodity. If we could "just scale up
| mining" and exponentially decrease the cost of materials,
| why haven't we been able to do this with steel? Care you
| explain why "just scale up mining" will work for lithium
| when it hasn't for plenty of other commodities?
|
| 1. https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-
| prices-...
| coder543 wrote:
| I said prices would be volatile. Scaling has worked for
| plenty of other commodities. As I said, I'm out.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > Scaling has worked for plenty of other commodities.
|
| Besides transistors and other electronics, which
| commodities have seen consistent exponential growth
| relative to cost?
| coder543 wrote:
| That's an irrelevant question. I hate that I'm still
| bothering to respond when you don't seem interested in
| changing your position.
|
| There is a fixed cost to extract a kilogram of lithium
| using a given method. When demand spikes, lithium
| suppliers will charge more and reinvest those profits
| into increasing mining capacity. If they had their way,
| they'd keep prices high, but anyone can open a lithium
| mine. Lithium is not hard to find. Those people will
| undercut the previous miner in order to attract buyers,
| which will force all miners to lower prices back to
| reality.
|
| As long as prices are high, more and more mines will open
| as it is suddenly an attractive resource to mine. This
| will happen until prices start to drop to some
| percentage-over-cost where things stop being attractive,
| and the market reaches equilibrium again.
|
| If lithium was profitable to mine for $X/kg for many
| years, then that is the price it will naturally return
| to. It is a commodity. There is no special value for
| getting your lithium from Corporation X or Corporation Y.
| The only value is the material.
|
| That's how commodities work. The price is determined by
| how hard it is to extract, and whether demand has
| recently spiked (or subsided). Gold is expensive because
| it
|
| If this were some rare substance, extraction difficulty
| would increase noticeably with time, but we're a long way
| from a shortage of ways to mine lithium. Some ways might
| be more expensive, so those mines will only open if the
| prices stay high, but the prices won't rise indefinitely
| this century. That is such an illogical assumption.
| Perhaps the natural price of high volume lithium
| production is higher than we have today because those
| more expensive methods are convenient, but it won't be
| enough of a price increase to matter in the grand scheme
| of things, and this assumption of a higher price is a
| pretty flimsy one to base predictions on _even then_.
|
| Eventually, as batteries age, they will be recycled, and
| the need for lithium mining will likely drop sharply,
| bankrupting some of these mines until production and
| (profitable) demand are matched again.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Higher prices would indeed incentivize increased demand.
| But again, this requires _higher prices_. Understand that
| renewable activists are predicting that lithium battery
| production will not only increase exponentially, it will
| also exponentially drop in cost per KWh as this happens.
|
| This is not going to happen because, as you point out,
| lithium mining will only expand if prices climb higher to
| make otherwise unprofitable reserves profitable. And
| since raw materials now dominate the cost of batteries,
| this is going to increase the cost of batteries. There's
| no having your cake and eating it too: in order to
| increase lithium mining capacity, battery cost is going
| to have to grow, not shrink.
|
| You edited your post after I replied, so I'll have to
| edit in response:
|
| There's no one "difficulty of extraction" factor for each
| commodity. The reality is that there's a diverse variety
| of reserves all of which are easier or harder to exploit,
| even for the same commodity. "The price is determined by
| how hard it is to extract" is at best a huge
| simplification.
|
| Higher commodity prices make it viable to extract the
| more inaccessible reserves, but those reserves will only
| be profitable _so long as prices remain high_.
|
| > If lithium was profitable to mine for $X/kg for many
| years, then that is the price it will naturally return
| to.
|
| Nope! This is completely wrong. Commodities don't
| "naturally return" to any price. Prices is a result of
| supply and demand. It could be we find some other battery
| chemistry that blows lithium out of the water. In that
| case the cost of lithium will probably collapse well
| below $X/kg. Conversely, if countries start to try and
| provision significant amounts of grid battery storage,
| the costs will grow even higher as more and more
| inaccessible reserves need to be exploited to supply
| market demand.
|
| There is no "natural" price of commodities, whatsoever.
| If the demand for lithium is going to rise and keep
| rising, then the cost will rise and keep rising unless
| some breakthrough makes it way more efficient to mine.
| Given the fact that we've been mining for centuries and
| we have huge demand for minerals other than lithium, I'm
| not optimistic on a 100x improvement in mining
| efficiency.
| onphonenow wrote:
| It's interesting because coder is very locked into their
| view on one price.
|
| I don't know lithium at all, but if you follow natural
| gas / fracking / oil production the question of what
| reserves are economically recoverable is HIGHLY price
| dependent (and highly variable). On low end $10-15/barrel
| cost of production or better. The only reason we have any
| production in the US is because oil costs more. If you
| said we would double oil usage prices would spike
| incredibly.
|
| Same thing with solar net metering, Solar activists
| demand that soler gen (often during periods with solar
| curtailments already in effect) be reimbursed based on
| the same cost as electric rates during the evening
| (usually peak demand and low solar / wind). Again,
| depressing how economically nonsensical this all is for a
| supposedly scientifically grounded effort.
|
| Anyways, rational heads (and economic forces) tend to
| prevail. I think we will see more TOU rates, and ideally
| this will at least create some market forces around
| storage.
| coder543 wrote:
| The prices have gone up, so mining is expanding. There's
| a clear next step to the way commodities work. That next
| step is not for prices to continue increasing
| dramatically, things should level off and eventually
| return to normal, as I explained.
|
| > Understand that renewable activists are predicting that
| lithium battery production will not only increase
| exponentially, it will also exponentially drop in cost
| per KWh as this happens.
|
| Battery prices don't need to keep dropping for them to
| take over the world. They're already _cheap_. Of course
| people would love for the prices to drop, and they have
| historically been dropping slowly, but the basic elements
| will cost a certain amount, so there is a price floor. I
| don't know where that is, but it is lower than we've
| seen, because every step in the battery production chain
| has been making a profit up to this point, including the
| miners.
|
| The fact that prices have increased only indicates a
| mismatch between supply and demand, not that the natural
| price needs to be this high, or that it needs to continue
| rising. As I pointed out, everyone was already profitable
| at a lower battery price than what we have today. If
| batteries are expensive because of lithium, more lithium
| mines will open and drop the price. If batteries are
| expensive because the battery makers are price gouging,
| someone else will undercut them.
|
| The main concern for something like this is market
| distortion by patents. If the best way to make batteries
| is locked behind a patent, that can cause prices to be
| unnaturally high. This concern does not apply to
| elemental lithium.
|
| > Higher commodity prices make it viable to extract the
| more inaccessible reserves, but those reserves will only
| be profitable so long as prices remain high.
|
| You're practically quoting my comment to me. I addressed
| that. It is possible that the price will settle higher
| than it is today if those methods play a big role, but it
| won't matter. You don't seem to appreciate how insanely
| cost effective batteries already are today. A modest
| price increase is fine, but it is still illogical to
| _assume_ prices will stay high. Lithium is not hard to
| find. Why would the market settle on expensive extraction
| methods? It is a strange assumption to start from. We're
| not talking about something that's rare.
|
| Either way, the outcome is unchanged unless batteries
| increase in price exponentially, as your earlier comments
| apparently assumed.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| For the second time, there is no "natural price". You
| need to iron this kind of wishful thinking out of your
| head. Companies want to buy more and more lithium, so
| unless you've got some breakthrough that makes mining a
| heck of a lot cheaper the cost will keep going up and up
| as more and more inaccessible reserves need to be
| exploited. If I have a reserve that costs $4/kg to
| operate when the price is $5/kg and another reserve that
| costs $7/kg, I may open the latter if the price rises to
| $8/kg. But if the price drops back down to $5/kg it's
| unprofitable to operate.
|
| Here's a way to articulate this that might better mesh
| with your mental model. The "natural price" of a
| commodity isn't static. If demand increases and the only
| way to meet demand is to use more and more expensive
| mining operations, then this raises the "natural price".
| As per the above example, the "natural price" rose to $8.
| It won't drop back below $8/kg unless either we find a
| way to make mining cheaper, or demand drops back to
| levels that can be satisfied by my cheaper-to-operate
| reserve.
| coder543 wrote:
| You have too many assumptions about the availability of
| lithium, and lack of "easy" reserves. That's the
| fundamental disconnect here. Lithium is not inaccesible,
| and it is super common. The "hard" ways to mine lithium
| aren't _that_ hard.
|
| We're not talking about gold or platinum, where your
| discussion points would be relevant.
|
| I'm not wishing over here. But anyways, I've tried to
| explain the reason why the market disagrees with you, and
| why people are rapidly seeking to integrate batteries
| into the grid and into cars, which would not be possible
| if you were correct about lithium becoming insanely
| expensive.
|
| Battery production will keep scaling at a huge rate, and
| the prices will be fine. A modest price increase is
| irrelevant to anything discussed here today.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Lithium is far from easy to extract. It also needs to be
| refined on-site because its raw form is too low-density
| to economically transport. So most lithium mines require
| large amounts of water to fill brine pools. The number of
| sites that are actually viable to produce lithium are not
| nearly so common.
|
| Again, the market disagrees with _you_ not me. Lithium
| commodity prices are rising, and so are battery prices.
| People are indeed seeking to integrate batteries into the
| grid - I 'm not disputing that. I'm pointing out that
| these batteries are actually becoming _more_ expensive
| [1], not less and it 's unlikely this trend will reverse
| on a dime.
|
| 1. https://www.utilitydive.com/news/new-york-battery-
| storage-co...
| coder543 wrote:
| Commodity prices are rising... causing more mines to
| open... causing more supply... which will cause prices to
| drop. Why do you keep pointing to that? Your argument
| makes no sense. That's how commodities scale.
| onphonenow wrote:
| I'd check out something like oil which is a large and
| high dollar market.
|
| The relationship between production and price is well
| established, and no, production does not move inversely
| to price. This is because the marginal cost in almost any
| of these areas is higher per unit of production as
| production increases. That also of course makes sense
| logically.
|
| Gold as well, same thing. You start by grabbing gold
| nuggets of the ground. The effort to mine more gold has
| not gotten easier, it's gotten harder over time.
