New Solar Thermal Farm Boasts Enormous Scale
As we sit here in mid-2016, there are two camps in the overall migration to renewable energy: those who say it can’t be done, and those in the process of doing it.
Here’s an article about a team that operates in the latter of the two: a massive solar farm in Morocco. Needless to say, Northern Africa represents a wonderful opportunity for solar projects of enormous scale, insofar as the land is inexpensive, the solar insolation is extremely consistent, and the location enjoys great proximity to Europe, home of almost 15% of the world’s energy consumption.
Interestingly, the technology is solar thermal, aka concentrated solar power, deploying 500 thousand parabolic mirrors, a working fluid that reaches 700 degrees F, and molten salt energy storage, making it operational 24 hours a day.
To those who say that renewable energy can’t play a major role in decarbonizing our energy, a simple request: just look.
“As we sit here in mid-2016, there are two camps in the overall migration to renewable energy: those who say it can’t be done, and those in the process of doing it.”
They may be doing it, but there is no project that demonstrates the ability to provide reliable power at all times. That is where the problem lies, a problem for which there is no adequately demonstrated solution and is generally glossed over. It may be some time before the limitations are actually inescapably demonstrated.
The linked-to article was interesting. From the article:
“The plant even keeps going past daylight hours by using molten salt, which is great at retaining and transporting large amounts of heat.”
That’s very wonderful, but the article does not state for how many hours past daylight the plant is able to generate power. Considering its importance, that is a very strange item to omit, an omission which is typical. The longest storage time that I am aware of for any plant is 24 hours although by now there may be plants that have more storage than that. However, because clouds can occur over very large areas, even if only rarely, there has to be sufficient storage to deal with that. Unfortunately, the practicality of having enough storage to deal with unusual and prolonged weather conditions has not been demonstrated. And, concentrated solar systems are especially vulnerable to even light cloudiness because they need direct sunlight. PV systems will operate during light cloudiness although at reduced output.
From Wikipedia:
“The plant will be able to store solar energy in the form of heated molten salt, allowing for production of electricity into the night. Phase 1 comes with a full-load molten salt storage capacity of 3 hours. The planned Phase 2 (Noor 2 and 3 plants), due to open in 2017 and 2018 will store energy for up to eight hours.[3] It will cover an area of 2,500 hectares (6,178 acres).”
Here is the link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouarzazate_Solar_Power_Station
Eight hours of storage is exceedingly insufficient. Obviously it will depend on CO2 emitting fossil fueled plants to generate power for much of the time. It’s my guess that that country is using Diesel power. At least Diesel power can be quickly ramped up and down to cover times when solar is not available, and that is exactly what they will do.
Part of the plant uses wet cooling. How great a problem that, and the problem of water required to keep the mirrors clean are, I don’t know. But in many desert areas the need for water is a serious problem. The power tower solar system is able to generate higher temperatures than the trough mirror system and therefore is more amiable to air cooling.
I greatly fear that there will be more cheering as solar and wind systems are built and that the intermittent nature of such systems will not be acknowledged as a problem until renewable penetration reaches a certain point beyond which it cannot go. Then, there will be massive finger pointing. Many of those who favored renewables will deny that they ever did just as those who supported the Vietnam war now deny that they ever did.
P.S.
I found an article in the “Guardian” that states that the solar plant will be supplemented with hydro and wind power. Considering that there is hydro power available, it may be that building the solar system was a reasonable thing to do. However, from the linked-to article was, from the technical standpoint, exceedingly poorly written. It was impossible to tell from it that the solar system worked in conjunction with hydro power. In the field of power and energy, most of the article are poorly written by journalists with no scientific background.
If the hydro system has insufficient water to provide enough power continuously, combining it with a solar system could result in adequate continuous and reliable power. Getting enough information to determine whether that is the case would be very difficult.
Frank,
Several times you have brought up the issue of storage and you seem to be advocating several days of storage. We could compare this to a coal fired power plant. Fossil fuel also represents a type of energy storage, but it is not unlimited. Your car can run out of gas and a coal fired power plant could suffer an interruption in its constant train loads supplying coal.
Engineers that build such facilities certainly have to measure the risk of a failure in energy supply and its economic consequences against the economics of building more storage. This same type of analysis is similar for those who design solar equipment. The likelihood of a sunless day in the desert may be on the order of 1 day in 20 years. With that kind of risk more than enough heat storage for early morning hours and late afternoon hours may be hard to justify if the plant is only operating 1 or 2 shifts. Even for a 24/7 facility in the desert more than 16 hours of storage may be a difficult economic choice.
There also seems to be some fixture in the human mind that says if we can’t do the same thing in every location it is worthless. On the contrary siting is an important part of renewable energy it means we actually have to look at the natural world and see what it offers and how we can adapt to it rather than trying to change the world to our design.
Solar insolation is a valuable resource that has been largely ignored as we pursued our love affair with fossil fuels. Using the sun in the desert, the wind on the plains, hydroelectric in wet areas and geothermal in volcanic areas is efficient especially when used for industrial processes that don’t require changing the form of the energy to electricity.
I will have to agree that water cooling seems a difficult choice for a desert. Air cooling has been substituted in other locations. Co-generation is the most efficient approach when possible. Someday we may have long term stable chemical thermal storage batteries that could be “charged” at such a facility.
Overall the article is “popular” with lots of pictures rather than descriptive or information based. It is the kind of overview that encourages you to dig a little deeper and at least for you it seems to have been successful.
Coal-fired plants usually have weeks of fuel stockpiled. A nuclear plant buttons up its reactor vessel with enough fuel to run until the next scheduled fueling, usually 18-24 months away. Natural gas plants must typically hold fuel oil in case their just-in-time pipeline deliveries are curtailed or interrupted, and they are the essential backup for wind and PV; renewables + gas represent a radical loss of energy security.
A day doesn’t have to be “sunless” to be a problem. So you get 50% today. What makes up that 50%, when you haven’t been able to fill your storage for the next night? What do you do on a string of days when sunlight falls short? The same applies to wind.
Very little of either the USA or Europe resemble Morocco.
You need some historical perspective here. I suggest looking up Farrington Daniels’ 1964 book. He details many efforts to use the solar resource in places like Egypt and Chile. All of those efforts were eventually abandoned. Another banquet for thought is the electrification of Holland. Holland used wind power to reclaim land from the North Sea for centuries. With that vast depth of experience, did they run their grid on it? Hell, no.
Wind and solar are intermittent. Intermittency of energy supply makes some jobs very, very, very hard. Greens gloss over this, but if you actually care about getting the job done rather than being ideologically correct you can’t ignore it.
Breath,
It’s not only clouds that affect solar systems. In some desert areas there are also sand storms. They also can greatly reduce the power generated by concentrated solar systems although PV systems would be less affected.
I don’t know what the risk of clouds is in the Morocco desert; obviously the frequency of cloudiness would depend on the particular desert. In some deserts it can be cloudy for a few days at a time. That happens in the Anza Borrego desert in California. There is even enough rain in the Anza Borrego desert to cause cactus flowers to bloom, although not every year. I have actually hiked in that desert and seen the flowers.
In Morocco, there is hydro power which may be able to assume the load WHEN heat storage for the solar plant is insufficient which will happen because, according to the article, storage is sufficient for only eight hours. The availability of hydro power is a special situation. It’s output can be quickly and efficiently ramped up and down to compensate for the variable output of renewable systems.
Not all concentrating solar systems can be built in deserts. In fact, one solar system propose for California was killed for environmental reasons. Some solar systems may well need sufficient storage for SEVERAL WEEKS to allow for unusual situations which may occur less than once per decade.
It is not clear that all power decisions are made by engineers. Sometimes engineers have little choice but to follow decisions made by politicians.
Frank and Engineer, you both seem to raise some interesting objections to renewable energy.
Morocco is not Europe or the US. What applies there may not be translatable to northern climates. Available natural resources are different.
This goes to the fundamental philosophical question of our trying to build civilization separate from our environment or as a joint venture with it. Searching for one solution that fits every situation leads us to fossil fuels and nuclear energy. Renewable energy must take careful stock of the environment. The solution in one place is likely to be less efficient or not work at all in another.
The former are more likely to see humanity and directing our own course without any sense of mystery or spiritual basis for existence. An energy environmentalist would tend to apply renewable and sustainable solutions first and if they fail to satisfy then alternative and finally perhaps even fossil fuel solutions might be applied.
The industrial and scientific age has promoted a self reliant perspective. Capitalism is a good fit for this philosophy.
Prior ages were more spiritually and environmentally based. We may be seeing some resurgence of this viewpoint. Regardless of the advocacy of a movie like “Avatar” both perspectives seem to offer advantages and disadvantages.
Frank and Engineer cont:
The quality of fossil fuels to store energy, seems to be largely unmentioned as their energy density is emphasized. Nuclear energy holds even more potential on both accounts. Both of these energy sources also encourage a concentration of economic and political power as over the last 5000 years the political rulers also tended to control the source of available energy (not necessarily the same as the visible heads of state,) and this seems to continue today.
If we are trying to achieve a system similar to fossil fuels or nuclear energy with all these qualities using renewable energy we are likely to fail. It will be much more difficult and more subject to failures. If and when we do develop economic electrical and heat storage batteries, it is likely that economic and political power will rest in that stored wealth in a similar way that banks hold economic power today.
Renewable energy may ultimately encourage or demand a change in philosophy to a more democratic world view. In such a world weeks of energy storage may become less significant that today. Unfortunately it is very difficult to stand in that world, and with that perspective look back on what we have today.
Solar energy is a valuable resource that is not well understood in all its ramifications. We understand a bit of what we want, electricity. We sometimes fail to appreciate that solar energy is what drives most of life on the planet. Solar energy used directly for heating, to drive the wind, to drive the weather is essential. The discovery of electricity may be thousands of years old if the implications of ancient batteries might be trusted. Our present day adaptation of solar energy to electricity started with making electricity from wind (derrived from solar energy) about 150 years ago. Our usage for lighting and motors is really in a kind of infancy. We have much further to go that may presently be hard to imagine. Capturing ambient solar energy in addition to direct sunlight will be one step along the way.
Holland wisely used wind energy mechanically rather than first converting it to electricity (for hundred’s of years) Presently they use electric pumps but take advantage of being able to pump when the wind is blowing in a kind of energy storage/time shaving fashion. Truly we need more work on energy storage.
So the challenge then is to find a path that leads to the future while solving the challenges of the present. It is a bit like the challenge of how to grow crops while engaging in war that may have been faced by more ancient civilizations.
This begs the question: why is northern, cloudy Germany pursuing an energy policy which requires conditions like Morocco? Did nobody consult any scientists or experts in electric grid operations?
You beg the question: are you pushing a “joint venture” or a hostile takeover, and is it even possible to make either of them work?
You should know it can’t. Just take home heating. With over 5 quadrillion BTU of natural gas alone consumed for heating, but only 0.53 quads of wood grown every year, even total exploitation falls far short of needs. To think otherwise requires ignorance of the past, like the deforestation of Europe in search of fuel and materials. Energy consumption was far lower then than today. Partnership or expolitation, we cannot grow our way out of our energy problems.
You mention these in the same breath as if they share any significant properties. The ONLY things they have in common are that they both produce on demand, and they both generate significant waste heat (as do all solar technologies). This is a category error.
In other words, “renewables” are a philosophical/ideological imperative, not a technical necessity. They can’t even accomplish the ends claimed for them.
I reject your ideology. I want to preserve the natural spaces of the USA so that I can enjoy them and save their unique biomes, not turn them into monoculture biomass plantations in a “partnership”. I would rather leave the wind free to blow where it would, not try to harvest every last watt from the weather systems pushing it.
There’s something funny about nature. The birth of our solar system, with all its heavy elements forged in dying stars, gave us a gift of actinide elements. Life, for all of its amazing creativity and variety, has no use for these; it treats them mostly as toxic substances to be expelled. Left to themselves they turn into stable but toxic lead, which is poisonous forever.
