Explore? Heck, I want one in my backyard!
3 Likes
How do you suggest the stability and reliability of our transmission system/grid will be maintained if all of the coal, gas and nuclear plants are shut down? Constant Frequency and voltage is required to Maintain the system frequency and avoid power Outages and black outs. Wind and solar do not replace the physical inertia from conventional generators. When the sun goes Down or a storm rolls in there has to be enough generation online to replace it. Our Current Energy storage systems do not have the capacity to meet peak demand. I’m all for renewables but we are getting ahead of what our grid is currently capability of.
1 Like
Batteries are performing well as part of the solution to this problem. See the recent successes in South Australia. They are smoothing voltage and frequency on the scale of minutes, while gas plants provide longer term smoothing.
At the moment I would agree that gas plants are a requirement (this article is about coal and fission) but as wind power is distributed over wider areas, and more battery storage comes online, I would expect the dependency on methane to decline.
8 Likes
Huge donations to the inaugural pay off.
I try not to do this much, because I’m just a voice on the Intertubes, right? My arguments and suasions should stand on their own, should not be based on unverifiable claims to authority.
But…
My first job after I earned my degree at age 24 was developing testing software for spacecraft engines and thermonuclear weapon delivery systems. My next job, I designed control system hardware and software for, among other things, nuclear reactors. My next job, which paid nowhere near as well, put me in a support role for the people assaying the environmental effects of the Savannah river reactors.
I’m not a nuclear physicist, not even a nuclear scientist. But I know a bit more than theory. Terrestrial nuclear fission power generation is a profoundly bad investment; it’s an antique technology unsuited to American business and military culture. It’s unprofitable and dangerously vulnerable.
7 Likes
Here’s another option: make a combined conventional and fast breeder reactor, so you don’t have to take the stuff in and out all the time. No temptation to make nukes with the by-products, as they get used up.
5 Likes
Propping up coal is a bad idea; propping up (existing) nucular is a very different issue, and, subject to the exact numbers, is a good idea.
I’m not making a case for new nucular plants. It’s a rich topic for discussion, but ultimately the political bias is insurmountable, and that’s the reality. And anyway, once you get into optimistic claims about what future nucular plants could do, you might as well focus on the optimistic claims about batteries and renewable sources, which have a lot less baggage and more support.
But however bullish you are on renewables in the long term, right now most zero-carbon power comes from nucular plants; if they shut down, greenhouse gas emissions go up, by a lot. It will take many years before renewables can displace enough fossil-fuel generating capacity to change that arithmetic – just reworking the transmission infrastructure is a project of epic scale.
As I say, it depends on the exact numbers, but if (for example) Three Mile Island could be kept open for an extra ten years by giving it the same subsidies a wind farm would get, then it would be clinically bonkers not to do that.
2 Likes
Just because you can drown does not mean that you can’t die of thirst. The economy works best with a moderate level of redistribution of wealth. Because money and power are highly correlated, the well off will secure an every higher percentage of the wealth and income to the detriment of the functioning of the economy if there aren’t some limits. Things like a minimum wage and progressive taxes are necessary.
3 Likes
I know - why not build the boarder wall out of coal and burn it. Not only will it look cool, it would be too dangerous to cross and hurt the environment. Win Win! /s
4 Likes
I recently determined that there is enough global wealth for every household in the world to have $150k. I suspect that number has been fairly consistent since the end of the industrial revolution, in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Wrong.
9 Likes
Robbing from the poor and giving to the rich is certainly consistent behavior from Trump and his oligarch supporters. His “tax reform” legislation may give a few lower income people a very small, very temporary tax cut, but I happen to have a salary in the very bitter “sweet spot” where I’m losing an additional $8k per year in taxes.
Mmm but hold on - the problem is what works for one area, may not work for another. How much power needs to be generated and the consistency is still an issue. I think solar will be our ultimate savior, but storage of power for cloudy days and the waste and cost involved in creating those batteries is a real concern. Some place like most of Kansas doesn’t have options like hydro power. Wind power is a good candidate for some of Kansas, but not for others as far as some parts are more consistently windy than others. Plus, again, power storage.
Now I believe all of these issues can be over come, but that doesn’t mean @Mvars point isn’t still valid. Wind and solar alone will have issues with low output days. I imagine places that are near 100% also have overlapping options.
Also consider the size and population of someplace like Norway is minuscule compared to the US. Simply put not only do we have more people using more power, but they are also spread out way more.
So yeah, again, these issues can be overcome, but it has to be done in a well planned fashion and there are many problems that still need to be worked out. Honestly I expect China to overtake most of the world in this sector and their breakthroughs will trickle down to here. They are heavily investing in that sector.
1 Like
If President Carter hadn’t fscked over the nuclear industry by banning reprocessing, and thus opening the fuel cycle, we wouldn’t have all this waste to deal with… it would all be fuel again, and again.
If environmentalists thought through the implications of their tactics before making nuclear energy out to be an evil boogie man, we’d have a much more efficient and continuously replenished inventory of plants turning out ever more energy at ever better prices. We could have even made the switch to Thorium molten salt reactors by now, which are quite a bit safer and generate a lot less plutonium.
Trump sucks, but he’s just the latest layer in a shit sandwich.
3 Likes
Adding hydroelectricity is disingenuous for the type of benefits they are describing, and hydropower has brought many species to or near extinction because of the environmental impacts - not to mention the deserts and other massive changes to the environment. We know that hydroelectricity is the most common form of power generation, it has been for decades. It also makes the (construction) costs of nuclear power look good in comparison.
2 Likes
I think you either need to provide some context, or a shedload of sources, because in the absence of either that paragraph appears to contain a falsehood in every sentence.
3 Likes
Most common non-fossil fuel source, the other sentences still stand without issue. There are huge environmental issues with damming rivers, and the costs are 5-10 times that of a nuclear reactor.
EDIT
And to be clear: I am against using fossil fuels with emissions for electricity generation. If nothing else, we have had the technology to support peak power consumption without fossil fuels for a long time and that article does show that it’s not an actual issue. I currently have 100% wind power electricity (though I suspect peak energy still comes from natural gas and they don’t have to report it), and it’s fractions of a penny more expensive than the cheapest energy plans. There’s basically no excuse.
On top of that, I want the government to invest hundreds of billions of dollars into infrastructure projects around the country. I’m a big advocate of building more hydroelectric plants, they just have been pitched as somewhat magical in recent years when there are major concerns with them.
2 Likes
I think I read once that the main issue with expanding hydro-power is that they built pretty much all the best dams that can be built in north america by 1960. They require some pretty specific geography. This may be part of that construction cost evaluation. An ideal dam site gets a big high reservoir behind a very narrow solid choke point. The less ideal the more you have to build or the less power you can generate.
We can get some more power out of them by killing the rivers entirely, by trading off agricultural water supply vs power, etc, but we are already on the flattening out part of the curve for investment in hydro-power vs hydro-power output.
The really great thing about hydro-power in a renewable energy system is that it is more flexible than most. One can turn up and down dam generation quickly, and - at least during some seasons - its mostly up to humans exactly when we get the power from them.
2 Likes
I have read that we can increase hydroelectric power output somewhere in the neighborhood of 70%, so there’s still more to do just not a cure-all.
1 Like
Read the article.