| coder543 wrote:
| I already addressed all of this with the difficulty of
| extraction. I even called out gold earlier in the thread,
| possibly more than once.
|
| The abundance of lithium is nothing like the abundance of
| gold, and oil is a different subject altogether because
| we have extracted a truly staggering amount of it, and
| then burned it. We've extracted something like 135
| billion tons of oil, and a "mere" 250 thousand tons of
| gold. So, hundreds of thousands of times more oil than
| gold has been extracted.
|
| Lithium is about 20ppm (parts per million) in the Earth's
| crust. Gold is about 0.001ppm: https://en.wikipedia.org/w
| iki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth...
|
| Lithium is 20 thousand times more abundant than gold,
| roughly.
|
| Lithium is reusable, analogous to how we handle aluminum.
| As demand is ramping up, we will need to ramp up
| extraction, but we're not throwing it away, and
| eventually we will get a lot of our lithium from
| recycling.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > Commodity prices are rising... causing more mines to
| open...
|
| Yes.
|
| > causing more supply...
|
| Yes
|
| > which will cause prices to drop.
|
| Nope! Remember, the expanded supply is only profitable to
| operate at higher prices. So the price will drop _if
| demand drops_ and then supplier will operate the more
| efficient extraction sites. But if demand stays high, so
| will prices.
| coder543 wrote:
| You should be linking to evidence that prices will rise
| uncontrollably if you want to support your argument that
| battery production won't keep increasing.
|
| I will remind you that this is your _absurd_ argument:
|
| > By comparison, the entire world only produces ~400 GWh
| of batteries each year. So it'd only take a decade and a
| half of global battery production to satisfy the storage
| demands of just the USA. The rest of the world would be
| left with zero EV or electronics production for a decade
| and a half and no grid storage to show for it.
|
| > Thanks for the site: it's a good tool to demonstrate
| just how unfeasible energy storage really is.
|
| Which is totally different from "battery prices might
| increase a little", which I have repeatedly indicated is
| not a problem, and I even pointed out that it is a
| possibility a long time upthread from here.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Again we're talking about 6,000 GWh of grid storage for
| _just one country_. And that 's also competing with
| batteries for EVs, and batteries for electronics. That
| site estimate's for storage necessity are also pretty
| optimistic. Most estimates for a completely decarbonized
| grid - not using peaker gas plants - call for weeks of
| storage not days: https://pv-magazine-
| usa.com/2018/03/01/12-hours-energy-stora...
| coder543 wrote:
| And again, battery production is scaling like crazy. That
| is an _undeniable fact_ for now. You 're the one
| speculating that it will suddenly stop, and you have
| presented flimsy evidence _at best_. Your entire argument
| falls apart if batteries continue scaling at a reasonable
| price.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > Your entire argument falls apart if batteries continue
| scaling at a reasonable price.
|
| _If_
| coder543 wrote:
| The _only_ logical choice is to assume that the battery
| industry will keep doing what it has been doing, unless
| you present some strong evidence to the contrary, which
| you have repeatedly failed to do, as has been pointed out
| by myself and others. The commodities are behaving as
| expected, which is to say that they 're rising in the
| face of new demand, since supply hasn't had time to catch
| up.
|
| You're proposing that the sky is falling, but it looks
| just fine to the rest of us.
| [deleted]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| A little off-topic, but has anyone ever developed
| residential hydrogen production / storage solution?
| What's the smallest scale hydrogen storage avaliable?
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Hydrogen is not very scale-sensitive. Many people would
| say it is not safe enough for residences.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > However, the world is also transitioning to Electric
| Vehicles, and most EV manufacturers are offering V2G
| (vehicle to grid) solutions, so millions of EVs can
| contribute
|
| V2G is idiotic. It cost PS10 for full-charge of Tesla in
| UK pre-ukraine. Half of that money is distribution cost,
| not energy cost. What will you earn from buying low,
| selling high in V2G? Let's be generous, say it's PS5.
|
| So the battery lasts 1500 cycles, you are going to make
| PS7500. And the battery costs PS17,000 to replace?
|
| No-one will be damaging their expensive car battery to
| earn fraction of a dollar to earn pennies. For anyone to
| do this, it has to be 2x above break even.
|
| > Lithium is not exactly rare or hard to extract, you can
| even extract lithium from saltwater, so this argument
| seems specious.
|
| You can extract anything from seawater, even gold.
|
| "Using electrochemical methods, comparable to those used
| in electroplating, gold has actually been extracted from
| the ocean, but unfortunately the cost of the process is
| five times the value of the gold obtained."
|
| "It's technically possible to extract lithium from
| seawater," Cui says. "But it's all about cost. And
| currently it's too high."
| coder543 wrote:
| There's no need to be so aggressive. V2G would likely
| operate similar to Net Metering, which the UK (and many
| other countries) does have experience with:
| https://uk.renogy.com/blog/net-metering-for-home-solar-
| in-th...
|
| According to one website that I found, the average
| residential electricity cost in the UK is $0.482/kWh.
| Simple math: 1500 cycles * 75kWh * $0.482/kWh = $54,225
| in offset electric costs, which would _more than_ cover
| the hypothetical battery replacement cost. It is _well
| above_ the 2x break even that you requested.
|
| However, I expect most people do not have electric bills
| that high, so those people would not allow that much of
| their battery to be used by the program, unless they were
| participating in this program for a very long time. They
| would be more than fairly compensated for whatever cycle
| life was used by the net metering program. Yes, I
| recognize that the electricity would have come from the
| grid at some previous point in time in most cases, so
| some adjustments would have to be made to the concept of
| Net Metering to make this a sensible proposal, but there
| are ways to make it work if you don't just declare that
| everyone is a bunch of idiots. Electricity is _much_ more
| valuable to the grid at certain moments in time than
| others. ""Transmission costs"" are irrelevant when the
| grid _needs more power_. Any kind of V2G system would
| involve exporting power _when the grid desperately
| requests it_ , not just at a random hours of the day when
| the grid doesn't even want it. Virtual distributed grid
| batteries are already being proven.[0] This solution can
| definitely be scaled up.
|
| Also, that estimate of battery replacement cost is based
| on the battery magically having _zero marginal value_ at
| the end of its lifecycle in your car, which is not at all
| how things work. A battery that people are unwilling to
| keep using in an EV will still have significant value if
| it is directly transplanted into a stationary storage
| application, but oftentimes, it is just a handful of
| cells that are causing balancing issues, so replacing
| those for a few dollars can restore a lot of missing
| capacity. Even after the battery is done in stationary
| storage, it will still have value in the highly
| concentrated resources which can easily be recycled into
| a new battery pack.
|
| So, no, it would not cost that much to replace the
| battery. Even today, you could throw a used battery pack
| on eBay as a worst case scenario and get thousands of
| bucks for it, but in the future as more of these
| batteries are being cycled through the market, it will be
| more economically viable to have businesses built around
| making this as painless as possible.
|
| If you consider V2G idiotic, then you're effectively
| asserting that any form of grid battery is idiotic
| because those have to work on very similar economics, and
| that is a strange position to hold when we have real
| world examples of grid batteries being _profitable_ even
| today.
|
| > Half of that money is distribution cost, not energy
| cost.
|
| I also have _no idea_ where you got the notion that UK
| electricity costs are 50% transmission fees. It is 3%.[1]
|
| > You can extract anything from seawater, even gold.
|
| I'm not saying seawater is absolutely the best available
| source of lithium, but some people claim to have proven
| real success with it.
|
| "The researchers estimate that their system can extract 1
| kg of lithium from seawater at a cost of $5 (Energy
| Environ. Sci. 2021, DOI: 10.1039/d1ee00354b). "Our
| process is quick, energy efficient, and scalable," Lai
| says. "And the system runs continuously and is compact
| and easy to operate.""
| https://cen.acs.org/materials/inorganic-chemistry/Can-
| seawat...
|
| Using gold in your response the way you did seems
| intended to be an insult, which is completely
| unnecessary. I'm not proposing alchemy.
|
| Maybe you know more than these researchers _whose literal
| job_ is to know about lithium and seawater, and that 's
| fine, but I have never claimed you can extract meaningful
| amounts of gold from seawater. It is infeasible. Lithium
| is _far_ more common than gold, though, which makes a
| huge difference in the feasibility.
|
| [0]: https://electrek.co/2022/09/02/tesla-virtual-power-
| plant-gro...
|
| [1]: https://www.nationalgrid.com/electricity-
| transmission/who-we...
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > I also have no idea where you got the notion that UK
| electricity costs are 50% transmission fees. It is 3%.[1]
|
| I expressed myself incorrectly - I meant that the various
| non-generation costs, like transmission, various
| middlemen and fees, etc. roughly double the cost of
| energy between powerplant selling it and it reaching my
| house.
|
| > Maybe you know more than these researchers whose
| literal job is to know about lithium and seawater
|
| I am just slightly jaded from seeing many research
| breakthroughs, especially in batteries, never make it to
| market, and only really consider something once there has
| been at least one commercial facility operating. My
| understanding is that I can't buy lithium from seawater
| at the moment.
|
| > If you consider V2G idiotic, then you're effectively
| asserting that any form of grid battery is idiotic
|
| On the contrary, I think if you are buying a used car
| battery on the cheap, cycling it optimally and you don't
| need an overpriced Tesla-authorised mechanic to fix it,
| the results should be much better. Safety is less of a
| concern too. Or you can buy Lithium iron phosphate.
|
| I think people are very precious about their cars and
| have many worries about damaging the battery, some of
| them irrational. There are also logistical challenges,
| repair is harder, etc.
|
| I think the economics you outlined are the very best-case
| scenario, with war in Ukraine causing energy crisis and
| assuming nearly free electricity avaliable to charge.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "Lithium is not exactly rare or hard to extract, you can
| even extract lithium from saltwater, so this argument
| seems specious. But, various alternative chemistries are
| being explored which could help in different ways."
|
| Lithium is abundant as far as its total share in the
| Earth's crust goes, but it is my impression that mineable
| concentrations are rather rare, unless you are willing to
| spend obscene amounts of energy on purification. That is
| why only a few countries in the world actually produce
| lithium commercially.
|
| We have some reserves of lithium in Czechia, but they
| would only be economically mineable if the bulk price
| rose significantly (as in, ten times or so), plus the
| mining methods would introduce a lot of poisons into the
| environment. Mining is usually seriously dirty.
| coder543 wrote:
| Until recently, there wasn't much demand for lithium.
| That's the main reason for limited mining, in my opinion.
|
| The cost of lithium was 9% of the cost of a lithium ion
| battery cell according to one analyst last year. Battery
| packs cost more than just the sum of the cells.
|
| If lithium rises in price, it will affect battery prices,
| but a 10x increase would "only" double the cost of the
| battery cells, and the packs would be slightly less
| affected than that.
|
| Realistically, there should be plenty of lithium for less
| than that, but it takes time to ramp, and lithium mining
| does not have to be destructive. The mining can be as
| simple as evaporation ponds in the desert[0]. (You'll
| need refining either way.)
|
| https://www.engadget.com/2019-02-24-the-big-picture-
| lithium-...