This gift can be turned into vast amounts of energy that scarcely affects nature at all. If we were so inclined, we could even go back through our dumps full of coal ash and recover enough uranium and thorium to produce many times the energy released by burning the coal. Burning that coal the first time dumped more radium and radon into the air than the radioactivity that a nuclear plant is allowed to release. If that didn’t kill nature, nothing further we do with it is going to change much. Nuclear power lets us live lightly on the earth, doing our own thing while leaving much more of nature to be itself.
I am, for lack of a better term, an “ecomodernist”. Nuclear power can light, heat and provide fresh water for entire cities; considering that a nuclear aircraft carrier is effectively a floating city, this has been proven many times over. Nuclear power heated as well as lit what is now the Idaho National Laboratory, from 1964 to 1994. All of this happened without burning any coal, oil or natural gas. No wells or pipelines were involved, and the mines are minuscule. Best of all, nuclear power uses only a fraction of the steel and concrete required for solar or wind technologies.
Last but not least, how is it possible to be concerned about global warming, and NOT be pro-nuclear?
I’m sorry, but this is bunk. Over-regulation destroys small enterprises and consolidates them into entities big enough to cope with the overhead. That is the situation of nuclear power in today’s USA; it was not the situation pre-NRC. Nuclear fuel is extremely cheap (about 0.2¢/kWh of heat) and requires no monopoly infrastructure of rails or pipelines to ship it. Back in the 1960’s, nuclear power was growing rapidly and was projected to replace coal because it was cheaper both to run and to build.
The forces of rent-seekers saw this coming, buried the nuclear industry under costly and punitive regulations, and headed off the threat. Had anyone been able to form a joint stock corporation and build their own nuclear power plant, those rent-seekers would be out of business today. Sad to say, “environmentalists” are responsible for the results because they uncritically accepted the bogus claims and acted as the front groups.
Renewables mean whoever controls the land, controls all the energy as well. It goes straight to feudalism.
If you don’t understand that trying to rely on solar power on a clear winter’s night at 45°N means you freeze to death, you understand nothing.
***”we cannot grow our way out of our energy problems.”
We can “grow” into new energy solutions by applying more efficiency, finding new energy solutions, and making existing energy technologies economically viable or we could reduce the population.
***”Searching for one solution that fits every situation leads us to fossil fuels and nuclear energy.”
You mention these in the same breath as if they share any significant properties.”
The do share the same two qualities:
1 They are concentrated energy sources which we sometimes describe as “energy dense.”
2. They come with energy storage.
Renewable energy in contrast tends to be diffuse and needs to be subsequently concentrated to be useful. Renewable energy also has no innate energy storage and must be used as it is captured or some additional means of energy storage must be applied.
*** “In other words, “renewables” are a philosophical/ideological imperative, not a technical necessity.”
Rather I would say that renewable energy fits a philosophy and are not strictly a means to only one goal. They are trying to satisfy two goals, energy and pollution/environmental considerations. They certainly seem far more difficult to apply. Some would say that maintaining the environment is a “technological necessity” that has been largely assumed and ignored. If you can’t breath you can’t work.
***”I reject your ideology. I want to preserve the natural spaces of the USA…” I think you latch on to a few terms that you don’t appreciate and label it “my ideology.”
There are environmentalists who want to control nature and those who want to preserve it. These are actions, but perhaps both should flow from a careful consideration of the environment which is all I am suggesting… an observation of nature as oppose to the somewhat childish perspective of doing what we want with the assumption that it doesn’t exist or will simply cooperate in whatever we do. Whatever the benefits of nuclear power, and you certainly put forward a strong case for them, it remains a solution that works in opposition to the environment.
For someone who wants to consider the environment first this represents a hazard in philosophy and application. If after considering the environment nuclear is the only viable option then it is the solution. But as it is very easy to disregard the environment and implement nuclear solutions for every situation large and small. This will tend to kill other options and tend to kill an environmental consideration. Eventually it will even kill an appreciation for the environment as well, which was your original justification for nuclear power. Nuclear power does not appreciate or understand the human resource and this leads to risks of accidents and direction.
I suppose you could say Nuclear and fossil fuels share a third quality in that they tend to be applied without too much regard for the environment. Because the power is independent of the environment engineering implications of the environment tend to be ignored. And so we have nuclear plants on waterways to provide cooling without sufficient consideration for the effect of climate and severe events will have on the operation of nuclear power plants.
Renewable energy by contrast has to take the environment into consideration first. No, a solar facility in Canada is not going to have the same output as one in Morocco but this does not eliminate the possibility that it could be engineered to be economical.
You’re handwaving again (and I should have written “farm”, not “grow”).
1. “Efficiency” is bogus. Amory Lovins has been pushing “negawatts” for 40 years or so, and energy consumption has only gone UP. Jevons’ paradox explains why, if you are able to understand why the dogma is wrong.
Do you really think you can “efficiency” the needs of the billions of people who don’t even have electricity today? When Greens wire up a village in India with PV and batteries, they demand “real electricity” that can run refrigerators and televisions.
2. “New energy solutions”… like the only proven-viable discovery in the 20th century, fission power? We have like negative 30 years to fix the climate problem without major damage (that means we needed to start cutting emissions about the time of the second OPEC price shock). What do you have that works TODAY and can provide electricity and heat without combustion backup, at scale, when and where needed?
3. “Making existing energy technologies economically viable”. More handwavium. Which technologies, why aren’t they viable, what does it take to fix them? In the case of wind and solar all you need is control of the weather and to eliminate nights. Anyone who could manage such a feat is a god in fact if not in name. Are you literally reduced to PRAYING for solutions?
You first. But for the sake of the USA, I’m willing to return all post-1965 immigrants and their offspring to their ancestral countries. That will slash the US population as well as energy use, because the countries they came from have much lower per-capita consumption.
You take it as axiomatic that we can substitute for that concentration and storage ourselves. You show no sign of allowing any questions about that, and you don’t do math so you can’t check your assumptions anyway.
I’ll give you the straight dope from an engineer: it is NOT possible to do it ourselves. The cost in materials and in energy itself is too high, and the energy return on the invested energy can even be negative. People have been trying to get the sun and the wind to power civilization literally for centuries. Wood and dangerous, dirty COAL, for all their faults, turned out to be superior workhorses. That energy storage is very, very important.
But it IS a means to only one goal. It is demonstrably a failure at eliminating fossil fuel; “renewable” Denmark’s grid emits at many times the level of France and Sweden. It is not a fix for climate problems, air pollution, dumping of ash, or anything else except one thing: making some people feel virtuous about “connecting to nature”, or something like that.
As an Ecomodernist, I deny that we must take from nature to connect to it. To the extent that we can leave nature to be nature and not a servant of humans, we have a better chance to appreciate it. Taking our energy from things nature does not need and cannot use is better than massive interventions in what were once forests, grasslands and free-flowing breezes.
Nuclear power has the lightest touch on the environment of any energy source we have. Fossil fuels leave massive wastes and often scars on the land. Solar is inhospitable to plant life, taking its energy. Wind kills flying animals and its power lines and access roads fragment wildlife habitat, among other ills.
When we have a nuclear problem and evacuate in fear, nature improves. Nature moves in when humans move out. Rare wild horses flourish around Chernobyl, and massive catfish grow in its cooling canals.
Respect the atom. Don’t fear it.
You make several excellent points here, but your first one on energy efficiency is fallacious. Please see: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/02/16/207532/debunking-jevons-paradox-jim-barrett/.
Barrett’s data contradicts his conclusions, and you only bothered to read the latter. Money quote:
Barrett goes on and on for several paragraphs about WHY that happened, and how people afforded it, but the paradox is intact: as efficiency went up, so did energy consumption as more people found it affordable.
There is a limit, of course: when the need is saturated people will stop buying more of something. The vast majority of people aren’t going to eat more than 3 meals a day. THEN efficiency will displace consumption.
Oftimes it will just shift it to some other need. Most buildings in Sweden are heated by electricity. Efficiency mandates reduced consumption. What did people do when they weren’t in need of much electricity to heat their houses? They used it to heat their sidewalks and driveways instead, to replace the labor of shoveling snow.
Sweden’s nuclear/hydro grid emits roughly 20 grams of CO2 per kWh. If the Swedes want to use electricity to melt snow, more power to them… literally. The idiot Danes and Germans, with their romantic notions of “natural” power, should have to pay by the gram.
Here is an interesting post on Brave New Climate which contains important information:
https://bravenewclimate.com/2016/05/01/open-thread-24/#comment-458450
Let’s see if blockquotes work here (I hate it when there’s no list of permitted HTML and no preview. Dammit, it’s $CURRENT_YEAR, get with it!)
There are THREE camps in the overall migration to carbon-free energy:
1. Those who claim it cannot or should not be done,
2. Those who insist it must ONLY be done with wind and solar (but so far can only point to success stories using mostly hydro), and
3. Those who have done it on a foundation of nuclear power, like Sweden, France and Ontario.
I’m still waiting for the pushers of ruinables to show me an example of an electric grid, let alone an industrial country, that runs exclusively on wind and solar. It’s EASY to do with nuclear, and you can even heat city-sized areas in cold climates with the spent steam (much of the current Idaho National Laboratory was heated by steam from EBR-II for 30 years). But despite the documented nuclear success stories, the shrieks of fear at the mere suggestion of splitting atoms prove that they’re not actually serious about de-carbonization; they’re into a romantic “back to nature” ideology that is simply impossible for mankind to achieve.
Engineer, While nuclear energy is certainly an “alternative” to fossil fuels it could only be considered “renewable” in some stretched and narrow definition of the term. Certainly it is not either “sustainable” or “green.” Here are some suggested definitions: http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?doc_id=209565&dfpPParams=ind_184,aid_209565&dfpLayout=blog&dfpPParams=ind_184,aid_209565&dfpLayout=blog
This is not to say NE is “bad” but simply a different kind of alternative energy that is not “renewable,” “sustainable,” or “green,” as it is presently implemented.
From the linked-to article:
“Nuclear energy is one example, since the available fissionable material on the planet is finite. ”
I suppose that we have to define finite. The oceans contain uranium which has been leached from the earth by streams which run into the ocean. Thus, the uranium in the ocean would be continuously replenished as we extracted it to use for nuclear power, and that can be done. The amount available is so great that it is inconceivable that we could ever exhaust it. That would be especially clear if we were using a better nuclear technology and fuel cycle which would generate far less “waste” because it would use the uranium fuel at least 90 times more efficiently than our current nuclear technology.
Thorium, which can also be used in nuclear reactors designed for it, occurs with rare earth elements and is generally treated as waste. There has been enough thorium discarded to provide for our energy needs for more than a century and more is available. It is about four times as abundant as uranium.
So technically I suppose that because uranium and thorium lack an infinite supply, using them for energy is not sustainable. However, for most practical purposes, they could be considered sustainable because of the huge supply available compared with the rate at which we would use them.
As for being green, why shouldn’t nuclear power be considered green? Wind and solar power are not totally benign. Current wind generators use rare earth elements in their magnets. Extracting the rare earth elements from the ore uses dangerous chemicals which have done considerable environmental damage in China. It is partly because of the dangerous chemicals used that mining and refining rare earth elements is not done here in the U.S. and China has a virtual monopoly on them. Moreover, wind generators kill birds and bats.
Similarly, solar power can be shown not to be totally environmentally benign although I shall not go into the details unless requested to do so. So it seems that nuclear power is being held to higher standards than wind and solar power else it would also be considered to be green.
Certainly when we are an advocate all possibilities seem presently available no matter if they are technologically mature or economically viable. I appreciate your optimism.
But I am also quite comfortable with nuclear power being labeled as an “alternative” energy source and feel no particular need to give it equal footing with “sustainable,” “renewable” or “green” resources. To apply those labels seems to create more confusion rather than clarity. There are also no doubt situations where it may be an advantage to not be a “sustainable,” “renewable” or “green” resource.
While there is some validity to your arguments they depend upon perspective and with the wrong crowd tend to promote resentment. It is very easy to overstate your case.
Rivers add about 32,000 tons of uranium to the world’s oceans every year.
The sum of all human energy consumption is equivalent to the fission of approximately 5000 tons of uranium per year.