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > The mining can be as simple as evaporation ponds in the
| desert[0]. (You'll need refining either way.
|
| The OP you are replying to lives in Czechia, they are not
| blessed with optimal location. Most of the world isn't.
|
| The optimal location is a paradox, it is a desert, At the
| same time it has to have abundance of water for
| extraction and evaporative pools. Very few locations have
| that. Extracting from non-optimal locations costs more.
|
| like 4 people are trying to explain this to you, but you
| keep repeating the same thing
| coder543 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it has almost exclusively been one person
| that has been explaining, and _they_ have received
| numerous rebuttals from other people, but okay.
|
| And no, I did not suggest the person I was replying to
| should do this in Czechia. Every country doesn't need to
| mine every resource. Thanks for throwing in a strawman.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| What is the origin of the claim that lithium makes up 9%
| of the cost of a battery cell? Anode material is the
| majority of the cost, according to this:
| https://www.visualcapitalist.com/breaking-down-the-cost-
| of-a...
|
| In reality it's 50% of the cost, so a 10X increase in
| input price would amount to a 5x increase in cost.
| Battery production has become a resource extraction
| problem.
| coder543 wrote:
| https://www.newsweek.com/precious-metal-values-are-
| raising-b...
|
| > In 2021, lithium comprised 9 percent of the cost of a
| battery cell. Nickel represented 12 percent of the cost.
| But for 2022, those numbers have risen to 13 percent and
| 21 percent, respectively.
|
| I had just glanced at the Google summary, so I only saw
| the first part. Call it 13%, then.
|
| It is not anywhere close to 50%. The cathode is made of
| more than just lithium. 50% is an incorrect
| interpretation of the graphic in the article you linked.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Great, so we have to solve shortages of lithium _and_
| nickel. Nickel 's cost is also up ~3x over the past few
| years: https://ycharts.com/indicators/nickel_price#:~:tex
| t=Nickel%2....
|
| My point remains: battery production has become a
| resource extraction problem. Even completely optimizing
| manufacturing to the point that it costs nothing would
| only reduce the cost of batteries by a quarter.
| coder543 wrote:
| Which just shows that you don't understand commodity
| pricing. If gold was as common and accessible as lithium,
| gold would be a lot cheaper.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| What don't I understand? Ultimately price is determined
| by supply and demand. Gold's supply relative to its
| demand sets its price. If some massive load of goal was
| dumped on the market, we'd expect a downswing with
| increased supply and no commensurate increase in demand
| (although gold being bought by speculators might distort
| this).
|
| We're seeing a big upswing in lithium demand, mostly for
| EVs. And supply isn't catching up leading to higher
| costs, which will in turn lead to higher prices and
| consequently lower demand. Unless greater supply is
| secured or demand is reduced, this increase in price is
| going to persist.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| If the predicate is that mining of a commodity cannot
| ever expand, the how is building new nuclear supposed to
| work? Where does the Uranium and Gadolinium for fuel rods
| come from?
| moloch-hai wrote:
| And tautologies will persist in being tautologies.
|
| Higher prices will result in investment in increased
| production, shift of demand to lower-priced alternatives,
| and investment in alternatives. Increased investment
| results in cheaper and larger production of everything.
|
| Unobtainable lithium is a strange choice of hill to die
| on.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Look at the the lowest point of energy demand. That's
| base load. How big is it relative to the peak of energy
| demand? Depends on the season, but it's usually 70-80% of
| peak demand. So, the vast majority of energy demand is in
| fact base load. I'm really confused about why renewable
| proponents talk about base load all the time - it's
| really not relevant to decarbonization of the grid.
|
| Intermittency of wind and solar aren't just daily: you
| also have longer-term periods of cloud weather blocking
| solar and lower wind speed hampering wind power. Actually
| running a majority renewable grid requires either
| hydroelectricity, or fossil fuels.
|
| The majority of Germany's electricity comes from fossil
| fuels [1]. It's not a mostly renewable grid, occasionally
| supplemented by peaker plants. It's a majority fossil
| fuel grid supplemented by renewables. By comparison,
| here's France's electricity production [2]. One of these
| is a mostly decarbonized grid. The other is a primarily
| fossil fuel grid, supplemented by renewables here and
| there.
|
| > However, the world is also transitioning to Electric
| Vehicles, and most EV manufacturers are offering V2G
| (vehicle to grid) solutions, so millions of EVs can
| contribute a portion of their battery capacity to the
| grid in the future, and the grid can compensate them for
| their contribution.
|
| This is an idea that no sane grid operator would ever
| accept. First of all, most of these vehicles actually
| lose energy in cold weather [3]. And if people leave to
| go on vacation, then we have blackouts because our energy
| storage solution drove away for a week? No to mention,
| plenty of people drive their cars around during the day
| doing chores or work and charge them at night. Those
| people are going to be a net drain on the grid.
|
| > Lithium is not exactly rare or hard to extract, you can
| even extract lithium from saltwater, so this argument
| seems specious. But, various chemistries are being
| explored.
|
| The market demonstrates otherwise. At the end of the day,
| if there's a shortage of lithium and the price goes it up
| it doesn't really matter what people are writing on tech
| forums.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media
| /File:...
|
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France#/media/
| File:F...
|
| 3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34120237
| coder543 wrote:
| > Look at the the lowest point of energy demand. That's
| base load. How big is it relative to the peak of energy
| demand? Depends on the season, but it's usually 70-80% of
| peak demand. So, the vast majority of energy demand is in
| fact base load. I'm really confused about why renewable
| proponents talk about base load all the time - it's
| really not relevant to decarbonization of the grid.
|
| I think this is just a confusion of terminology. What
| "renewable proponents" are talking about is _baseload
| power plants_. To quote the Wikipedia article that you
| linked to:
|
| "Power plants that do not change their power output
| quickly, such as large coal or nuclear plants, are
| generally called baseload power plants."
|
| If you've been missing that key piece of terminology, I
| can see the source of the confusion. People just call
| this "base load" to be short, for various reasons. You
| can criticize this if you want to, but that is what is
| happening.
|
| > The majority of Germany's electricity comes from fossil
| fuels [1]. It's not a mostly renewable grid, occasionally
| supplemented by peaker plants. It's a majority fossil
| fuel grid supplemented by renewables. By comparison,
| here's France's electricity production [2]. One of these
| is a mostly decarbonized grid. The other is a primarily
| fossil fuel grid, supplemented by renewables here and
| there.
|
| This has nothing to do with my previous comment. I have
| no idea what point you're trying to get at.
|
| > This is an idea that no sane grid operator would ever
| accept. First of all, most of these vehicles actually
| lose energy in cold weather [3].
|
| You're really confused about a lot of things in this part
| of the discussion. EVs have less range in winter because
| more of the energy is being used to heat the cabin, and
| that was done with resisitive heating until recently
| (more vehicles are starting to use heat pumps). The grid
| operator would not be insane, except from the point of
| view of a very traditionalist grid operator. The future
| is dynamic.
|
| > The market demonstrates otherwise.
|
| It really doesn't? The market demonstrates that demand
| has risen sharply, and it will take time for production
| to catch up. Every demand spike results in a "shortage".
| Manuel_D wrote:
| "base load power plant" is a meaningless term. Base load
| is a feature of energy demand. Power plants produce
| energy, the same power plant might serve peak load, base
| load, or both.
|
| EVs are not a solution to energy storage. Even ignoring
| the challenge of getting people to hook their cars up to
| the grid, the battery production figures aren't remotely
| close to what we need.
|
| People have been assuming that battery cost will continue
| to decline exponentially. We'll need a century to
| provision just 18 hours of battery storage at current
| rates. Renewable activists hand wave this saying that
| battery production will increase a hundred fold. In
| reality, prices are rising:
| https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-
| prices-....