Nuclear power is just as sustainable as the hydrological cycle, meaning it is as sustainable as life on earth.
“This goes to the fundamental philosophical question of our trying to build civilization separate from our environment or as a joint venture with it.”
…. An engineer is given the problem of providing energy for heat, light and power for “something” plant in “anywhere” county.
A. Common business practice today says you design/source the cheapest components to get the job done. “something” and “anywhere” do not enter too much into the consideration.
B. We could look at something plant to see what processes might be available for resource reintegration (like co-generation and energy recovery, and insulation) We could look at the site in “anywhere” to see what resources are naturally available. Perhaps the only economically viable option is to site the facility to take some advantage of passive solar heating and cooling. Perhaps solar panels will be designed into the structure (correct pitch for the roof) Perhaps the economics of geothermal heating/AC will be reviewed.
This second perspective (B)isn’t routinely done or presented to a customer. It is considered off the table and not an essential part of the considerations. This is why it is a philosophical distinction, but it could be a procedural review if the philosophy of a society changed to embrace the environment first rather than what we are building first.
But I am not presently going further than to say it is a distinction approach not necessarily in solutions.
At least they are doing it right, if indeed, it is oversized enough to power the community day and night. The salt requires higher temps than the kind of 2 axis parabolic solar in California, therefore, more efficient (and i guess, more precise).
What would really be cool is something i heard from a gen 4 nuclear proponent, to melt silicon (of some type) and get to like 1,300 degrees C heat storage. This way (RE and advanced nuclear, and solid state batteries, yet to be developed) we could ditch the fossil fuels ALTOGETHER.
You may be thinking of the silicon heat-battery portion of this concept:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301930343_Ultra_high_temperature_latent_heat_energy_storage_and_thermophotovoltaic_energy_conversion
Thermophotovoltaics are not as efficient as combined-cycle gas turbines, and even 45% is a very poor figure of merit compared to chemical batteries. It’s quite a bit better than the thermal efficiency of Ivanpah, though.
Engineer-Poet, “Sensible” heat storage is what we have used for thousands of years. “Latent” heat storage is what is referenced in your article and has been more recently in the news with “phase change materials,” but the truly revolutionary will be stable chemical heat storage and the type of research that I reviewed here: http://cleantechnica.com/2011/07/29/21st-century-stable-thermal-energy-storage/ This could lead to commercially transporting heat energy over time and space from where/when it is abundant to where/when it is needed.
Considerable emphasis should be put on the word “could”, as in, “This could lead to commercially transporting heat energy over time and space from where/when it is abundant to where/when it is needed.”. That reminds me of an aphorism: Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.
Even without intermittent sources of power, good heat storage systems, which can be operated in different temperature ranges, would be very useful. However, when working to eliminate CO2 emissions, we really should not count on anything for which the technology has not been demonstrated. We should not commit ourselves to something that MIGHT be developed.
We know that nuclear power works; it is now in use. There is good reason to believe that nuclear technology can be greatly improved to make it more economical, dramatically reduce nuclear waste, and make it even safer. However, we need not count on that since our current nuclear technology does work and entails far less risk than continuing to use fossil fuels which, of course, emit CO2. Then, if superior nuclear technologies are developed, which will probably happen, we can discontinue expanding our current nuclear technology and migrate to superior nuclear technologies.
You quote no figures, make no significant comparisons, and then you use a link-shortener to hide the destination. Do you realize that the cost of moving material is a function of its mass and volume, and chemical energy storage that’s 1/10 as energy-dense will only go 1/10 as far before it becomes uneconomic to ship or simply exhausts the energy you put into it in the waste of its own transport?
You sound an awful lot like a liberal-arts major who couldn’t balance a formula in chemistry class. If you can’t handle the math for this stuff you are completely out of your depth. It’s time to put down the opinions until you have done your homework and proven that they at least pencil out.
Engineer,
It is good to have someone like you here since you are clearly very well qualified to understand this sort of thing. My only real qualifications are two years of college physics and a degree in business administration. However, that does help in understanding such important things as return on investment and risk management. And, when the consequences of a disaster are sufficiently severe, even a probability of 10% that the disaster would occur is unacceptable. In this case, I think that the probability is more like 95%.
My fear is that the anti-nuclear crowd will succeed in delaying the rapid implementation of nuclear power until it has been proven that renewables are not up to the task. For the proof to be inescapably clear to everyone would take so much time and money that the damage done by CO2 emissions would have greatly increased and it would be far more difficult to deal with it.
“Do you realize that the cost of moving material is a function of its mass and volume, and chemical energy storage…becomes uneconomic to ship”
Yet electrical batteries are sold world wide, not because of their energy but because of their convenience. Can you be so sure that your calculations predict that a heat battery would find no applications?
“You sound an awful lot like a liberal-arts major who couldn’t balance a formula…” It is so very easy to take your body of knowledge and attempt to lift yourself up by assuming others who don’t fit exactly the same standard are worthless. It is a human failing done by some scientists, teachers, politicians, and even farmers and poets. The alternative is to value each for what they offer. When very young, I couldn’t understand why we did not have scientific marvels promised even 100’s of years in the past. Slowly I realized that economics and politics tended to trump science. For better or worse. The article contains no formulas to balance mostly it contains terms and a few definitions by way of explanation and to narrow the field. It is neither a “filler piece” nor a “scientific study” but targeted for a particular audience that seemed to read that magazine.
One of the reasons I backed off from writing tech articles was the pervasive demand to use words like “could” “might,” “if” and “probably.” It is one thing to be hopeful but another aspect of this framing is that its sensational and suggestive wishful thinking could also be misleading. Nevertheless, there are clues to the future in present research. I have to point out that your recent comment starts off with a caution about using the word “could” and ends up with “if” … “superior nuclear technologies.” The same concern should apply to both but we do tend to have our favorites and tend to become a bit blinded by them.
There are many potential levels of “commitment” to a future technology. I don’t favor nuclear as it seems that at least 1 in 150 nuclear reactors will have a major world affecting accident during its lifetime (based upon 3 reported accidents from approx. 450 world wide reactors.) Based upon this past more nuclear reactors will present an increased risk.
However the potential for LFTR reactors to consume existing stockpiles of “spent” fuel seems to offer 2 potential benefits. Although it seems likely that we are 30 years away from a commercial fluoride reactor the second potential (as a solution to nuclear waste) may tip the balance to continued “commitment.”
For some tech the potential is so great that a substantial, sustained “commitment” is justified. Nuclear fusion has received this kind of treatment. We should be doing the same with energy storage. An economic and stable heat storage has this same kind of massive potential to radically change civilization, but its benefits seem to fall disproportionately on renewable energy and most people can’t conceive that it is possible.
Scientists investigate and experiment with possibilities. What writers of all kinds do is broadcast the possibility. These are two different levels of “commitments.” Providing funds are another level of “commitment.” Backing economic ventures are yet another level.
I don’t think you mean to suggest that a private individual should not back any type of tech that inspires them. Rather your argument seems to be that governments should not back some tech and maybe should back other types. Governments are political organizations that seem to have as one function the spending of pooled public money. Choices will always be somewhat political. Even the decision to not spend money on something can be political as we have seen when fossil fuel companies used government to restrict competition.
CO2 emissions has been a major part of the global warming and environmental dialogue. Eventually it will be more clearly seen as just a part of the picture as other greenhouse gas emissions like methane come to understood as playing a significant role.
Breath,
You wrote, “I don’t favor nuclear as it seems that at least 1 in 150 nuclear reactors will have a major world affecting accident during its lifetime (based upon 3 reported accidents from approx. 450 world wide reactors.) Based upon this past more nuclear reactors will present an increased risk.”.
Of the three disasters, one was a disaster only to the investors (Three Mile Island); perhaps we should not count that one.
More important, we should consider the cause of the disasters. Both the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters were the result of sheer stupidity. The Chernobyl reactor had its safety devices disabled to carry out a dangerous test when it blew up as the result of a steam explosion. Moreover, it lacked a containment structure which would have confined the disaster to the interior of the containment structure. There were other factors which contributed to the disaster, factors which are not relevant to our common pressurized water reactors.
In the case of the Fukushima reactors, the emergency Diesel generators were actually and foolishly located below the level of historic tsunamis thereby causing them to be flooded out.
The Westinghouse AP1000 reactor has passive emergency cooling which would prevent a melt down even if all pumps and power failed. Actually, I see it as unwise to build nuclear power plants which depend on active emergency cooling systems to prevent a melt down even though there are hundreds of such plants in operation.
Considering that even pressurized water reactors can be made much safer than older reactors, and that much has been learned from the disasters, I see basing the risk on past happenings indicating a risk far greater than it is or need be. Also, in the Fukushima case, it is unclear that even one death resulted directly from the failed reactors although the trauma of relocating some residents did cause deaths.
Renewables also have accidents which kill people the main difference being that each renewable disaster is on a very small scale and usually is not reported. Nuclear accidents attract more attention than other accidents. The Fukushima disaster was widely reported over and over while the oil refinery disaster in Japan, which was very serious, was practically ignored. Also, more than 15 thousand people died directly as a result of the tsunami. Clearly reporting is unbalanced. From the way the media and public respond, it would seem that people dying of nuclear accidents are more dead than people dying by any other means.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmo_Oil_Company
As you say, CH4 may receive more attention. It may, at least partly because it is a more powerful global warming gas than CO2. Fortunately it remains resident in the environment for a much shorter period of time.
One thing that receives inadequate attention is the possible reduction of the percentage of O2 in the atmosphere. CO2 absorbed by oceans lowers the PH and, if the PH drops too far, the organisms in the ocean that “inhale” CO2 and “exhale” O2 would die. We could, but not without trauma, survive global warming but if atmospheric O2 dropped too low, we’d all die expect perhaps for enclaves of people who somehow manage to live in an artificial environment.
This “world-affecting” modifier you used… besides hysterical news coverage and over-reactions, just how have any of the 5 meltdowns (TMI, Chernobyl, 3*Fukushima) affected the world?
Take Chernobyl. A zone of forest immediately downwind of the reactor got a dose of hot, short-lived isotopes sufficient to kill the most sensitive trees; this wasn’t even up to the level of a middling forest fire. There were about 5 dozen human casualties total. The area is now fine; people live there quite happily even in the “exclusion zone”, and the lack of human activity has made it a haven for rare wildlife!
Now compare this to a chemical plant accident. When the fertilizer plant in West, TX went up, it killed 15. Bhopal chemical plant? Official death toll 2,259. But the worst human disaster on record was the Banqiao dam collapse, with a direct death toll of 26,000 from flooding and another 145,000 from famine and disease.
The radiation-related death toll from Fukushima is 0. TMI, 0. These are, by any rational measure, small to medium industrial accidents with neglible human impacts. AAMOF, shortly after the meltdowns George Monbiot looked at the facts behind the hysteria and came out strongly for nuclear power.
So why’s the “environmental” community so rabidly anti-nuclear? It’s almost certainly because the big donors pay them to be that way. The big money isn’t made in 5-kWh-per-cent uranium, it’s made in oil and natural gas. Those are the people behind the foundations which drive the agendas of the big-budget environmental organizations. Oh, they’re also certainly driving the agenda of Cleantechica.
But somehow this doesn’t get environmentalists to push back against the movement to replace nuclear power with wind plus gas. The massive leak in California should have led to much bigger marches to close gas plants than Diablo Canyon. So who’s driving the agenda here? I submit to you that the major environmental organizations are fronting for the fossil fuel interests. Nothing else makes sense.
On another forum, I raised the issue of falling oxygen levels. I wondered if O2 levels were being monitored. Another issue you didn’t mention is the basic chemistry. If we are adding carbon to the atmosphere and it is joining with two oxygen atoms to form carbon dioxide we might expect to see some change in oxygen levels. The offsetting aspect is that carbon dioxide makes up only about .04% of the atmosphere while oxygen is about 21%. Over millions of years oxygen levels have risen from a low of about 2% to a high of about 35% and then declined to present levels.
Even if we doubled the carbon and combined it with oxygen it would only require a slight amount of oxygen. There are other chemistries that consume more oxygen, as you mentioned, but especially pollution. Oxygen levels in some polluted cities is said to be below 15%. OSHA requires oxygen levels between 19.5% and 23.5% but elevation, conditioning, and illness are all factors in oxygen levels required for human health. There are examples of fit and conditioned people who have survived on mountain tops in the equivalent of 7% oxygen for a night.
Certainly a big part of the problem of selling nuclear energy is the unseen nature of the risk. Even natural gas leaks tend to seem less of a problem because we can’t see them. We have to rely upon “experts” with safety and risk perhaps too often related to economic conditions rather than any moral code.
The argument that Nuclear is CO2 free is then trading one unseen risk for another unseen risk. It is a difficult sell to someone who is not inclined to delve too deeply into the technicalities.
3 mile island did result in the designed venting of radioactive gas into the atmosphere to keep the pressure vessel from exploding. The arguments that nuclear accidents have been the result of some kind of human stupidity (or oversight) could be forwarded for probably every kind of accident.
It really doesn’t change the assessment of risk, it may only go to the question of where we could apply solutions and attempt to mitigate some of the risk. Human beings will constantly do useless lazy and stupid things. Humans are an active component of nuclear power plants operation that is likely to fail. This has lead me to muse that we should have no civilian operated reactors. But like all such musings there are pros and cons. Like your suggestion of renewable energy “accidents.” We might solve the “reporting problem” but not fix what is wrong.
It’s easier if you look at natural radioactivity where people live. The monazite-sand beaches at Guarapari reach exposure levels of at least 460 mSv/year in some places, and that was just one spot measurement made by bionerd23. We know that there are no elevated levels of cancer or birth defects at Guarapari, so this level of exposure is harmless and might even be healthful.
For comparison, the Japanese have evacuated areas with exposures a small fraction of what you get at Guarapari. This needs to be called what it is: radiophobia.
The unreasoning fear of harmless levels of radiation, maintained despite information to the contrary, is definitely a neurosis. Some people have gone fully paranoid over it. These people should be in mental-health treatment, not driving our public policy.
The other end of the spectrum is not believing in dangers you can’t see. It does appear that there’s a lot of overlap between people who disbelieve in anthropogenic climate change also tend to dismiss dangers of radiation with no detectable effects. However, the group which supports nuclear power also includes those people who live near and work at the plants themselves; they are dealing with things from a position of familiary and personal knowledge. Who do you believe? Who SHOULD you believe?
Bah. Typos. Why no preview?
Sorry. I wish I could make that happen…..
Engineer, “It’s easier if you look at natural radioactivity where people live.” Exactly, it was an article that discussed radioactivity and heat within the Earth that reconciled me to the “natural” aspect of radioactivity in general. Sadly, the implementation of nuclear reactors in the US has been marred by a sense of a secret knowledge and general duplicity.
“Secret knowledge and general duplicity”? Since when? Nuclear engineering and health physics are complex and deep and thus difficult, but AFAIK nothing of significance has been secret for decades. Just because you have antis claiming that things are secret and people are duplicitous does not make them so; consider the huge and completely bogus ado over the 3 words “hide the decline” in so-called “Climategate”.
You really do need to appraise people and organizations on their ideologies and agendas. Any person or organization which is flatly pro-X (e.g. “renewables”) or anti-Y (e.g. “nuclear energy”) without in-depth justification and caveats needs to be rated “suspect”. Those which refuse to justify their positions, especially those demonstrably failing to deal with their supposedly most-important problems at the expense of some secondary or tertiary priority, need to be called to account and denied any legitimacy in the public forum. So far these dishonest or even perfidous organizations include every major “Green” and environmental group out there, save the new Ecomodernist camp.
It is somewhat sad that a developed LTR project was not carried to commercial implementation 40 years ago and instead reactors were developed that would produce plutonium as a by product were commercialized.
It is also a shame that the only reactor to have a single walled storage pool in the US which has been leaking for 30 years continues to be re-certified beyond its design life in the shadow of one of the countries largest cities.
It’s not merely sad, IMO, but criminal that the Integral Fast Reactor project was terminated by the Clinton administration in 1994. We had the IPCC telling us that climate change was a major problem since 1988, yet the Democrats killed the ONE program the USA had that could produce large amounts of clean energy with negligible waste or environmental impact.
You’re hand-waving and spreading FUD here. Why don’t you be specific?
If you’re talking about Indian Point, the problem is way overblown. For instance, you could drink a glass of the “contaminated” groundwater with no ill effects. But nobody’s going to drink it, and NYC gets its water by pipeline from the Catskills. If it wasn’t for all the paranoid activist organizations, that tritium would simply decay to helium, unnoticed. Most of it probably would never get out of the earth around the plant.
Yes typos are annoying. And I hear your “engineers pain” when it comes to the rationality of certain arguments. But the answer is likely found closer to the “poet’s” perspective.
Are there wealthy people and those in control of wealth who are willing to promolgate their views in mass media? Certainly. Is the general population less able to resist propaganda now than at times in the past? Also probably true. But a less enlightened consciousness also tends to be more closely self serving. People are concerned about bread and butter (b&b) issues. Supporting nuclear power is a b&b for those in the industry. Radiation or gas leaks are unseen and for most people not in the “smell” zone, far less significant issues. When you factor in a primal fear of the unknown the balance might be tipped slightly against these things.
There is rhetoric that suggests massive spending on media to advance global warming, anti-fossil fuel and anti-nuclear but in the first instance we don’t need to rely upon such conspiratorial claims to explain human nature. Secondly, this rhetoric seemed to appear after exposure of corporate spending in support of what might be considered its own b&b issues of advocating fossil fuels and against global warming implied restrictions.
What is a world-affecting nuclear accident? This is going to frustrate the engineer but the poet may understand. It is an incident that captures global public attention. It doesn’t have to be a melt-down. It doesn’t have to be a release of radiation. It only has to give the appearance of these things and so there are potentially many more than 3 incidents. There are bombs that were lost, planes with nuclear material that crashed. There are some that have not been so much in the public eye. Collectively they leave the impression of risk.
But you also did not comment about the human aspect of risk. We can design components and systems. They can be active and passive. But eventually society involves humans. If terrorism and accidents teach us nothing more we should at least learn of the importance of the largely marginalized human resource and its equal standing to economic, energy and material resources.
It’s a B&B issue for everyone else, too; they just don’t know it. The closure of Vermont Yankee was followed by some steep rate hikes in its area of New England. The prospective closure of Clinton, Quad Cities and Fitzpatrick will increase costs and rates in their regions as well.
The real B&B issue, though, is the health of the planet and its services on which we depend. Climate change and ocean acidification are deadly threats to them. Why aren’t YOU pushing nuclear power to avert the otherwise-inevitable consequences? If dozens of multi-megaton above-ground nuclear tests have no detectable effects today, the worst possible nuclear-plant meltdowns are nothing to worry about beyond their immediate area. Maybe (maybe…) some people have to move away from home for a few years. What’s that compared to losing the world’s coasts and river deltas for as long as human history?
In other words, it is DEFINED by the agenda of the global media hype machine, and thus the people who own or bribe it. Any physical human impact is beside the point.
Please ponder the implications of that.
The worst that terrorism can possibly do is vastly less than the best that continued use of fossil fuels WILL do, and “renewables” require such use into the indefinite future. How do I get it through your head that this is an EXISTENTIAL crisis for humanity?
As i see it, only the math will reveal what is ultimately true or false concerning today’s pressing clean energy challenge. Current tech, too. Back in the 60’s when the non pressurized molten salt reactor was proven (and shut on and off repeatedly for just the weekends), the machine did have to have more enriched material than what today’s light water reactors require. I guess this could have been a issue concerning the fact that humans err and others are terrorists.
However, today, plans are in the works which can power the passively safe MSR with even less enriched than that of the LWR!
Surely, the greater accident would be the collective one that continues to increase fossil fuels (required to back wind and solar with today’s tech in a still developing world) and to pretend that the unseen effects of excess co2 is not the real cause of concern. Unseen, because who can notice a mere 2 degree increase – until it’s to late. Molten salt reactors, would be cheap to manufacture and replace (minus unnecessary imposed fees), and produce less wastes (even consume current spent fuel if need be). More importantly, with a little effort, replace ALL FOSSIL FUELS within the “2 degree C time span”. Electric cars are proving to become cheaper, however, with the almost unlimited heat energy potential from the more efficient MSR,it is even possible to make liquid fuels despite the inefficiency of liquid fuels! Consider that batteries are like 95% efficient and liquid fuels are only like 33%. We might want to make both batteries and liquid fuel, powered by the gift of fission. Actually, the math states that we HAVE to.
Yes, technologies like TransAtomic’s can consume today’s “waste” as fuel (or roughly 70% of it). That doesn’t make them “the” solution; nobody’s tested them yet, let alone at commercial scale.
On the other hand, given the number of technologies in the offing that MAY dispose of such wastes, we can be very confident that at least one will pan out and thus allay our concerns about leaving such things for our grandchildren. What we really need to leave the is an intact ecosystem, meaning one that hasn’t been ravaged by uncontrolled climate change. That requires us to act immediately to slash CO2 emissions and sequester our historical GHG products. We need to start by ceasing our combustion of coal, oil and natural gas. Nuclear power is the only way we have today to do that.
EP,
Yes, I believe that continued fossil fuel use is FAR worse than spent fuel issues. Thanks for pointing that out. It’s too bad that greed will destroy everything unless everyone can come to their senses.
It’s ok to try to figure out how to store solar (CHEAP!) but NOT ok to continue on with increasing FF use (but I still have to drive a truck, working in construction. Wish I could afford an electric truck even though i couldn’t charge from solar at night, anyways, oh, that’s right, we don’t even have that option yet, sucks!).
It also sucks that in order to save money, MORE natural gas will be used to follow solar, worldwide, instead of simply building whatever best nuclear and keeping batteries primarily for EVs. I hear that Germany is resorting to “load following, clean” coal. What a CROCK!
Keep up the good work. I’ll try not to give up… fireofenergy
I was wondering if the water would be radioactive. ..
https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/
ALL water is radioactive. It’s just a matter of degree.
WE are radioactive. Among the radioactive elements in our bodies are radioactive potassium and carbon 14.
ALL of our food is radioactive. Bananas are especially radioactive because of the radioactive potassium they contain in addition to carbon 14.
Every time we fly in an airplane we are exposed to additional radioactivity. I live in Albuquerque NM which is about a mile above sea level, so I am exposed to additional radioactivity.
Except in cases where people are exposed to excessive radon, there is no proof that those of us who live where radioactivity is greater than average suffer any ill effects from it. If we did suffer from the additional radioactivity, we may be sure that those who are pathologically afraid of radioactivity, as opposed to those who are properly cautious, would have the statistics to prove that all radioactivity is harmful.
Where radioactivity is concerned, we should be properly cautious and not careless.
Frank, i don’t think water is radioactive (but was wondering how bad the waste pool would be and found out, without leaks, does not get contaminated). You could actually be “protected” from background radiation swimming inside a waste cooling pool (unless you got too close to the wastes). I was referring to a link I posted earlier about that called “what if”.
Most people will counter by repeating the media hype “but it’s still dangerous”. They do not understand that global warming is a far more serious threat than any nuclear threat short of WW3. Therefore, the most effective way to stop excess co2 emissions is to inform the public about molten salt reactors, the safer, better reactor.
Actually, water IS radioactive. Tritium is a naturally occurring radioactive isotope of hydrogen. Although it is very rare, it does occur and when oxidized is radioactive water. Because it is so rare, it is of little or no concern. Also, tritium quickly decays into helium and has a half life of only 12 years.
You are certainly right about the overriding danger of global warming. I fear that the phobia against nuclear power will have us all in serious trouble. If our informed politicians had adequate leadership ability they would unite together and adequately inform the public.
A retired physicist I slightly know asserts that we don’t need nuclear power since renewables will do the job. One would expect someone in his profession to be better informed.
Regarding molten salt reactors, to me they seem to be the way to go. However, I think it is premature to commit ourselves 100% to them since some other reactor type might turn out to be better.