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| > We'll need a century to provision just 18 hours of
| battery storage at current rates.
|
| That's a weird way of spelling enough batteries were
| produced in 2022 alone (about 760GWh) to replace the
| entire world's nuclear fleet with a renewable mix with
| minimal overprovision, more flexibility to meet peak
| demand and a lower forced outage rate.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z
|
| > Renewable activists hand wave this saying that battery
| production will increase a hundred fold. In reality,
| prices are rising: https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-
| ion-battery-pack-prices-....
|
| And this has nothing to do with reserves and everything
| to do with extraction. The price spike of lithium was a
| combination of unpredicted demand and the supply dip from
| covid (because brine ponds take about 3 years to
| process).
|
| Lithium will be irrelevant to grid storage anyway. There
| are already two GW scale sodium ion factories running and
| the supply chain CATL is building will completely dwarf
| them as it is much larger and compatable with the TWh/yr
| of existing lithium cell production and packaging
| facilities.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| > _People have been assuming that battery cost will
| continue to decline exponentially._
|
| I think the incredible success of the transistor industry
| has created some very unrealistic expectations about the
| pace of technological advance more generally. I know this
| is a fallacy I used to fall for. If a pocket sized
| computer today can beat out a supercomputer the size of a
| small building from when I was a kid, anything seems
| possible. But in reality, the rapid miniaturization of
| transistors is an extraordinary outlier.
| mbesto wrote:
| > EVs have less range in winter because more of the
| energy is being used to heat the cabin, and that was done
| with resisitive heating until recently (more vehicles are
| starting to use heat pumps).
|
| I thought it was this PLUS the fact that lithium
| batteries degrade quicker in freezing temps?
|
| https://www.livescience.com/61334-batteries-die-cold-
| weather...
| coder543 wrote:
| I agree cold has _some_ effects on batteries, but the
| main impact on EV range is related to heating, so linking
| an article on EVs is not very useful when talking about
| stationary storage.
|
| Batteries generate heat when charging and discharging, so
| grid batteries should naturally keep themselves warm, but
| maybe in extreme climates it would be worth adding some
| heat pumps to keep them in the optimal temperature range
| for longevity. It all depends on how the cost
| calculations work out, but it is not some major obstacle.
| fulafel wrote:
| "Base load" is just a description of how demand is
| behaving currently, its now high as we are using fossils
| unsustainably and keeping intra day price variations
| artificially low. It can dip much lower and hourly
| pricing and spot market means the usage adapts to
| production without blackouts. (this also makes storage
| profitable to build where needed)
| scq wrote:
| Hornsdale Power Reserve was nowhere even _close_ to being
| the biggest energy storage facility, even when it was
| constructed. At that time, the biggest facility was the
| Bath County Pumped Storage Station at 24,000 MWh, which
| has since been surpassed again.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Or just take any hydro electric dam. The Swedish hydro
| power currently stores 17.7 TWh.
|
| It is not a battery in how it can fluctuate due to
| natural flow concerns, but some fluctuations are fine.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Dams are geographically limited. You can't just build
| more of them. A fully decarbonized grid's ability to
| build renewables is largely determined by the
| availability of hydroelectricity for dispatchable power.
| Sweden gets ~40% of its electricity from hydro, another
| 40 from nuclear, and 20 from intermittent sources.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| You can increase their peak power production to deal with
| the variability.
|
| For example this hydro plant, about the size of a nuclear
| reactor, maxes out at ~1 GW while the production is on
| average 250 MW.
|
| In other words, it facilitates renewables.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harspr%C3%A5nget_hydroelect
| ric...
| moloch-hai wrote:
| A fully decarbonized grid's ability to build renewables
| is, in fact, _not at all_ determined by the availability
| of (watershed) hydroelectricity.
|
| In particular, hydro storage can be built in hundreds of
| times as many places as watershed hydro generation. And,
| there are numerous other practical storage methods.
|
| Ready combined-cycle gas generation capacity is more
| important, most places. Those will be incrementally
| converted to consume imported synthetic ammonia.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > Ready combined-cycle gas generation capacity is more
| important, most places. Those will be incrementally
| converted to consume imported synthetic ammonia.
|
| Synthetic ammonia that comes from where? Ammonia is
| currently produced by steam reformation, which emits CO2.
| You're talking about electrolyzing water to produce
| hydrogen, and using renewable energy to carry out the
| Haber process. Nobody is using this strategy of energy
| storage, so it's priceless in a very literal sense: there
| is no way to estimate how much such a system would cost.
| I'd take an expensive solution over a priceless solution
| any day.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Synthetic ammonia will come from electric synthetic
| ammonia production plants. A few production-scale plants
| are already under construction, but of course hundreds
| more will be needed. Ammonia will not be, primarily, a
| storage medium, but a transportation medium and fuel,
| although it stores well under light pressure. Any
| tropical country can put up a solar farm and begin
| exporting ammonia to places less blessed with reliable
| sunshine -- for fertilizer, at first.
|
| Insisting technologies that people are already spending
| billions of dollars on building out were not first shown
| to be viable is a peculiar position to take.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Efficiency of producing Ammonia is 15%? How is this ever
| going to be practical?
| moloch-hai wrote:
| When marginal cost of energy is zero, other things than
| energy efficiency become more important. But where is
| this 15% figure coming from?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| You are assuming a very ideal scenario, which is
| dangerous.
|
| Even so, do you have another figure? This is a complex
| molecule, it is naturally inefficient to produce compared
| to hydrogen, which is below 50%.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| > _500 GWh of electricity every hour_
|
| GWh/h, or simply 500 GW ;)
| Gare wrote:
| Not quite the same thing. Watts are power. Watt-hours per
| hour (or jules per hour) are average energy consumption
| during one hour.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| Yes, but in practice Watts are almost always an average
| over some sample period. Generation capacities for power
| plants are given in Watts, not Wh/h. Wh/h gives you a
| hint that the sample period was an hour, but that isn't
| necessarily the case. I don't think Wh/h is the correct
| way to describe the sample period.
| didericis wrote:
| This is highly geographically dependent, but water
| displacement "batteries" that pump water to an elevated
| basin when power is on and then let it run through
| turbines back down to a lowered basin seem like a really
| simple, effective solution that can work at scale.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I don't know what "at scale" means in this context, but
| they certainly do work [0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-
| storage_hydroel...
| didericis wrote:
| By "at scale" I mean building enough pumped storage
| facilities to meet current energy demands when the wind
| isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining. It seems much
| more likely that we could build sufficient pumped storage
| facilities than the kind of battery farms the poster I
| was replying to rightly points out are not likely to meet
| required needs for the foreseeable future, if ever.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| It is not either/or.
|
| It is all/and. There will be many kinds of storage.
| didericis wrote:
| True, yes. It just seems to me like conventional battery
| farms are not going to make much sense in a lot of
| places, and hydro pumped storage will. Another user
| pointed out that the size inefficiency is severe enough
| with hydro pumped storage that it is less grid scale
| suitable than I thought, so that difference between hydro
| pumped storage and conventional battery farms is less
| than I thought. Regardless, energy storage is a _huge_
| problem that's going to require lots of deference to
| practicality and as many simple solutions as possible.
| Frankly I'm not sure it _is_ possible, which is why I'm a
| big advocate for nuclear.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Building out enough storage will be a _huge_ task.
|
| We can't use much of it yet because we haven't the
| renewable generating capacity to charge it from.
| (Charging it from fossil fuels would be beyond stupid.)
| Several varieties are getting cheaper very fast, and new,
| cheaper ones are being invented, so when the time comes
| it will cost a lot less. Likewise, carbon capture:
| building that out now would be stupid if it diverted
| money that could be spent building renewables that
| displace carbon emission.
|
| It is also why building nukes is stupid: they displace
| way less carbon emissions, per dollar, than renewables,
| and first spend a decade displacing none at all. For the
| price of the coal burned waiting for the nuke to come on
| line, you could build that much solar, never mind what
| you are wasting on building the nuke, and it would start
| displacing carbon emissions almost immediately.
|
| Batteries and pumped hydro are very far from the only
| practical storage media. But the assertion you read that
| pumped hydro does not scale is deliberately deceptive.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| I would read Tom Murphy's posts from a different light.
| His message has consistently been 'unbounded exponentials
| aren't real, why are you pretending they are?'.
|
| In that light 'pumped hydro can't scale' means 'stop
| trying to use this for Petawatt hours of energy storage
| you idiot, you'll destroy everything'.
|
| Some of his more recent posts have been worryingly easy
| to coopt by the 'maek moar fossil fuels and nuclear'
| crowd, which his previous posts indicate he should be
| even more strongly opposed to.
|
| The general message of degrowth and steady state economy
| is positive even if 'pumped hydro can't scale
| indefinitely' sounds a bit like 'pumped hydro can't
| decarbonize the current scale of the economy', and he
| gets the scale required to maintain status quo
| consumption a bit wrong.
|
| I do wish he'd make this distinction clearer though.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| I would be satisfied to see him stick to facts.
| lazide wrote:
| That depends on the geography.
|
| Bangladesh, The Netherlands, Kansas, maybe Texas, etc?
| No, not useful.
|
| Norway, Wyoming, Idaho, California, Switzerland, Nevada,
| Arizona, etc.? Oh yeah. Very doable.
| plank wrote:
| My personal pet idea: a big 'tower' on the seafloor. Yes,
| costs are immense, but scaling would really work well.
| (Making the 'well' or tower twice as big would not make
| the cost double).
|
| In ascii art: ------| |----
| | | |++|
|
| With '| |' the walls of the well or tower, --- the
| sealevel, and ++ the water inside the well. Energy would
| be gained through letting seawater go 'into' the
| well/water tower. (Edit: attempt to make ascii art work)
| moloch-hai wrote:
| You don't need a tower. A boat with a winch and a weight
| does the job cheaply. For extra credit, more weights.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Limited by the displaced water weight. Prone to storm
| damage. But the general idea could work and you could
| even do it entirely under water, saving you from having
| to dig out a mineshaft, just sink a bunch of caissons to
| create an underwater tower. As long as they stack and can
| be re-inforced so they don't end up shearing under the
| pressure of flowing water. Maybe even open up the sides
| to a lattice to reduce that resistance.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Existing supertankers can displace in the _hundreds of
| thousands_ of tons. New, they cost under $100M. Scrap,
| much less.
|
| They are not bothered much by weather, in normal
| operation. With that much weight hanging well below the
| surface, they would be very stable. (Racked together side
| by side, moreso.) Think of it as a very long oil
| platform. Those endure any weather with no difficulty.
|
| No need for anything attached to the bottom except anchor
| chains.
|
| When planning ocean operation, make sure _almost
| everything_ is at or well above the surface, and
| everything complicated (motor /generator, winch, power
| conversion) is well protected from exposure. Ocean
| deployments that expose expensive stuff to wave action or
| put it underwater fail, reliably. (Expect tidal
| generation that puts generators underwater to fail
| spectacularly.)
|
| Offshore wind has the nacelle well encapsulated and
| everything that moves far above the waves. Nothing is
| underwater except the pilings, the end of the support
| post, and a wire.
| didericis wrote:
| Yep, I tried to acknowledge that in the original comment
| when I said it's geographically dependent.