We are informed about molten salt reactors. However, we did not become informed through the commercial media. Rather, we became informed by spending considerable time studying the matter through various means. In general, the public doesn’t do that and the commercial media, PBS, and NPR have shown no inclination to inform the public.
Robert I enjoyed your reference! Especially the last line.
The excess heat from condensing steam is negligible from a GW point of view. However, the molten salt reactor is many times more efficient at fission (less heating and less wastes) than the LWR. Safer, too.
Consider that with mostly solar, we’d need hundreds of thousands of square miles of panels – which converts light primarily into infrared heat because they seem to have to be a dark color in order to efficiently convert light into electricity. Only about 18% gets converted.
We would need lines to connect summer day to winter night, lest there be Eroei issues that fundamentally eat too much output energy for the manufacture of yet more panels and more storage in a RE, non global power line world.
It’s not about how many panels we can build, it’s about the most practical way to stop excess co2 emissions ASAP.
The only problem is that we have nothing ready to build. If we went onto a war footing, we could have NuScales rolling off assembly lines inside of a year, with fully robotic welding and examination for the pressure vessels and all critical NSS parts. We could have S-PRISMs in a similar amount of time. Nothing else is less than 10 years out on any sort of realistic schedule to go from demonstration, to pilot, to pre-production, to full production.
Yup. Electric power plus heat account for something like half of all US carbon emissions, and they’re the easiest things to convert; district-heat steam systems don’t care what makes the steam.
Nuclear power is clearly a more energy dense source of electricity. However although it is presently a popular talking point to compare it to Solar land use, this can be misleading.
A solar power plant only needs the resource of the land area at the power plant. On the contrary, nuclear power requires mining operations that might be factored into land use. Waste material from mining and processing represents a waste that requires more land. The area in use by a nuclear power plant also typically involves a “safe setback zone” also called a “clear area” or in NRC
Regulatory Guide 4.7. an “exclusion zone, that is larger than the plant and could be included as part of the “area” of a nuclear power plant. http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1409&context=law_urbanlaw If we compare nuclear to wind turbines we have to consider how much of the area might continue to be used for farming or other purposes. So land use comparisons can be a little like ducks to oranges.
Overall the land use requirement for solar is a small fraction of either the total land in the US or what is presently used for farming: http://rameznaam.com/2015/04/08/how-much-land-would-it-take-to-power-the-us-via-solar/ Nuclear must be cooled to be safe. Solar power plants must be cooled to be efficient. Thermal Solar power power plants which use about 1/2 the land area of PV can also use air cooling rather than water. Nuclear power plants must be shut down if the temperature of the cooling water exceeds safety margins. This does not bode well for nuclear power and global warming considerations.
Breath,
The need for mining to support nuclear power can be greatly reduced.
Our current nuclear power technology is exceedingly inefficient. Most of the nuclear “waste” is not waste at all. Rather, it is unused fuel because our mediocre nuclear technology and fuel cycle extract only about 1% of the available energy from the fuel and discard the rest as waste. We can do far better thereby reducing the amount of uranium that has to be mined. Moreover, the existing “waste” can be reprocessed (France is doing it) and reused. Perhaps better yet, we could use nuclear reactors which are capable of extracting a much higher percentage of the available energy from the fuel. Basically we know how to do it and the technology has been verified, but more R & D would be required to implement it.
Moreover, we don’t need to use uranium at all. We could use liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTR) or some other reactor which can use thorium as fuel. Because currently there is little use for thorium and because it occurs with rare earth elements and is discarded as waste, there is already enough thorium mined to last for centuries without mining more.
You have made some generalizations regarding nuclear plants. It is true that it is been necessary to shut some down or reduce their power when the temperature of the cooling water has become excessive for what they were designed. However, they can be designed to use warmer water or air cooling although not without cost.
It is true that solar thermal plants can use air cooling, but not without cost. The efficiency of heat engines is limited by the difference between the two temperatures at which they operate. Less effective cooling reduces the temperature difference thereby reducing the efficiency and the amount of power which they can generate. There is no way around that; it is a law of physics which has been understood for well over a century, and it cannot be changed.
One of the advantages of the LFTR is that it can operate at a higher temperature than our present pressurized water reactors. That makes it practical to use the Brayton cycle (look it up) instead of the Rankine cycle. And, the higher temperature makes it less sensitive to increases on the cold side thereby making it practical to use air cooling.
The plans for at least one California desert solar plant were axed because of environmental considerations. The difficulty of finding suitable locations for solar and wind systems should not be overlooked.
Nuclear plants can generally be located near to where grids are designed to accept power. That is not true of solar or wind plants. Solar plants must be located where insolation is good and wind plants must be located where there is adequate and reliable wind. That means that additional power lines must be built. It can easily take 10 or more years to get approval to build new power line and acquire the right of way. Numerous hearings are necessary and often there are environmental objections. If the new power line is arial, regulations may make it impossible to use the land under it; that must be taken into consideration when comparing the land required by renewables with the land required by nuclear power plants.
While a “nuclear plan” seems to have advantages permitting for nuclear power has historically been on the order of a 10 year process. We don’t presently have commercial LFTR reactors so add another 10 to 20 years for development and scaling up construction. Can we wait 30 years for an energy solution to fossil fuels?
A worst case for a HW reactor could give us massive radiation leaks and a core melt down. while a worse case for a breeder can give us a nuclear bomb. (not to speak of the potential to manufacture fissionable material that could make a bomb) Perhaps we should consider safety just a little with our enthusiasm if we are planning a massive rapid build out with expected risks associated with increased numbers and speed.
Fukushima had not 1, not 2, but 3 meltdowns… and zero fatalities. Why are you still spreading FUD about this, when the proven consequences are darn near trivial?
Hardly. Hans Bethe’s analysis came to a value of 160 kg of TNT… using absolutely worse-case asssumptions some of which are completely backwards. For instance, gaseous fission products cause fuel to swell, not collapse. When the EBR-I had a partial core melt the gas caused the melted fuel to foam up and expand, forcing the core sub-critical. It not only did NOT go “boom”, it sulked and wouldn’t work again until the core was rebuilt.
More on the reaction of nuclear fuel to high-power transients here. Generally, it’s a nuisance and a pain to fix up after, but harmless outside the reactor.
Can’t be done for reasons of physics. Neither the isotopic nor chemical composition of plutonium from power reactors allows the manufacture of reliable bombs.
Perhaps you should consider the difference between 40 years of anti-nuclear propaganda and reality. Believing will neither make a faulty bomb design work (as N. Korea found out), nor make climate change go away. Nature has the only vote that counts.
** You seem to be constantly measuring the “danger” of a nuclear power plant in terms of direct deaths from radiation. 49 immediate deaths were due to the Chernobyl disaster (not all from direct radiation) But, subsequent deaths are estimated include up to 7000 deaths due to thyroid cancer. Some estimates reach about 1 million people. Livelihood, and having to evacuate homes are also part of the effects. There is still an exclusion area that produces freak animals with birth defects that also might be attributed to radiation. These are all part of the “unseen” results that essentially scare people when it comes to nuclear power. They are never sure when they are safe.
** “Neither the isotopic nor chemical composition of plutonium from power reactors allows the manufacture of reliable bombs.” Sadly this does not always seem to be true. India used the plutonium from its FBR program to produce its first bomb.
I enjoyed reviewing the material you cited. The estimed Hans Brethe analysis seems to be directly on point. Unfortunately it is from 1956. In the paper he specifically says that the calculations are for a specific type of reactor. They are certainly based upon experience with the experimental breeder reactor 1 (EBR1.) This is the same reactor that produced enough power for 200 light-bulbs on its start up. A commercial reactor with slightly more power could be expected to have different results.
I wonder at the purpose of the paper. Was it to prove that the reactor was small enough to not produce a bomb on meltdown. He described the energy result as a “pressure wave” similar to so much TNT.
I did find this paragraph somewhat perplexing: “We have shown that when the core of a fast reactor collapses, the reactivity might increase at a rate of between 40 and 50 dollars per second. When enough heat has been generated in the system to raise the uranium to its boiling point, the system will be 13 cents …” I am not familiar with the vernacular of “dollars and cents” in this context.
You have several times made a point of “relying upon scientists” who study the field for their expertise. This group of atomic scientists have written that a FBR can produce a “small nuclear explosion” (1st paragraph on pg 53 https://www.princeton.edu/sgs/publications/articles/Time-to-give-up-BAS-May_June-2010.pdf
With such a divergence of opinion what is a simple layman to think?
The official death toll is 62, from all causes.
Those claims are based on the LNT model, which is known to be bogus. People who live in areas where natural radiation is several hundred milli-Sieverts per year (tens of rads) show no elevated rates of cancer or other illnesses.
But suppose the 7000 figure is correct. It is now 30 years since Chernobyl, so you are talking about 23 radiation-related fatalities per year for the nuclear electric power industry worldwide over that period. Compare to the number of people who die in mining and drilling accidents for coal, oil and gas, THEN add the indirect fatalities from pollution and climate effects. You should JUMP at the chance to get rid of the other stuff in exchange for 7000 over 30 years! If you’d kill millions to save thousands, something is wrong with you.
No, they’re part of the official paranoia. If people benefit from 55 μSv/hr on the beach at Guarapari, evacuating people to keep them from getting 3 μSv/hr around Fukushima is criminal malfeasance. If the Japanese people were rational about radiation they would have put Naoto Kan in prison for his part in this.
Every area produces freak animals. Freaks are commonly produced by fevers during embryonic development (which is why pregnant women are advised to avoid hot tubs), chemical teratogens and other things. Did you know that there are NO mutational effects observed in Japanese A-bomb survivors and their descendants?
The WNA page on India shows no Indian FBR capacity until the 2010’s. Obviously you have been misinformed… or disinformed.
Other sources I’m familiar with claim that India’s bomb-grade Pu was made in HWR research reactors, not power reactors. If you would bother to study the history of nuclear weapons, you’d learn that weapons-grade Pu requires a very particular fuel cycle to make, and that requires specialized reactors to make it in bulk. Research reactors which are built for fast changing of test samples are decent. The Windscale reactors, the Hanford N reactor, and other weapons-production reactors were graphite-moderated units built for continuous refueling. Fuel burnup reaches a fraction of a percent in such reactors before cooling of the neptunium-rich slugs and reprocessing to recover high-purity Pu-239. A LMFBR which reaches 10% burnup before fuel is swapped… the isotopic composition of the product plutonium would be worse than PWRs, whose Pu is utterly useless for bombs. Perfect for reactors, though; all the spontaneous fissions would start them right up as soon as the control rods were pulled, no waiting.
It was to prove that the worst possible case wasn’t going to destroy a city. Not only did we not almost lose Detroit, we couldn’t even have lost the Fermi I reactor building.
They are terms of art in nuclear engineering, and I have already forgotten enough details since I dug into that paper that I can’t write an explanation for you right now. Basically, they refer to how fast a chain reaction grows or declines.
You do realize that the BAS is an anti-nuclear-weapons activist organization, and works more on fear-mongering than scientific accuracy? They’ve been better lately, perhaps because the wiser heads have realized what the twin threats of conflict over fossil-fuel supplies and climate change mean. Nuclear war is actually a smaller threat to the globe than GHGs.
First, don’t trust ideologues… unless they are making an admission against interest.
I have a reply to the 3:04 AM comment that the moderators have been sitting on for the best part of a day.
“The need for mining to support nuclear power can be greatly reduced.” And my mail constantly holds developments and promises in solar energy that also suggest significantly increased efficiency (which I also don’t take as a present fact.) Crunching numbers may be a useful way of making some comparisons but will certainly involve estimates and assumptions that are not so easily compared. Your paragraphs above are blossom with what can be done in the future. I respect that optimism. There are others with an equally optimistic but different vision of the future.