|
| It still seems like the only solution that currently
| exists and actually works on the scale required. I'm not
| sure what realistic solutions are for regions where hydro
| pumped storage is not a viable option.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| A handful of hours storage, 60% curtailment (with most of
| the surplus used to create hydrogen and such for chemical
| feedstock) and a small amount of HVDC leaves a remainder
| small enough that meeting it with biogas and existing
| hydro is possible, meeting it with hudrogen is not
| costly, or meeting it with LNG is not a huge problem.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z
|
| The world produces about 3TW of electricity, 2022's
| battery production was 760GWh and it's growing 30-50%
| yoy.
|
| Ideally degrowth happens, but while we negotiate that,
| the |bhattery industry is at the scale required and is
| rapidly shedding critical mineral requirements (sodium
| ion is at GWh scale now, and much larger supply chains
| with all abundant materials come online in june).
| RhodesianHunter wrote:
| It does not scale.
|
| https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/11/pump-up-the-storage/
| moloch-hai wrote:
| The article is foolish from top to bottom.
|
| It says exactly one right thing: you can put a reservoir
| on a hilltop, and the "head" is the height of the hill,
| not the depth of the reservoir.
|
| You do not need a mountain. You do not need a high
| valley. It is cheap to build an earthen dike around the
| top of a hill, leveling off the hilltop peak for
| material.
|
| The hill does not need to be steep; a shallow slope just
| means a longer penstock, which costs more.
|
| A 300-meter hill is high enough for practical use. In
| most cases only a few hours' storage is plenty; you only
| need enough to make firing up a gas generator an
| occasional event.
| didericis wrote:
| Good article. I stand corrected.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| It is not a good article, at all. See above. It is
| cleverly written to fool the unwary.
| didericis wrote:
| I'll back out then/leave the debate to those who have the
| time to sort through all of this. The gist about the
| enormous amount of space needed in that article seemed
| accurate/more than I thought.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| OK if by "highly geographically dependent" you mean "
| _not_ highly geographically dependent ".
|
| You need a hill, but there are a very, very large number
| of hills. Most usually you need to build an earthen dike
| around the top of the hill, although often a natural
| feature allows it to be shorter.
|
| The reservoir does not need to be deep because the "head"
| is from it to the bottom of the hill, or even to the
| water table well below that.
|
| The reservoir or reservoirs are good places to float
| solar farms.
| lazide wrote:
| Kansas and the Netherlands would like a word.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Both have plenty of transmission lines to places with
| hills.
| didericis wrote:
| I forget what country was trying to build a bunch of
| these but an article popped up on here about this a while
| back and they cited lack of suitable locations as one of
| the main barriers for building more.
|
| The most ideal locations are natural that require minimal
| land reshaping. Some places in the world have a lot of
| suitable locations like that. Others don't.
|
| But despite that it still seems much more feasible to
| build lots of hydro pump stations like that than it does
| to build other forms of battery farms.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Places with not many hills will of course prefer other
| storage media.
|
| Places with lots of hills will also prefer other storage
| media if they turn out to be cheaper. It is far from
| clear yet how costs will settle out. It is anyway not
| time yet to build more than just enough storage to shift
| the few hours from peak generation to peak use.
| pydry wrote:
| A near 100% renewable grid doesnt require as much storage
| as you'd think:
|
| https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-
| renewables-g...
|
| This model projects that a 98% solar/wind/hydro grid is
| possible for Australia by building an additional 450GWh
| of storage. 1.3x snowy 2 (which is 350GWh).
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Unfortunately, Snow 2's storage figures are rather
| misleading. That 350 GWh cannot be used daily, that's its
| total storage capacity which takes a month and a half to
| refill. The cyclic capacity of Snowy 2 - as in, the
| storage capacity that I can pump back _into_ the facility
| using excess renewable power - is only ~40 GWh.
|
| And again, this is geographically limited storage system:
| pumped hydro requires just the right geography of an
| upper and lower reservoir spaced not too far apart. Not
| too bad if you're a sparsely populated country with huge
| amounts of land per capita. But it isn't a solution for
| most countries.
| pydry wrote:
| >Not too bad if you're a sparsely populated country with
| huge amounts of land per capita.
|
| Even a pretty skeptical assessment of Snowy 2 believes
| it's 240 GWh:
|
| https://majorprojects.planningportal.nsw.gov.au/prweb/PRR
| est...
|
| "If based on the active storage volume of the 'lesser
| reservoir', Talbingo, the theoretical energy storage
| capacity is about 240 GWh"
|
| Once again this is just JUST ONE project, already under
| construction and it already will cover somewhere between
| 30-40% of the energy storage requirements to get the
| _entire_ country to reach a 98% solar /wind powered grid.
|
| Dismissing the possibility of this order of magnitude of
| storage as simply _impossible_ as the OP did when it is
| _already_ under construction is asinine.
|
| >And again, this is geographically limited storage
| system: pumped hydro requires just the right geography of
| an upper and lower reservoir spaced not too far apart.
|
| There have been multiple studies on this. Unlike hydro,
| the geography for pumped storage is not rare throughout
| most of the world.
|
| This is the most perplexing talking point against pumped
| storage, and frankly, reminds me of when people used to
| pick up on pro nuclear/carbon lobbies sneering at
| solar/wind for being infeasible because it was < 1% of
| the grid back in 2014.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| It will be used where it is a good solution. Where it is
| not, others will be used. Use of other methods elsewhere
| does not detract from its usefulness in places suited to
| it.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Australia is 1 - Huge, low density, lots of choice where
| to place renewables, 3 - has some of the best places for
| solar in the world, 4 - good solar production in winter.
|
| Try Austria, and find that solar production falls 5-10x
| in winter, there is almost no good location for wind, and
| the problem is much harder.
| pydry wrote:
| Austria has just the right geography for pumped storage
| and is connected to a Europe-wide grid generating plenty
| of excess solar and wind.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Indeed, central and eastern Europe are some of the worst
| places on Earth for renewable energy. They are "nuclear's
| last stand". What this means, though, is that in a post-
| fossil world energy intensive industries will simply move
| elsewhere. Why build your aluminum smelter in an energy
| ghetto?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I would add Canada and Alaska, but I think you are right,
| only Europe has high population and poor conditions for
| renewables - a terrible combination.
|
| This is not about industry, they need to run their
| economy, residential heating, etc.
| switchbak wrote:
| Canada isn't great for many renewables, but hydro
| supplies most of its power. There's only a couple outlier
| provinces using coal.
| yawaramin wrote:
| Most of Ontario's power comes from nuclear energy. And
| Ontario is the biggest economic zone in Canada.
| tchaffee wrote:
| That's wrong. 34% of Ontario's power comes from nuclear
| energy.
| evancox100 wrote:
| Every fact you are saying may be true, but "fossil fuels
| are a bigger cause of blackouts than renewables" doesn't
| follow from the facts your gave, you're just assuming it
| is true. That is the last thing I will say on this.
| coder543 wrote:
| > you're just assuming it is true
|
| I'm not assuming it. I'm referring to the very real,
| major blackouts that have occurred in the US over the
| past couple of years. These events have plenty of
| reliable sources that tell exactly what happened.
|
| In the Texas blackouts, the problems were coal and gas
| plants going offline due to the cold that they weren't
| winterized against. It had nothing to do with Wind or
| Solar failing unexpectedly, despite the governor's claims
| early in the blackouts.
|
| In the recent rolling blackouts in the Southeast, TVA and
| Duke Energy reported that the cause was their coal and
| gas plants freezing up. Nothing to do with renewables
| again.
|
| I cannot recall any major blackouts caused by the fossil
| fuel plants operating normally while renewables failed to
| produce on schedule. I would love to see some examples,
| if they exist.
|
| The Cleantechnica article that I linked to earlier (which
| you surely didn't read) also provided quotes on this
| exact topic, and that analysis agrees with my own, FWIW.
|
| I could dig into the specifics of these events and
| provide more sources, but you don't seem likely to care.
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| I agree with most of what you say, but renewables can't
| be counted on, so they can never be blamed. This is
| tautologically true and yet a meaningless point.
|
| If a hospital loses power to lifesaving equipment, 100%
| of the time it is due to a failure of backup generators.
| coder543 wrote:
| > I agree with most of what you say, but renewables can't
| be counted on, so they can never be blamed.
|
| Renewables are fairly predictable, so they _can_ be
| counted on. The production is variable, but not
| unreliable or unpredictable. It 's an important
| distinction, and it gives more time for the grid to
| coordinate with Demand Response (or peaker plants) to
| match load and production.
|
| Obviously the weather models involved are still
| improving, but for solar especially, it's easy to predict
| when the sun will go down. Cloud coverage and wind
| forecasting are active areas of development to make
| things easier and more predictable for everyone.
| loeg wrote:
| > Renewables are fairly predictable, so they can be
| counted on. The production is variable, but not
| unreliable or unpredictable. It's an important
| distinction, and it gives more time for the grid to
| coordinate with Demand Response (or peaker plants) to
| match load and production.
|
| Was Germany's months-long period of low wind in 2022
| predictable in this sense? Was Germany supposed to stop
| using electricity for months as Demand Reduction? I buy
| that you can maybe store enough power for overnight
| demand if solar generates enough during the day (at some
| potentially large cost), but wind can just stop blowing
| for _weeks_. Storage cannot solve that without outrageous
| cost, or blackouts.
| coder543 wrote:
| I can't find any actual accounts of the wind stopping
| entirely for "weeks" in Germany. It is a theoretical
| possibility. Periods of "low wind" are fully expected in
| summer, since there is usually more wind power generated
| in winter, although I'm not sure when you're referring to
| specifically. Similarly, solar produces more power in
| summer and less in winter.
|
| Critically, we have the ability to transmit power over
| distance. That's the whole point of having a grid,
| instead of just having each person operating off-grid and
| only having access to the resources that are within arm's
| reach of their house. Individual solar panels may be
| under a cloud or individual wind turbines may experience
| no wind, but it is tremendously less likely for entire
| regions to experience this for an extended period of
| time.
|
| The US has encountered several winter storms that brought
| a number of our fossil fuel plants to a halt for days at
| a time, causing blackouts. That's not theoretical.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| Perhaps unintentionally, you changed your argument from
| "fossil fuels are responsible for blackouts" to " I
| cannot recall any major blackouts caused by the fossil
| fuel plants operating normally while renewables failed to
| produce on schedule". These are different arguments.
|
| I am very much on team renewable, but the only reason
| those fossil fuel plants are needed in the first place is
| because of the very nature of renewables. So it's
| disingenuous to say that fossil fuels are responsible for
| blackouts when it's the dispatchability of renewables
| that required fossil fuel burning in the first place.
|
| I don't think the GP meant anything other than this.
| coder543 wrote:
| > So it's disingenuous to say that fossil fuels are
| responsible for blackouts when it's the dispatchability
| of renewables that required fossil fuel burning in the
| first place.
|
| No... as I recall, in the Texas blackouts, the renewables
| actually generated _more_ power than originally
| forecasted. If the natural gas and coal plants go offline
| completely, that has nothing to do with the
| dispatchability of renewables. The fossil fuel plants
| would be part of the grid regardless, because it takes
| decades for those plants to reach the end of their
| lifecycle and be decommissioned.
|
| The grid _relies_ on every type of power doing what it
| says it will do. It is possible to predict when solar and
| wind will deliver power, and how much they will deliver.
| The stability of the grid relies on that. The fossil fuel
| plants were the ones that had problems. If they had
| produced power as they normally do, there would have been
| no blackout.
|
| > These are different arguments.
|
| Do you still think I changed my argument? I'm fairly sure
| I didn't, but I can see how you reached that conclusion
| without the clarifications above.
| mbesto wrote:
| Energy is fungible, so if both fossil and renewables are
| both online and producing energy how can you blame one
| over the other? My understanding is that neither source
| of energy was winterized to _transmit_ the energy to the
| grid, not that they were unable to produce. So blaming
| one or the other is a red herring.
|
| > But unlike utilities under traditional models, they
| don't ensure that the resources can deliver power under
| adverse conditions, they don't require that generators
| have secured firm fuel supplies, and they don't make sure
| the resources will be ready and available to operate.[0]
|
| The question should squarely be "can renewables create
| the same base load and peak load required to run the
| entire demand of the grid"? From there than we can talk
| about the other topics such as what is required to
| deliver the energy, which is cheaper to operate, etc.
|
| [0] https://judithcurry.com/2021/02/18/assigning-blame-
| for-the-b...
| coder543 wrote:
| > My understanding is that neither source of energy was
| winterized to transmit the energy to the grid, not that
| they were unable to produce.
|
| Transmission was not the problem in any of these
| blackouts that I'm referring to. Powerlines failing
| affects extremely localized parts of the distribution
| network, but the coal and gas plants literally stopped
| producing. It was a production failure.
|
| https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/natural-gas-
| power-st...
|
| https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/texas-wind-
| turbines-...
|
| On the other question, that goes back to how we
| desperately need energy storage and demand response.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| You may not have intended to change your argument, but I
| think you were assuming evancox100 was arguing against
| renewables where I thought they were just making a point
| about your language. I can't speak for them or you, but I
| think their comment was fair in the absence of the
| clarity you've now provided.
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| > the renewables actually generated more power than
| originally forecasted.
|
| They were forecasted to produce 6% and actually made 8%,
| vs 41% from the prior week. You can't blame renewables in
| this case, but you aren't presenting facts in an unbiased
| way.
| coder543 wrote:
| My primary point is that renewables are working the way
| that they say they will work. Certain people refuse to
| admit that fossil fuel plants struggle in adverse
| conditions, but then rant about renewables being somehow
| unreliable.
|
| Renewable integration into the grid is heavily dependent
| on forecasting. You may think it is biased, but I see
| that statistic as things going better than forecasted.
| With proper forecasting, you can overbuild and make up
| for lower production. With proper forecasting, you can
| employ demand response.
|
| When the fossil fuel plants turn off completely and
| unexpectedly, there's nothing you can do, because no one
| planned for that. The grid was relying on the power
| plants, and they weren't there. If the grid had planned
| for the unreliability of those plants, the grid might've
| had more renewables to make up for it, who knows.
|
| People building renewables plan for the variability. As
| I've mentioned, energy storage is essential for the long
| term.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > there's nothing you can do, because no one planned for
| that
|
| You're comparing a future of renewables to a present of
| non-renewables. You could also add in additional
| generation to cover the gap you mentioned in the future
| as well.
| [deleted]
| criley2 wrote:
| 95% of stored energy in the US is hydro-electric pump
| storage. People really have no understanding of how the
| grid works. We don't just run gas plants all night.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| Gas plants aren't "stored energy", you're comparing
| apples to oranges. 95% of stored energy amounts to little
| more than bupkis, the US grid doesn't run off stored
| energy at night.
| barney54 wrote:
| Natural gas in pipelines is stored energy. A pile of coal
| at a coal plant is stored energy. Nuclear fuel roads are
| stored energy.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| These are not stored energy in the "stored energy" sense,
| you can't feed solar power into a gas plant and get it
| back out at night.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_storage
| pfdietz wrote:
| "Stockpiled" would be a better term.
| calaphos wrote:
| Sadly LCOE is a very bad metric when looking at
| intermittent and non dispatchable generation sources in a
| power grid. Especially so as they approach a meaningful
| fraction of total generation. The market goal of power
| generation after all is not to produce as much kWh as
| possible but to satisfy demand at a specific time. System
| level LCOE which take dispatch into account are a better
| way of looking at power generation costs.
|
| Here is a pretty good paper on the topic, albeit a bit
| older so some parameters might have changed slightly.
|
| https://research.google/pubs/pub46289/
| pfdietz wrote:
| System level numbers are dependent on the details of the
| system. LCOE has the advantage that it's independent of
| the system. Of course everyone understands that in
| specific cases one has to look at details local in time
| and space.
|
| Ah, and from that abstract:
|
| "DOSCOE shows that to cost-effectively remove the last
| 10-20% of fossil fuels requires a moderate price on
| carbon and either low-cost nuclear power or carbon
| capture and sequestration. Alternatively, a hypothetical
| zero-carbon source needs to have a net present cost less
| than $2200/kW to displace existing fossil-fuel plants."
|
| A combined cycle power plant burning hydrogen satisfies
| that last requirement. Studies that purport to show that
| nuclear is needed for the last 10-20% do so by ignoring
| hydrogen (and other e-fuels), which slam that door in
| nuclear's face.
| epistasis wrote:
| > cost increases are mainly due to the rise in construction
| material prices as well as financing costs; nothing inherent
| to nuclear power or the novel technology itself.
|
| I would argue that construction is inherent to nuclear power,
| and is in fact the biggest draw back about nuclear power.
|
| SMRs were _the_ attempt to mitigate most of the disadvantages
| of a constructed product, versus a manufactured product.
|
| There's still significant work needed to convert nuclear into
| a technology that has a learning curve. I think this work has
| some of the best insights about which technologies do or do
| not experience learning curves with price drops:
|
| https://www.volts.wtf/p/learning-curves-will-lead-to-
| extreme...
| [deleted]
| theptip wrote:
| Yeah this is a big problem with fusion too, it requires a
| really big concrete footprint which limits how cheap the
| power can be.
| epistasis wrote:
| And the welding, soooo much welding...
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| Too much concrete is probably the smallest of fusions
| problems. The tritium fuel cycle is pretty much
| impossible to solve economically.
|
| We already know hydrogen infrastructure isn't very cost
| effective. So imagine radioactive hydrogen.
| [deleted]
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I think the idea behind these technologies is they're
| industrialized and continued production will see cost of
| production and operations fall rapidly over time. It's unfair
| to judge a new tech based on the performance relative to long
| established and optimized tech.
| huijzer wrote:
| Isn't the whole point of NuScale to get a plant in production
| to produce reactors and then have economies of scale deal with
| the price?
| moloch-hai wrote:
| That is the story today, and will be until it turns out not
| to work out that way. Then it will be another story.
| scythe wrote:
| The report cites recent large increases in the price of
| structural steel and copper wire as driving the cost increases,
| together with higher interest rates. It would seem to follow
| that other sources of power which rely on steel and copper, and
| which are financed by loans in dollars -- most of them, last I
| checked -- would be similarly affected. Nuclear power does
| usually involve a lot more concrete than alternatives, but this
| was not cited as a cost driver.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| What other, renewable, sources being constructed rely on much
| steel?
|
| Solar just now uses a lot of aluminum. Wind uses a lot of
| fiberglass.
|
| Both use a far bit of copper, although aluminum works in wind
| turbines and transmission lines.
| scythe wrote:
| Source? I would imagine rooftop panels use aluminum, but
| I'd be surprised if the solar farms did, since it's more
| expensive and there's no particular advantage. Wind turbine
| _blades_ are fiberglass, but it seems likely the towers
| themselves would be steel (although there are relatively
| few towers, making this less important), since again it has
| excellent cost-to-strength ratio.
|
| But I was also referring to natural gas, coal, hydro, etc
| -- steel is ubiquitous.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Wind towers use a surprisingly large amount of zinc. I
| assume this is sacrificial, to protect the steel against
| corrosion. But, yes, a wind turbine tower is a steel pipe
| bolted to a concrete base.
|
| Solar panel mounting rail hardware I priced were all
| aluminum. On a solar farm it would not be surprising if
| the uprights were steel. Floating on a reservoir,
| supports are probably fiberglass.
|
| It would be a mistake to build most solar farms not
| floating, but that doesn't mean it won't happen.
| pfdietz wrote:
| I presume magnesium could be used instead of zinc for
| corrosion protection.
|
| We're now seeing solar systems where the modules are
| simply laid flat on the ground, with a few steel anchors.
| gene-h wrote:
| And the article notes that the cost increases were due to
| factors such as the price of steel and steel fabrication
| increasing. Perhaps the cost of building new reactors like
| Vogtle has gone up similarly?
| runesofdoom wrote:
| To quote the late Admiral Rickover, "An academic reactor or
| reactor plant almost always has the following basic
| characteristics: (1) It is simple. (2) It is small. (3) It is
| cheap (4) It is light. (5) It can be built very quickly. (6) It
| is very flexible in purpose ('omnibus reactor'). (7) Very little
| development is required. It will use mostly off-the-shelf
| components. (8) The reactor is in the study phase. It is not
| being built now.