The same is true for “waste.” Fossil fuels and nuclear energy produce wastes that are economic externalities when forced upon the general population. For fossil fuels the most common externality is pollution. For nuclear the level of risk is an externality that is hard to calculate or add into costs. The US government has undertaken the risk of Nuclear power plant disasters and waste disposal. While there are numbers associated, these represent best estimates. The cost and risk remains with the general population. This is not the same as solar power. Perhaps it is necessary and we all must continue to cross our collective fingers and hope for the best. But it is only necessary if we do not have alternatives. …. which is uncertain.
“If we went onto a war footing, we could have NuScales rolling off assembly lines inside of a year….”
I don’t doubt it. Moreover, considering the consequences of global warming, I think that that’s exactly what we should be doing, and not just for NuScales. But realistically, with public attitudes what they are, that would be politically impossible.
Regarding wind power, here is a link I found:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-R1BEWmIprIg/VhFxo8pGr-I/AAAAAAAAAHo/Zi7GHxrTJgk/s1600/ERCOT_Wind_March_2014.png
It is to a table what shows variations in wind power in Texas. With such an irregular source of power connected to the grid surely it would be very challenging to maintain stability.
Neither fossil fuels or nuclear options require the same kind of storage as renewable energy seems to demand. It then seems we are asking if it will be easier, quicker, safer and more politically practical to develop safer nuclear power or energy storage.
Or we could consider funding both options.
We are going to continue developing energy storage in any event so perhaps it is not strictly an either/or choice.
The argument for nuclear then rubs up against the counter question: do we need this option considering the potential for human and engineering errors to meet unforeseen climate events. We don’t presently have the right kind or enough energy storage, but even advocates of nuclear will leave the field of future development open to various possibilities.
We don’t want to necessarily plan our energy future on the likelihood of developments that are difficult to foresee, but at some point we may have to measure the cost and likelihood of various technological futures in a world with vested interests and political uncertainty.
Only storage has been funded. The cheapest battery we have is far too expensive, pumped hydro is way too limited by geography, compressed air has low efficiency and other problems as proven by the abandonment of the Iowa Stored Energy Park project and the decade-long failure to move on the air-storage limestone mine in NW Ohio… the list goes on and on.
Advanced nuclear research funding in the USA was terminated in 1994.
Cal Abel has a scheme to use solar-salt energy storage to allow nuclear to provide full demand-curve tracking, decoupling of the nuclear section from grid outages AND emergency gas backup. This really ought to be tested right after the first production S-PRISM goes into service (in order to be working with a fully-debugged nuclear section rather than FOAK).
“Renewables” require fossil backup and CANNOT get their climate-altering pollution down to the levels required. There are no available storage technologies which can change that, so aiming for renewables means planning to fail; hoping that “something” comes along is equivalent to praying for divine intervention.
Nuclear power works. Even when rather big problems occur, no commercial unit with a containment has ever caused a radiation-related fatality. Even the over-paranoid “precautions” of the Japanese are yielding to sanity.
So what’s the threat here? Worst case, that you lose the use of a few areas for 5 years at a time, or best case that you lose the world’s coastlines and river deltas until the next glaciation?
We are out of time to bring things out of the lab. We have to move with what we have now.
It does seem as if the area around Fukushima will be unavailable for longer than 5 years. Reports are now saying that we will likely not have the technology to clean up that disaster for another 30 to 50 years. The area around Chernobyl is still off limits from that 1986 accident. 40 years and counting.
The safe time for radioactive decay is 20 times the half-life if there are no radioactive isotopes resulting from the decay, Cesium-137 results from the decay of Uranium and is now spread throughout the world as a result of the Fukushima disaster. It has a half-life of 30 years giving us a level of safety after (30 x 20 ) 600 years. Perhaps 5 years is a bit of a low estimate for a “worst case.”
But your point is taken that we are balancing risks. Fossil fuels and global warming also presents risks.
Without some sort of terraforming our own world (Geo-engineering) our global warming disaster could naturally last 1000 years. By comparison plutonium is also found in the radioactive debris of Fukushima. This has a half life of 20,000 years and so the safe level might be reached after 400,000 years.
Hogwash. Most of it never exceeded the radiation levels on the beaches of Kerala and Guarapari, which are proven safe by centuries of human occupation and recreation. Most areas around Fukushima should never have been evacuated in the first place, and should have been re-occupied in weeks.
Radiation is not a cumulative harm; it stimulates repair mechanisms which fix other damage from e.g. oxidative radicals. All life on earth evolved with higher levels of radiation than exist now; humans may be suffering from not getting ENOUGH of it for optimum health.
Pretty much everything you “know” about radiation is a lie, engineered by the Rockefeller Foundation to protect the value of fossil fuel reserves.
I agree that we should be adequately funding energy storage systems. Regardless of what energy technology, i.e., nuclear, fossil fuel, or renewable, storage would be helpful. Of course nuclear energy requires far less storage than renewables which is a huge advantage, but storage would still be helpful.
Sodium-cooled FBRs have almost an ideal operating temperature for compatibility with molten-nitrate (“solar salt”) heat-storage systems. The cost of the storage medium is well under $10 per kWh (electric).
If you are looking for solutions to energy and pollution problems, nuclear has ’em in spades.
“Sodium-cooled FBRs…” It is just unfortunate that sodium is explosive when exposed to water and sodium leaks tend to be an issue with such reactors. Down time severely restricts the final capacity factor of this type of reactor.
Renewables require a fossil fuel backup because of a lack of sufficient energy storage. If we had sufficient storage there is sufficient renewable energy potential to serve many times over. This is why I suggest it is a question of funding energy storage or nuclear. Nuclear seems to pose more risks, some uncertainty and a 30 year technological development, permitting and deployment time period. I will grant that it doesn’t have to but the same might be said of a “war time” effort going into energy storage.
One of the more interesting forms of energy storage I have seen is uses two storage facilities of unequal temperature. It seems like it could be built anywhere with a far smaller footprint than pumped hydro. It is discussed here under the title “pumped heat storage.” http://www.greenchipstocks.com/articles/utility-scale-power-storage-innovations/804
That article is from 2010. It would benefit you to look up the specifics of those schemes to see which of them have gone anywhere (none yet). This might properly temper your enthusiasm for laboratory miracles; unless they can make it into massive production, no miracle, however grand, is going to help.
Energy storage is interesting in general. The article was about outliers and unusual technologies. I quoted the article rather than give a more detailed explanation of the technology. The site was never intended to be a complete explanation of the process, its application, efficiency or economic future. If you are curious about such things that may be more than I could have hoped for. If you wish to dismiss the technology because you did not get more and are not inclined to discover more that may be a personal choice.
Some forms of energy storage seem more suited to certain forms of energy recovery. Hot salts fit well with Solar thermal. Battery storage and for short term frequency regulation possibly flywheel storage may be useful for photovoltaic panels. At least one engineering I once interviewed suggested that compressed air storage makes a great deal of sense with wind generation but the compressors should be in the nacelles with generation equipment on the ground for economic and maintenance reasons.
Although largely unfunded and inefficient Solar updraft towers like existing hydro generation are fairly unique in the renewable energy field as the process includes energy storage.
Part of the problem we have with energy storage is that we are only slowly coming to fund its existence. Beacon power, an energy storage company, had to enter bankruptcy because it could not get the necessary funding. After the stockholders lost their money a private corporation snatched up the company and new regulations made its energy storage technology marketable. If we want energy storage we will have to fund its existence. This is likely not out of taxpayers pockets but through the establishment of a marketplace that favors a degree of storage over new fossil fuel generation.
Are you at all familiar with the timeline of the Manhattan project? The first controlled atomic chain reaction was December 2, 1942; between then and the Trinity test on July 16 1945 was just over 2.5 years. In between, massive amounts of heat energy were produced as a byproduct of plutonium production, heat which could have produced power if anyone was so inclined. That’s how fast real, feasible physics can go from discovery to full-scale test.
Schemes involving e.g. air compression and the like can use off-the-shelf hardware, and ought to be able to go from concept to pilot in as little as months. If they’re not being exploited it’s because the physics doesn’t work out.
Oh for crying out… I keep my thermodynamics book handy for just that kind of question. I dismiss such concepts because I’ve worked the numbers on a bunch of them and found out what the faults are. There have been a few interesting twists in some of the schemes, like the piston-engine compressor-expander with a mist or foam of heat-transfer fluid used by SustainX, but very little is new. SustainX itself merged with General Compression last year and hasn’t had much news since.
I just tried visiting General Compression’s web site, and got “You do not have permission to access this document.”
Yes. Now do yourself a favor: learn how to do the math on those different things, so you can see why some are better-suited than others. Classical thermodynamics requires some calculus, so if you’re weak in the math you’re going to have to start several steps back.
If you don’t have the math chops to handle this, try trusting the opinions of people who do. Theirs are based on information, yours on blind faith.
Breath,
You wrote, “Part of the problem we have with energy storage is that we are only slowly coming to fund its existence.”.
Similarly, part of the problem we have with nuclear energy is that government funds for R & D were cut off decades ago. The stated reason was that R & D funds were “unnecessary”. That basically halted R & D for alternative nuclear technologies. Fortunately it did not halt developing significant safety improvements and operational improvements which result in less down time for refueling and somewhat greater fuel efficiency.
Much of the development in electronics has been because of government funding. Global positioning systems and the satellites necessary to make them work are the result of government funding. Nuclear power was also the result of government funding since nuclear power was considered essential for submarines and other military vessels. So naturally further improvements in nuclear technology were impeded when governments funds for R & D were cut off.
Surely, regardless of what type of energy technology we use, practical and economical energy storage systems would be helpful. Even so, we already have an energy technology which can operate without storage or fossil fuel backup, i.e., nuclear power. Even now nuclear power can be greatly and rapidly expanded without waiting for new technologies for which there is no assurance that they will ever be practical on a large scale. And, although grid improvements would be desirable, nuclear power can be expanded without making major changes to the grid.
It is amazing what improvements can accomplish. At first, river boats were exceedingly dangerous because of frequent boiler explosions. Later they became quite safe as the result of federal government safety regulations and improvements in boiler technology.
Rail travel used to be dangerous because of boiler explosions and derailments. Boiler technology improvements and boiler maintenance improvements practically eliminated boiler explosions. Replacing cast iron rails with steel rails and implementing better track laying technologies greatly reduced derailing accidents.
Air travel used to be so dangerous that people would travel by air only when speed was critical. Crashes were commonplace. Because of improving technology air travel has become perhaps the safest way to travel.
Safety conscious people once used the stairs instead of using elevators, and for good reason. But regulations and improvements in technology have made elevators so safe that we rarely consider the possibility of an elevator accident.
Industrial accidents used to be a very serious problem. Of course they still occur, but there has been a dramatic improvement in industrial safety.
Nuclear power has a very excellent safety record. However, there is always room for improvement. Improvements in travel technology safety and safety in other areas has shown that dramatic improvements in safety should be expected. As a result, nuclear power has already been made much safer and we can expect further improvements in nuclear safety.
Breath,
We now have nuclear technology that is fully capable of providing all the power the world requires except for small remote areas out of reach of the grid. Renewables can, although with significant limitations, handle those areas.
The Westinghouse AP1000 reactor has water storage tanks above the reactor level thereby enabling the emergency cooling system to operate without power. The European pressure reactor (EPR) has a core catcher so that if a melt down does occur, the bottom of the containment structure will not be breached. Those are the two safest reactors CURRENTLY available and they are fully capable of doing the job. I would much prefer a nuclear technology that doesn’t require containment structures and other safety mechanism to ensure safety, i.e., one that is inherently safe, but they are not yet available although with R & D surely they will become available.
There is certainty that we can use currently available nuclear technology to provide for the world’s power needs without emitting CO2. However, there is no certainty that adequate storage technologies to make renewables workable will EVER be available. Because of the urgency of the situation, it is essential to use what we have now and expand it as quickly as possible. Although it is too late to prevent a climate disaster, at least we can mitigate it to some degree and, with a plentitude power available, live with it although with difficulty.
Again, it is already too late do prevent a disaster. We will need even more power to deal with it the inevitable disaster. To deal with the disaster, we will need far more power for cooling and sea water desalination and for other purposes as well, and that power must be implemented quickly and not emit CO2! We cannot wait and hope for nonexistent technologies, i.e., storage, to become practical.
Statistics have amply demonstrated the safety of nuclear power and, as more of the modern nuclear reactors are built, nuclear power will become even safer. Cost will not be a problem if the successful and deliberate efforts of the anti-nuclear crowd to make nuclear power too expensive are stopped. The grid is ready to accept nuclear power plants because they can be located where the grid is designed to accept power; that will avoid the delays and and additional cost of modifying the grid to accept power from new locations.
France went from 0% nuclear power to 80% nuclear power for electricity in only 15 years; that proves that nuclear power can be implemented very fast thereby quickly reducing CO2 emissions. There is no other power technology that has been or can be implemented that fast on a large scale.
Frank,
While nuclear power holds a sufficient resource to provide power to the world history has shown that there is risk with at the very least, human error in operation and design. Unexpected climate events compounds that risk. Some aspects of Nuclear waste is hazardous for longer than our species has existed on Earth. Increased use will increase risk.
Renewable energy also holds sufficient resources to provide power to the world many times over. There may be associated risks to natural life, but this can be directly compared to the risks to the natural environment posed by global warming.
We could always attempt to reduce population but assuming an expanding economy there will be a global environment impact regardless of our choices. It is pure hubris to assume that anything we do will be so “pure” or isolated that it will not impact the environment. We may only have some say in the extent and nature of that impact.
Frank, overall I wish to thank you for your participation in these comments and discussions as they have helped to clarify my own perspective.
If you check the statistics, you will find that nuclear power is safer than renewables. I guess that the basic problem is that people are not very good at evaluating risk.
Surely it was a tragedy that 49 people died at a nightclub in Florida when an assassin with guns attacked. But isn’t it an even greater tragedy that tens of thousands of people per year die in road accidents? Yet the dangers of road travel attract far less attention. They certainly do not tie up the media for weeks.
It has been estimated that thousands of people die annually as the result of medical accidents, but less action is taken to correct that than it taken to safeguard air travel where the number of deaths from all causes is a tiny fraction as great.
While working on my degree in business administration, I had to take a course on risk management. Perhaps such courses should also be required in high schools and should include how to put the risks of nuclear energy into perspective.
Again, statistics indicate that nuclear energy is safer than any other energy technology, even though there unquestionably is room for improvement. And, from experience in many other fields, we can be certain that improvements in safety will occur.
Lack of energy contributes to shortened lifespans and is one of the reasons that people in poor countries have a much higher premature death rate. With nuclear power we can, without emitting CO2, greatly improve the quality of life and reduce the premature death rate of people in poor countries.
The difference, Frank, is that we of the USA derive no benefit whatsoever from Afghan immigrants who raise jihadi children.
I kinda want to explain what I think about solar, wind and nuclear in terms of required energy in for energy out. They say solar has an Eroei of about 10, wind, about 20, and nuclear, between 7 and 1,000 depending on who says what (and for which reactor type). I say, use the ones that can easily energy afford to pay for themselves.
It has become self evident that a low capacity factor requires about the inverse in additional capacity buildup (-1). Solar’s 20% requires about 5x the buildup to make up. Plus, it needs to store up to 4 parts of that for the 80% of the time it’s not generating. Plus, there is the inefficiency of the batteries (95% ain’t bad, though), and the real kicker, the amount of energy required to make the batteries.
So, if solar gets an Eroei of 10, but needs 5x the overbuild because we won’t have powerlines from summer to winter (8,000 miles?), then it really only has an overall Eroei of 2. Add in the batteries, and we’re probably down to 1 (point something).
Add in integration (like the summer to winter power lines) and we’re back up to at least 3, maybe even 5. Only then could it be even remotely possible. Add in wind, and we might be able to limit manufacture of solar for when the wind is blowing, boosting the overall Eroei further. However, factories don’t work that way.
Add in nuclear and you don’t need much storage, don’t need 8,000 mile long power lines and don’t need to cover hundreds of thousands of square miles with solar. If nuclear’s CF is 90%, then the inverse, is 1.1 (-1). Required storage would be for only 10% of the time (without integration). Add in hydropower, done deal! If it gets an Eroei of only 7, then it’s overall with storage is not more no matter how inefficient the storage (make liquid fuels and charge batteries). Add in solar and wind, and now we need load following nuclear.
So, as I see it, solar should be for kick ass portable solar lighting and other battery powered things like cars (if you don’t want to charge at night).
Another way to look at it is how much the inverse will cost in not only energy, but money. If solar gets down to $2 installed, it’ll still be over $10 after all the extra build up and storage. We have to pretend that NG will be outlawed in these equations, otherwise the main purpose of going clean is trashed. If solar does 20% and you don’t build up the other 80% and add all that extra storage, then you still have 80% fossil fuels in a world that’s on track to consume 2.5x more energy in just about the same timeline as when our 2 degree C time limit expires.
Question for RE “only” advocates – Do you really think that fossil fuels will be ditched for the inverse of capacity factor???
Whoops, typed in my screen name,
Robert
fireoenergy, EROEI is a measure that was “invented” to get around some of the externalities associated with fossil fuels. If we attempt to make it the exclusive method of choice, as you advocate, then why not also consider fossil fuels? I think you agree it is precisely because there are other factors in our energy choices.
All of our energy choices have benefits. There are also drawbacks. I essentially argue for a careful examination of the environment in which those decisions are being made. We are being forced to look at the environment when we take into consideration global warming. This tends to take us away from fossil fuels. In some places the scarcity of mined products will force us to abandon other options.
For nuclear power there is risk associated with human error and natural events. It may be that for a particular environment there are other workable options that will not promote atmospheric pollution but also not force us to accept risks associated with nuclear energy. It may be that when we examine the decreased energy return on energy invested for renewable energy we find that that energy cost is actually an investment in less risk or less uncertainty in the long term.
To some extent after much discussion the argument may come down to how we assess the various risks and what we are willing to pay to avert them. It could well be that someone inclined to renewable energy in your analysis is willing to pay more for a cleaner, more limited risk energy solution.
It also seems more likely that those inclined toward fossil fuels and atomic energy minimize the risk assessment and are unwilling to pay as much to take the environment into consideration.
Breath,
Renewables are not totally benign.
The current wind generator technology uses a magnetic alloy that contains rare earth elements. The strength of those magnets enables making generators which can perform adequately at low speeds thereby eliminating the need for a gearbox to step up the speed. China has a virtual monopoly on rare earth elements not because the elements are rare or occur only in China, but because they are considered to be too dangerous to refine here in the U. S. of A. Because the elements are very similar chemically, they are very difficult to separate. Toxic chemicals are required to separate them and have caused considerable environmental damage in China. Wind generators also kill birds.
The manufacture of PV panels also has environmental hazards. Some PV panels contain small amounts of toxic elements so when the PV panels reach the end of their economic lives, recycling will have to be done very carefully.
Both PV and solar thermal electric systems require large land areas. At least one proposed PV installation in California was halted because of environmental considerations. Senator Dianne Feinstein was involved in the move to halt it.
The power tower type of concentrated solar thermal electric system fries birds which fly where the sun’s rays are concentrated.
Even hydroelectric power has its problems. Although it is clean, it is not always environmentally friendly. In some places, it has reduced fish populations. It has also dislocated tens of thousands of people who had to make way for the artificial lakes created by the dams. Also, dam failures have been serious disasters and killed thousands of people. Dams have also been suspected of causing earthquakes.
There is no power / energy system that is completely benign. There are always risks whether we burn fossil fuels, mine uranium, build dams, build solar systems, or whatever. But the evidence shows that, even though there is room for improvement, nuclear power is the most benign energy technology available.
Yes, nuclear is above and beyond fossil fuels, to which we wouldn’t have to extract and pollute large amounts from and into the environment, as is the case with FFs.
RE is good for charging stuff up when it’s generating, however, when it’s not, it’s FFs that takes its place.
Nuclear does not require fossil fuels except during manufacture. By the time it’s to be decommissioned, we better hope that most of the heavy equipment and cars for employees are already running on clean fuel made in the hours of excess nuclear capacity (probably early morning after cars have been charged) and that “all” cars are electric.
Therefore, it’s not “fossil fuels and nuclear”, it’s “RE and fossil fuels” that is seen as most damaging to the biosphere.
Eroei and Esoi HAVE TO BE considered when trying to ditch FFs, otherwise, whatever fossil free we choose might always have to be “energy subsidized” by FFs.
For the record, I’ve always been kinda afraid of fast reactors and would prefer the few extra years to develop and fast track the molten salt reactors, and, of course, the solid state battery for complete transitioning of transpo from FFs.
Not even then, mainly. Neither concrete nor steel needs carbon-based fuels, per se. Electric furnaces can make both.
Who needs fuels? Jackhammers can run on electricity. Plasma torches ONLY run on electricity.
By the time today’s nuclear plants will need decommissioning, robots will be doing all the critical work. They can work at night, when humans are asleep and demand is minimal. Off-peak nuclear generation will supply the energy. End of problem.
FYI, molten chloride reactors would be fast-spectrum. Your fears are based on ignorance; you would be best-advised to start with a learning program.
I was referring to molten salt reactors like the MSRE that was cut by Nixon (aka LFTR if fueled with thorium). The IFR that was cut by Clinton some two decades later is the one I’m kinda afraid of, because of supposed high reactivity issues concerning the solid fuel.
Now, as I’m writing this, I have to admit that I don’t understand the math behind nuclear engineering, but do understand that a molten fuel is less dense than a configuration of solid fuel and further admit that i probably fear from somebody else’s (who is otherwise pro nuclear) FUD.
The MSR, on the other hand, is fueled by a much less dense liquid that would seem to not have any possibility of.
I found a page about it from Rod. He quoted (from Bill Hannahan, probably who I got this FUD from!) calling it a “high reactivity rate accident” when explaining what actually happens. Ok, the fuel is spaced apart far enough to prevent any super criticality events, as evidenced in Plentiful Energy. However, I still fear (what if the fuel gets impacted together somehow, like during a large quake?). FUD stems from no only ignorance but also from the human ability to err.
Now, since I have reservations about a solid fuel assembly holding itself together, spaced far enough apart to prevent high reactivity in the molten metal (during a nine pointer or some other unforeseen event) of a fast reactor, but not of the MSR, it seems that the public might also undergo this fear after beginning to understand that we need nuclear. They would be especially afraid of the sodium fires once they were told that it can’t come in contact with air (but that’s nothing compared to the fear of high criticality). The public might never learn about the IFR after hearing about this stuff from the anti nuclear crowd, but might insist on the MSR, as I have done.
We don’t have time for fear and confusion (but that’s what I’m still going through considering all the different ways to split the atom).
Is there anything wrong with “just” the molten salt reactor as “thee” Gen IV nuclear scale up? Perhaps longevity issues. And, perhaps, a requirement for larger amounts of start up fuel? Supposedly, the WAMSR design needs very little.
I need to figure out how much and how enriched, the start up fuel for all the various reactor designs needs to be, as “too much” might become a real limiting issue.
So, my confusion is really based on trying to figure out which reactor design is overall, the best and most passively safe.
I, nevertheless, want Terrestrial Energy to become full scale… and will continue promoting the MSR.
Indeed Frank, I have never suggested that Renewables are lily white or pure beyond reason. Yours seems a common criticism to common environmental rhetoric.
Rather, buried within these comments is my suggestion that we consider the environment in determining our energy future. It may be that nuclear, fossil fuel or one of the many different renewable resources are the final solution. But with nuclear energy or fossil fuels you are immediately presented with an ability to largely ignore the environment. There seem to be many who embrace this possibility with relief. I would suggest that this is a fundamental issue with these choices.
It may be difficult to understand this perspective simply because you are not reading about it daily in anti nuclear rhetoric. It is not intrinsically anti nuclear nor anti fossil fuel for that matter. It is simply a matter of looking up from the workbench and observing first. It advocates sensitivity and observation first rather than being blinded by our goals. But neither is it a native-istic acceptance of doing nothing to change the environment.
Breath,
I do not understand why you seem to believe that it is impossible or less likely to ignore the environment while favoring renewables. Regardless of what energy systems we choose, we have to consider the environment.