|
| "On the other hand, a practical reactor plant can be
| distinguished by the following characteristics: (1) It is being
| built now. (2) It is behind schedule. (3) It is requiring an
| immense amount of development on apparently trivial items.
| Corrosion, in particular, is a problem. (4) It is very expensive.
| (5) It takes a long time to build because of the engineering
| development problems. (6) It is large. (7) It is heavy. (8) It is
| complicated."
|
| From the article, "The first module is expected to be operational
| by 2029 with full plant operation the following year."
| credit_guy wrote:
| In this particular case, what is this quote supposed to imply?
| [deleted]
| eganist wrote:
| > In this particular case, what is this quote supposed to
| imply?
|
| I don't know that it's supposed to _imply_ anything but
| rather shine a light on the different acceptance criteria for
| a study reactor v. one that generates power for, in his case,
| mission critical needs (though power for homes and businesses
| would be life-critical, so it 's up there).
|
| If a study reactor breaks, even though there's a possible
| risk to life depending on _how_ it fails, you can endure the
| downtime for a bit while bringing it back up. If a practical
| reactor breaks, people are far more likely to die.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| A study reactor is also designed to break. It is meant to
| be easily opened up and examined after a fault. It is meant
| to validate the core process but also explore edge case
| situations. So it needs to fail gracefully. That is a more
| complex beast than any final product.
| likeabbas wrote:
| That's why it's important to have a multitude of energy
| sources on a competitive power grid. The nice thing about
| SMRs is you can build enough of them to make the overall
| output consistent as needed, even with a higher tolerance
| for failure of any individual reactor.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| A higher tolerance for random failure, but extreme
| exposure to expensive repairs for systematic failure.
|
| Anything $M you have to fix in N of them costs Nx$M.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| That small, modular, cheap reactors have been promised many
| times for decades and have never panned out.
| [deleted]
| docandrew wrote:
| We use them in nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, so
| the tech seems feasible - not sure why commercial use for
| small reactors is such a difficult stretch.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| The problem with a small reactor is that there's a lot of
| per reactor cost. Things like security, communicating
| with the grid, and paperwork don't get cheaper with a
| smaller reactor so the percent of cost going to overhead
| goes up.
| rippercushions wrote:
| Nuclear submarines cost on the order of $6B a pop, so I'd
| hesitate to describe anything about them as "cheap". We
| use nuclear reactors in them because there's no other
| power source that's as compact and self-contained.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Plus worst case for a nuclear submarine is that you flood
| the reactor with sea water if you have a loss of cooling.
| sebcat wrote:
| Surely there are worse cases for a sub than this?
| nine_k wrote:
| The idea is that you are not going to have a meltdown
| even in a badly malfunctioning reactor.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Is it? It's not at all difficult to stock enough seawater
| to flood a terrestrial plant. What's distinguishing the
| submarine?
| HPsquared wrote:
| Smaller size than commercial power station reactors,
| easier to keep cool.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| This contradicts the comment I responded to, though. The
| scenario is that we've already failed to keep it cool.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| There is less of it to cool.
| [deleted]
| LgWoodenBadger wrote:
| Wikipedia says a 688 costs less than $2B in 2021 dollars.
| And that's all in for the submarine on top of the
| reactor.
| gghhzzgghhzz wrote:
| don't they normally run on highly enriched fuel?
|
| I'm not sure there we currently have the supply chain,
| security and ability to deal with geopolitical fallout of
| using the same fuel for mass domestic use.
| credit_guy wrote:
| Naval reactors usually run on weapons grade nuclear fuel,
| but not always.
|
| The French K15 reactor runs on 7% enriched fuel.
| Klinky wrote:
| Sub and ship reactors are effectively sealed units that
| are not intended to be refueled on a regular basis. They
| can be serviced and refueled eventually, but it is a
| major overhaul to do so.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refueling_and_overhaul
| idontwantthis wrote:
| The exception proves the rule. If we have them already
| for subs, but still don't have them on land then they
| must be bad ideas when cost matters.
| nashashmi wrote:
| It is not built yet. So it is theoretical. ... And Academic.
| credit_guy wrote:
| In that case Rickover's observations don't apply at all:
|
| (1) It is simple -> nobody said NuScale's reactor is
| simple. It took NRC about 6 years to approve it, and in the
| process NuScale had to produce about half a million pages
| of documentation
|
| (2) It is small -> not really. It is smaller than full size
| reactors, but then it delivers only 50 MW, not 1GW. Per
| unit of electricity delivered, it is most likely somewhat
| larger than a full size nuclear power plant
|
| (3) It is cheap -> relative to what? it's not that cheap.
| If anything, see the comments in this thread, it appears to
| be expensive
|
| (4) It is light -> this does not apply here. Rickover was
| concerned with submarines, where weight was important. This
| is not a reactor designed for submarines. I don't know how
| light it is, but nobody cares about this
|
| (5) It can be built very quickly -> well, if the first one
| is supposed to get online in 2029, that does not seem to be
| very quick, does it?
|
| (6) It is very flexible in purpose ('omnibus reactor') ->
| NuScale's reactor is designed to generate electricity.
| That's it. What is flexibility in purpose?
|
| (7) Very little development is required -> NuScale has
| already worked for one decade on this. It will take until
| the end of this decade to see one come online. Nobody
| claimed "very little development is required" It will use
| mostly off-the-shelf components -> not really. NuScale will
| use a Korean manufacturer that is accredited by NRC to
| manufacture componenets for nuclear reactors. There's
| nothing off-the-shelf about this.
|
| (8) The reactor is in the study phase. It is not being
| built now. -> it depends what "being built now" means.
| NuScale can't start building before it has all the
| approvals. It is working on getting these approvals, if
| this counts as "being built now", then it's being built
| now.
|
| More to the point. Rickover was talking about a completely
| different context. People venturing cheap ideas, while he
| needed concrete reactors for his submarines. We are in a
| different world. NRC is extraordinarily stringent. The fact
| that NuScale got their approval is a phenomenal
| achievement. This should not be dismissed with the same
| tired old quote from Rickover that gets posted on HN almost
| every time we talk about nuclear reactors.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| > What is flexibility in purpose?
|
| Reactors can generate electricity, generate fission
| products (for biomedical uses, for physics uses, for
| weapons, etc), or both
|
| Not really applicable here though
| einpoklum wrote:
| Ideas of the top of my head:
|
| * Base-load vs turn on during peaks
|
| * Simplicity vs shorter bring-up time
|
| * Maximization of generation capacity vs efficiency, for
| a given volume of the plant
|
| etc.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I'll answer that with another quote:
|
| "In theory there is no difference between theory and
| practice, in practice there is."
| credit_guy wrote:
| Why the flippant quote?
| jacquesm wrote:
| It's not flippant at all. It is the essence of the much
| longer version and the real lesson contained therein, you
| asked a question and I answered it. If you see it as
| flippant then that might reflect on you. Your other
| comment further down in this thread is flippant, even
| though it is a much longer one: you reject out of hand
| what is contained within these words without taking the
| time to ponder how they _do_ apply to the matter at hand.
| credit_guy wrote:
| > If you see it as flippant then that might reflect on
| you.
|
| It does reflect on me. It reflects the fact that I can't
| read minds.
|
| You gave a widely known quote, and in your mind it was
| crystal clear what you meant. But to other people, who
| can't read your mind, it just sound flippant.
|
| It sounds like you think NuScale is a bunch of
| theoreticians. And that with your remark you are trying
| to put down their decade-long quest to achieve something.
|
| Maybe it does not sound flippant to you, but I assure
| you, it is flippant.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The message, to expand on it is that they are in the
| earlier stages of their development and the safe bet is
| that by the time it is all said and done things will be
| much more in line with what we've come to expect from the
| nuclear industry, including any and all of the statements
| already in line with that today.
|
| So by the time it is done it will be more expensive,
| likely heavier, likely way late, more complex and
| narrower in its possible range of applications. It's not
| a law, it is an observation made over many nuclear
| deployments and to the best of my knowledge there isn't a
| single project that was an exception so I expect it to be
| true this time around as well. Which is why you can
| safely ignore any of the touted advantages _until the
| product is ready to be fielded in quantity_. Assuming it
| ever will be fielded in quantity, plenty of designs were
| slated for large numbers of deployment and ended up being
| one-offs or at best single digit runs because of
| unforeseen issues with the design.
| credit_guy wrote:
| Fair enough.
|
| But although the most dangerous words in history are
| "this time is different", there are reasons to believe
| things could be different this time:
|
| 1. the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. NuScale got the
| design approval from them. That means this design is as
| good as frozen. The NRC is an extraordinarily
| conservative organization. If NuScale, or anyone who
| licenses their technology, will try to diverge from the
| approved design by a bit, ..., well that's not even a
| possibility, why should we think of consequences. So this
| design, by the time is in production, won't be heavier,
| more complex, or narrower in scope, because it will be
| this exact design. It may be more expensive, late, in
| fewer numbers than expected, however.
|
| 2. Conservativeness of the design. This reactor is just a
| pressurized water reactor design. The most widely used
| today. It's in a small form factor and modular, but
| otherwise there's nothing revolutionary or radical about
| it.
|
| 3. History. After about 70 years of reactor operation,
| the NRC has seen lots and lots of failure modes. The
| number of new failure modes to be discovered is not zero
| for sure, but it asymptotically approaches zero. The
| reason for a lot of past construction delays was the
| moving of the goalposts by the NRC, but that was due to
| the discovery of new failure modes, not to any malicious
| intent. The goalposts may still move between now and
| 2029, but much less.
|
| 4. Politics. In the past few decades, at least in the US,
| the left was against nuclear power, and the right was for
| it. Now it appears a large number on the left have
| embraced nuclear power, so some form of bipartisanship
| has been achieved. This is quite unprecedented. Will it
| last? Probably not forever, but it might last a few
| election cycles, and this could be enough for this SMR
| design to achieve some escape velocity.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Reality is harder than fiction. And people are bad at
| maintaining pipes.
| AviationAtom wrote:
| Our new nuclear reactor here in Georgia (Plant Votgle unit 3),
| the first new one in 29 (?) years, is a great example.