NO energy system is completely benign. Isn’t ignoring the bird deaths resulting from wind power and tower power solar systems ignoring the environment? Isn’t ignoring the the effect on salmon populations of hydro systems ignoring the environment? Those ignorations are just as damaging as ignoring the possible damage caused by nuclear power.
I’ve had it with the willful distortions from BotW. No more Mr. Nice Guy.
Bullshit. EROEI extends to the life sciences, such as the amount of energy an organism needs to expend just to feed itself and thus how much it has available for reproduction. If the EROEI of your lifestyle goes negative, you either switch lifestyles or starve to death.
Fossil fuels were used because they had a massive EROEI… at least at first. But some FF deposits, such as deep coal, went unused for some time because the fuel required to pump water out of the mines ate up all the profits; the EROEI was too low. Those had to wait until more-efficient steam engines made the pumping profitable again.
Stop being willfully dense. Just stop it. You know full well that EROEI is not the only figure of merit we have to be concerned about; you have NO EXCUSE for taking such an ignorant position here. What you are doing is trolling, plain and simple.
Neither do you have an excuse for attempting to obfuscate the reality: no matter how “renewable” something is, if the system EROEI is too low any attempt to rely on it will collapse, or the energy wasted on it will deplete other energy resources faster. You know better. Just stop it.
This is true, your willful distortions, omissions and cherry-picking of facts notwithstanding. One inconvenient fact is that “renewables” are reliant on backup sources of energy. This forces the use of fossil fuels. If you use nuclear, you do not need the backups and “renewables” are mostly pointless.
We could have a Fukushima event every year and still be far better off than renewables + their unavoidable fossil backup.
As a matter of fact, you’d have to be insane or a fossil-industry shill to equivocate between nuclear power and the so-called “renewables”, which can only exist as part of a system that is anything BUT renewable. So which are you?
This kind of expert BSing argues for “shill”. Uncertainty requires continued believe in “uncertainty”, when it is unambiguously certain that minimal carbon emissions are achievable with nuclear and very like NOT achievable without it. Claiming otherwise, against literally decades of experience, should be an indictable offense against truthfulness.
I so indict “Breath against the Wind”. I accuse you of being a liar until proven otherwise.
So there you go and encourage people to pray for something that doesn’t exist… a solution that isn’t the solution we’ve been given. You should be ashamed of yourself, but you have no shame.
Engineer: ” “With such a divergence of opinion what is a simple layman to think?“
First, don’t trust ideologues… unless they are making an admission against interest. And you don’t consider yourself an “ideologue” so you should be trusted? I will have to review the comments to see if there are “admissions against interest.”
EROEI… I am reviewing the history of the term to see if I can relocate the site that associated EROEI with externalities. So far it seems the term in fact does have an older history in biology and it was adapted to physics. But not quite BS. There are plenty of sites that comment on my primary point that EROEI is not to be considered the sole arbitrator of energy decisions. I mentioned pollution and risk but obtaining fuel (storage) is another reason to discount EROEI.
*** “If we attempt to make it the exclusive method of choice, as you advocate, then why not also consider fossil fuels?“
“Stop being willfully dense…” The question was retorical and you have taken it out of context. I have to wonder if you are confused by the rhetorical device or intend to misquote? The subsequent line explains the point.
*** “I’ve had it with the willful distortions from BotW. No more Mr. Nice Guy.” “…What you are doing is trolling” Does this mean that you will now stop discussing the subject and start with personal attacks?
I have been accused of being “stubborn” on the negative side and “tenacious” on the positive but never before of “trolling.” It takes some time to read your references and research a response. I do think if “trolling” were some kind of satisfactory goal it would be done with very little investment of time.
***”We could have a Fukushima event every year and still be far better off than renewables + their unavoidable fossil backup.” I suspect that this is not a mainstream perspective. You certainly seem to have a higher tolerance for nuclear accidents than most. Perhaps this is what is required of any nuclear advocate?
*** “if the system EROEI is too low any attempt to rely on it will collapse” But what is too low? Tar sands are “economical” above $100 / barrel even though their EROEI is precariously close to negative. Do we need to have 20:1 of natural gas and ignore gas leaks? Is nuclear of 10:1 good enough or do we have to strive for geothermal of 32:1 or winds 18:1 or do we have to hold out for something like coal’s 80:1 Or perhaps we should just pursue hydro with an EROEI of 80 to 100+.
But I am sure you also understand that these numbers are generalizations and include some assumptions. For a specific site with a rich resource the EROEI will be higher. Hydro in a desert is not likely going to give the same ERORI as in the northwest US. We must examine the site and take into consideration the conditions as they exist. Nuclear power in contrast is a power source that attempts adapt the environment to the energy source.
This is not necessarily “bad” but it is a condition that should be taken into consideration. As you have previously mentioned there may be some situations where we prefer not to touch the environment. There may also be some places (like completely underground installations or ships at sea”) where we find a nuclear reactor compatible with clandestine locations and military operations. The military dictated our domestic nuclear program once. Is that the direction we wish to continue?
Breath,
Fossil fuels can never be the “final solution” because they are finite and entail too much trouble trying to sequester all the co2. Why do you continue to clump nuclear with fossil fuels (I clump RE with fossil fuels)?
Germany requires new load following coal plants in order to back RE. France requires far less fossil fuels as their per person CO2 footprint attests to (cheaper, too). RE demands a much larger footprint upon nature. Nuclear reduces the footprint we already impose to almost nothing. How? RE is diffuse and intermittent. Physics states that such requires a greater mass to be forced upon nature, especially if we are to provide the 2.5x the power the world currently consumes by 2050, whereas nuclear excludes the reliance, and therefore, the forcings upon nature, by virtue of its isolation from reliance upon nature.
No need to dam the land, no need to cover the land, no need to erect eagle killing machines, no need to build 4x the amount of these to make up for no wind and no sun “events”, no need to build even more structures for storage, and finally, no need to mine all that extra material (how much mining required for almost a million square miles of solar coverage, for example)! Splitting the atom provides about 6 orders of magnitude more power per mass of fuel, and thus very much less actual mined mass and plant space to make it happen, especially if advanced reactors are fully tested and scaled up.
Advanced reactors are to be passively safe and create less long term wastes.
Again, nuclear has nothing to do with fossil fuels and is sustainable far into the future using today’s tech for modular mass production, operating and maintenance, and, for advanced Gen IV nuclear, wastes disposal.
Robert, it is not perfectly clear. You quote Craig and then direct comments to me? It may not be immediately understood, but we are two people.
***”Why do you continue to clump nuclear with fossil fuels (I clump RE with fossil fuels)” Yes and therein lies a big difference. Although you might use any filter and a bit of set theory to combine anything, when it comes to
1. energy density
2. integral energy storage
3. application independent of but with demands from the environment.
…both fossil fuels and atomic energy may be compared closely and contrasted extensively with renewable energy.
When it comes to greenhouse gases most renewable energy and atomic energy could be compared and then contrasted with fossil fuels. Some of the rhetoric here, I believe mistakenly, associates renewable energy with fossil fuel energy sources used to back them up. There is a confusion here of common practices and the essential nature of the energy source. A similar misapplied argument is made when we call an electric car a “coal car.”
The essential nature of the EV or renewable energy tends to not give us the polluting externalities of fossil fuels. However in a society where more than 65% of our electricity is made from fossil fuels that will be a fall back source of energy (for all sources.) Rather than understanding the nature of the energy source this argument then places the fault of the energy system disproportionately on to renewable energy. It it were a tactic rather than an argument we might say the attempt is to smear or tarnish renewable energy with fossil fuels.
The more appropriate argument will weigh points like EROEI and capacity factors, thought I have previously argued that even these should not be exclusive.
Although not all renewable energy suffers lower capacity factors (geothermal and hydro are quite good) and some like hydro have a built in storage potential, grid sized energy storage will go a long way to resolving such issues and replacing fossil fuel back up with stored energy.
The problem with the misapplied argument is that it causes us to throw out the good with the bad. Should we throw out all cars because petrol cars pollute the environment? Should we toss all renewable energy because fossil fuels exist.
Rather it makes more sense to strive for a better system using our best elements where they seem to fit.
But most importantly you ask if it does not make the most sense to divorce our energy needs from the environment. That could take you to fossil fuels but an aversion to global warming then leads you to atomics. It is almost as if you are saying that the environment is working against us so you don’t want to pay it any attention. Or you maybe saying like so many from the past that the environment is so big nothing we can do will “harm” it.
I see instead that the environment is too big and too vital to ignore and we are too many people with collectively too much impact to ignore the environment. The mindset of using nuclear energy to steer clear of environmental impact seems instead to invite disaster through hubris. We think this is an easier path but I suspect it is more like cheating on a test. The solution is of limited duration and fails to give us a complete picture, add to our understanding, or avoid future pitfalls.
All in all I am grateful to all who have participated with me in this discussion. I never intended to change anyone’s mind and I hope no one is disappointed in my counterpoint. The thread is getting repetitive and I suggest we collectively move on. In the coming weeks I hope to be working closely with a utility scale power engineer and expect some of what is written here to reappear in those discussions.
Breath, you wrote, “…grid sized energy storage will go a long way to resolving such issues and replacing fossil fuel back up with stored energy.”
Surely it would have been more accurate to write, “…it is conceivable, although to an unknown degree, that grid sized energy storage will go a long way to resolving such issues and replacing fossil fuel back up with stored energy.”
I, for one, would prefer not to trust the survival of civilization to something that is conceivable. I would prefer to trust the survival of civilization to something which is closer to being a sure thing. The fate of billions of people depends on this.
We need speed! We cannot afford to wait for a technology that does not exist and may never exist. That is the basic issue.
I don’t know how I cited Craig (Thanks for allowing these comments).
Breath,
It is almost as if you are saying that the environment is working against us so you don’t want to pay it any attention. Or you maybe saying like so many from the past that the environment is so big nothing we can do will “harm” it.
No. We are working against nature by not using nuclear because we are instead using fossil fuels. This is what I implicitly mean.
RE is just fluff, as I see it (unless hundreds of thousands of sq mi are covered with it, necessary…).
Making solar lights got me into solar. In order to make one bright enough to displace a “grid” light at about 100 watts equivalent requires just 10 watts (yes, leds kick ass now days!), I would need to store at least 6 hours, or 60 wh. If stored in 3.2v LiFePO4, then about 20 amp hours with a 4 volt panel rated at about 16 watts. If stored by 12v lead acid, only about 5AH using 18v panel rated at 16 watts (this time, only just over 1 amp). I would want to make it last about 20 hours, meaning a much larger panel and battery, because it would be cloudy for days. Everyone thought they were kinda kool, but basically said “why, when we already have lights”. Finally, I just hooked up just 20mA of leds (x4 in series) because I got tired of it always dimming. Now, it lasts for weeks (and is good enough to be used as a night light).
I was intrigued with clean energy but realized soon that it’s not going to power everything.
This is about when I started to re-look at nuclear, especially the molten salt concept that Terrestrial Energy is going to do. The only thing I don’t like about it is that nasty radiation filled containers (the actual reactors themselves) must be dealt with. But, hey, better than global warming, right? As long as we can isolate them for a few hundred years, nature will be fine. For the most part, nature would be fine even if we blatantly dumped them without concern (compared to planetary warming, ocean acidification and whatever effects that follows). I don’t like nuclear but I don’t really like work, either (have to do it).
fireofenergy
Your same argument could be applied to Nuclear development. Today some grid storage exists. It is actively being developed. An extensive research program, expansion and development of Nuclear power is a hope and a wish that could take 30 years if not preempted by energy storage, nuclear fusion or further delayed by powerful fossil fuel interests.
Perhaps it very much comes to where your optimism lies.
Not really.
France went from zero nuclear to 80% nuclear for electricity in only 15 years. That proves that nuclear power can be rapidly expanded. It is not a matter of hoping or waiting for something to be developed. Of course R & D on nuclear power should be greatly accelerated to develop better nuclear technologies, but the nuclear technologies we already have will do the job.