|
| Cost and time overruns galore. It's going to end up costing
| almost double what they projected.
|
| The time overrun is attributed to Westinghouse's bankruptcy,
| but Westinghouse's bankruptcy was also tied to trying to take
| on this project.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-accounting-westin...
| accrual wrote:
| I wonder what causes the cost projections to be so far off.
| Not enough time or research into what the final structure
| will actually cost? Overly optimistic projections to help
| ensure the project is approved and started, thus getting the
| "foot in the door" to complete it?
| enslavedrobot wrote:
| It's rule number one of the big physics playbook. Make
| outrageous claims that funders can't verify cause they
| ain't good at math. Then let the good times roll!
|
| See the LHC, ITER, James Webb, F35, quantum computing etc.
| AviationAtom wrote:
| I think the biggest cost is compliance. Paranoia is the
| maximum after the various incidents.
| raverbashing wrote:
| After SpaceX showed how it is possible to build rockets much
| cheaper than previous ones I attribute the size and complexity
| of current reactors to outdated mentality by their designers
|
| Setting goals like "maximum efficiency" and trying to bring
| cost per MWh too low is a self-defeating exercise
|
| Example: designs that require active cooling.
| zrail wrote:
| Kind of a fraught comparison. SpaceX intentionally learned by
| blowing rockets up, figuring out what went wrong, fixing, and
| trying again.
|
| The same learning process applied to nuclear reactors is
| problematic at best.
| raverbashing wrote:
| You obviously don't need to blow up reactors to learn stuff
|
| Build, prototype and see how parts react (for example,
| corrosion) way before an emergency happens. Build a first
| version, then improve on a second version. Iterations will
| work better with smaller reactors than with bigger ones
|
| And you do need some research into materials, but that's
| part of the process and evolution.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| > _You obviously don 't need to blow up reactors to learn
| stuff_
|
| Some people do. Did, even.
| raverbashing wrote:
| If only Coal plant accidents were taken with such knee-
| jerk reaction
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_
| fly...
| moloch-hai wrote:
| We have seven+ decades of experience now. We are certain
| of two things. (1) Price of reactor n+1 is not less than
| n's; (2) every number produced by the nuke industry is a
| lie.
| ikrenji wrote:
| this could be said about computers back in the day too. they
| used to take up entire floors, now they fit on your pocket. i
| suspect something similar applies for tech in general and
| reactors also
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Cars are mature tech. Can you fit one in your pocket?
| z3phyr wrote:
| Yeah. RC cars can fit in your pockets. But you can't be the
| passengers.
| p1mrx wrote:
| Sure, you can buy a 1:76 scale electric car for around $80.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| In other words, no.
| rcme wrote:
| What is a car? Is it 4 wheels, a driver seat, passenger
| seat, three read seats, and a trunk? Or is it an efficient
| means for getting from point A to B on paved roadways? If a
| "car" is the latter, then there have been plenty of
| advancements. Electric scooters and bikes are two pieces of
| tech you can very easily take with you.
|
| Your car analogy doesn't really work. It's like saying
| "desktop computers are mature tech, can I fit one in my
| pocket?" No, but you can fit a smartphone in your pocket,
| which does many of the same things a desktop computer can
| do.
| djtango wrote:
| Oof, reactor in my pocket is a tasty prospect. Personal
| computing and personal transport could get super exciting.
| Basically a grown up way of saying Iron Man suits one day...
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Keeping an ionizing radiation source in one's front pocket
| could improve the gene pool.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The chances of that being an improvement are extremely
| slim at best.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Individuals willing to do it self-selecting against
| contributing to the next generation could be a great
| boon.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Nuclear reactors are almost as old as computer, yet we have
| seen nothing like the scaling we have in the semiconductor
| industry. Part of this is because they half of the power
| plant is essentially a steam turbine just like in most other
| thermal power plants. That technology is essentially
| centuries old. Not much scaling to be done there.
| mindslight wrote:
| Does this qualify for the 30% residential energy tax credit?
| Asking for a friend.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| If by 30% tax credit you mean they are being handed enough
| money to pay for 3x the net capacity in renewables and then
| having their energy price subsidized by an amount higher than
| the total cost of unsubsidized renewables on top of that, and
| that rate payers must pay however much they spend on it no
| matter how far over budget it goes, then yes.
| pkaye wrote:
| This video is a tour of a NuScale facility and control room.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brr5j50umYA
| programd wrote:
| Looking at the control room displays they use imperial units
| all over the place - lb/ft/F. I'm very surprised that none of
| that stuff is metric. I wonder if this is part of some
| regulatory requirement.
| comicjk wrote:
| These old units are common in engineering applications across
| North America, the US especially. When I was in chemical
| engineering school, we had to be effectively bilingual in
| terms of units. We even used some bizarre units like the lb-
| mol, defined as the number of atoms in 12 lbs of carbon-12
| (ie 454 times more than a gram mol).
| alexb_ wrote:
| Stupid question: the article says that each module can produce 50
| megawatts. What is the time of that number? Like how many people
| can have their energy needs met by one module?
| credit_guy wrote:
| One way to think about this is that the maximum power of a
| Tesla Supercharger is 250 kW. So with one such SMR you can
| supply the electricity to power 200 EVs at the maximum possible
| power.
|
| Also notice that 50 MW is only the approved level. Each module
| can actually produce more, but NRC only approved 50 MW so far.
| Towards the end of the article you can see that NuScale is
| applying for uprating the modules to 77 MW, and it's expected
| the NRC will review this in 2024.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| A typical household uses something on the order of 1-2 MWh of
| power a month. This is something like 2-3 KW on average. 1 MW
| can thus support something like 300-500 households, and 50 MW
| can support 15000-25000 households, i.e. small to medium size
| town.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| That may suffice for where they are installing the first one.
| [1] The county has 19k people. I assume it will be tied into
| the grid to shed some load from the other power plants.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_County,_Wyoming
| e12e wrote:
| 50 MW should be able to power a small town (aroud 80 000
| people) AFAIK. (ed: or half that, see sibling comment - i saw
| that an avg us house use up a kwh in 50 minutes - but that
| might be with gas heating etc. So "full electric might very
| well be more in the 30-40k ppl range).
| nynx wrote:
| Watts is a measure of energy over time.
| [deleted]
| kube-system wrote:
| [deleted]
| coder543 wrote:
| Technically, the person you replied to is correct. Energy /
| time (energy over time) is power. Power * time is energy.
|
| If you had a battery with 20kWh and it was empty after two
| hours, you would know that it was providing 10kW, which is
| a measure of the energy released over time, aka. average
| power.
|
| I don't think nynx's comment made things much clearer to
| anyone, though.
| kube-system wrote:
| Ah, yeah, I interpreted it differently as well.
| Emerson_Vento wrote:
| 1W=1J/s ... energy per unit time.
| fulafel wrote:
| There are necessary energy needs only biologically, adults run
| at about 100 watts. So if humans could use electricity as
| energy source directly (or indirectly without losses) instead
| of biomass diet, 50 MW would supply about 500k people.
|
| Electricity for our everyday applications is nice, but its
| demand is elastic (depends on price) and there is no rule of
| thumb about consumption per person outside of just measuring
| what various societies happen to use currently, but that's bad
| data to plan by as we are hugely overusing and underpricing
| fossils. Some communities don't use any electricity, etc.
| coder543 wrote:
| Watts are power, Watt-hours or Joules are energy.
|
| 50 megawatts (MW) of power is (perhaps obviously) able to
| supply 50 megawatt-hours (MWh) of energy every hour.
|
| According to a google search, the average US residential
| customer consumes 886kWh (0.9MWh) of energy per month.
|
| 50MW -> approximately 36.5GWh / month
|
| 36.5GWh / (886kWh/home) -> 41196 homes
|
| So, about 42,000 homes worth of power could be supplied each
| month in theory, but there are a lot of asterisks on that. (One
| example of an asterisk: residential load factors are really
| low. Another quick google search suggests Phoenix, AZ homes
| have a load factor of 33%, so 50MW might only be good for
| 16,000 homes if you want to avoid blackouts. There are other
| factors that would affect the number further, but 16k is
| probably a good approximation.)
| coolspot wrote:
| In the future, with electric cars and gas cooking ban,
| average energy consumption of a household will go up
| significantly, but perhaps will be somewhat offset by local
| solar/wind generation and/or battery storage.
| jsight wrote:
| If you think in terms of electric semi trucks, that's enough to
| charge 40 of them at a time.
| panick21_ wrote:
| While I don't really think PWR in a module is that huge of an
| improvment. They did help to develop some certification that will
| help many other SMR companies.
|
| Congrats on getting this certification threw. Its a huge
| achievment even with a PWR.
|
| Sadly if it wasnt a PWR it would essentially have been impossible
| in the US.
| exhilaration wrote:
| I had to google PWR and it stands for pressurized water reactor
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressurized_water_reactor
|
| What are the alternatives?
| HPsquared wrote:
| Gas cooled reactors, CANDU reactors, molten salt (fuel and/or
| cooling), fast (breeder) reactors, molten metal cooling, etc.
| Probably some others too.
| hangonhn wrote:
| The other common alternative are boiling water
| reactors:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_water_reactor
| credit_guy wrote:
| The Department of Energy is working with a number of startups
| on various reactors designs (including NuScale). [1] is a
| very nice summary.
|
| [1] https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2020/05/f74/Ad
| van...
| sofixa wrote:
| For instance my favourite reactor type - lead bismuth cooled
| fast reactors. They've only been actually used once, on the
| Soviet "Alfa" class submarines, and have some interesting
| advantages (lead naturally blocks gamma radiation, in case of
| a leak temperatures will go down and the coolant will
| solidify thus preventing radiation leaks, high efficiency due
| to the high temperatures, etc.), but are pretty expensive and
| impractical (the coolant solidifies if temperatures get lower
| than expected, thus you need specialised equipment to keep
| them hot/operate them 24/7).
|
| There's also thorium, molten salt reactors.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| NaK cooled reactors have an advantage of not freezing when
| you shut them down since NaK freezes at -12C. However Nak
| explodes when mixed with water...
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