Climate Change(d)?

[bilby]

Presumably all the vehicles will be electric.

That's not necessary. They could be; or we could make gasoline and/or other hydrocarbon fuels out of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and keep our existing vehicles and fuelling infrastructure.

The only reason carbon neutral synthetic fuels aren't widespread right now is that it's free to dump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere - so the cheapest fuels can be gotten by drilling holes in Arabia or Texas.

 

[bilby]

Maybe we ought to ask the question whether it will be possible to sustain a high-tech industrial civilization without fossil fuels.

The answer is an obvious snd resounding "yes". Fissile fuel is better, cheaper, and more abundant, and can easily do the job.

 

[bilby]

It seems to me that no matter what you throw into the mix — hydro, solar, wind, nuclear —all those things require fossil fuels to build and maintain.

Only because that's what we are currently using. None of our technology is incapable of existing in the absence of fossil fuels. None.

 

[bilby]

Can nuclear power be used to build nuclear plants?

How is that even a question? You can use electricity to do anything that fossil fuel combustion can achieve.

 

[bilby]

how can wind or solar possibly help?

By generating juice off the grid - especially when the grid goes down. Centralization brings vulnerability.

Most wind and solar generation today cannot work without a connection to a grid to provide phase synchronisation for the inverters.

You CAN build units that wirk off-grid, but very few are currently built or in use, because it's a LOT cheaper not to be grid independent.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

But we need to be investigating technologies that aren't hamstrung with limitations that can not be addressed. If we got Thorium to work for nuclear plants (honestly, we probably should be shifting investment here from fusion), that'd should greatly reduce waste. If we could sequester CO2 into gasoline, that would be incredible!

Reprocessing would take a big bite out of the high level waste and we know how to do it now. And it's not the scary thing that it's made out to be, plutonium from a normal civilian reactor will be heavily contaminated with Pu-240. This is of basically zero concern to the power industry. It is a very big headache for those who would make bombs.

And if you're still scared, throw some of the really hot stuff in with the plutonium at the reprocessing plant. The reactor won't care if the fuel is contaminated with a bunch of cobalt-60 and they already have the equipment to handle the material (the rods come out hot enough that nobody can go near them, thus it doesn't matter if they also go in that hot.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

One advantage China has over us is that it can mandate civil projects. They have gotten at making 5 years pans and executing them. They are thinking out 100 years, not the next political cycle.

You mean their pans only last 5 years?

Yeah, they're great at making them. Not so great at recognizing when the plan no longer aligns with reality.

 

[bilby]

If we could sequester CO2 into gasoline, that would be incredible!

We can.

http://bioage.typepad.com/greencarcongress/docs/GreenFreedom.pdf

But it's slightly cheaper to use fossil fuel, while fossil fuel producers remain able to ignore the environmental costs of their products.

And Americans will do anything for slightly cheaper gasoline.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The problem with renewable is it isn't the solution that gets you to the target.

The bigger problem is that it makes getting to the target more difficult.

Renewables cause a crash in wholesale prices during sunny or windy periods. This is a big problem for base load generators, as it makes some of their generation valueless.

I'm tired of "economics" being the reason we can't go to a carbon neutral power source, as if we are unable to manage that part of it. If the Government could manage literally trillions of fucked up debt, it can handle volatility in electricity prices. We just have to prioritize it. I'm tired of "capitalism" making progress impossible. That is the exact opposite of what it is supposed to be capable of accomplishing.

Economics are a measure of resource use. You can't simply ignore it any more than you can ignore any other resource limit.

The reality is that renewables are sufficiently unreliable that their only value is in reducing fuel use by fossil fuel generators. Good for the environment, but the consumer is going to get soaked because the generating capacity is basically duplicated.

You can generate up to about 40% of electricity from intermittent renewables, as long as you are happy to massively distort the market such that the only way to get the remaining 60% is from fossil gas*.

We need to lower carbon yesterday. We can't build nuclear plants fast enough to manage that short-term. So we need an interim.

Renewables aren't an interm.

If you want to eliminate fossil fuel burning, then you need to adjust the market conditions to make fossil fuel burners pay the (currently externalised) cost of their carbon dioxide emissions - ie, you need a carbon tax.

No, we need to build nuclear plants. The US didn't need to land on the moon. Other than the engineering breakthroughs, the US gained little economically from the Moon race. But we made it a priority. We can do that with nuclear power.

Those engineering breakthroughs were of great value to society.

All the world's lowest emitters of carbon dioxide have grids powered mostly by hydroelectricity and/or nuclear. Boasting, cherry-picking, and propagandising aside, we need to pick options that actually lower total system emissions. Not just emissions from the bits of tne system you want to show off, nor just emissions at the times that show your favourite technology at its best, but across the entire system, over the entire year.

We need to cut emissions. Renewables help. But we need something else. In light that we can't flood enough territory to make hydro work, we need the other carbon neutral thing. But that will take decades. And we need something now, well decades ago. So we need to put those pieces together, which can be done by intelligent people who understand economics and engineering.

There's exactly one thing that fits the requirements: nuclear. And we need to modify the rules so all the nuts don't get to challenge it over and over and over.

 

[bilby]

The reality is that renewables are sufficiently unreliable that their only value is in reducing fuel use by fossil fuel generators. Good for the environment, but the consumer is going to get soaked because the generating capacity is basically duplicated.

It's not "good for the environment" though, because it renders less viable those technologies for which fuel use is less important, while rendering more viable those where fuel use is a major component of cost.

Wind and Solar thereby promote the burning of fossil fuel, particularly gas; And demote hydropower and fission, for whom fuel is a trivial cost, with capital costs dominating.

Their net impact on the environment, as a consequence of their economic impact on other generation technologies, may well be sharply negative.

And because they are uncontrollably intermittent, wind and solar always imply other technologies (whether it is other generation, or some kind of storage).

Looking at wind and solar while ignoring the costs of these unavoidable additional activities is just as unforgivable, and as distorting, as looking at fossil fuel costs, while ignoring the cost of emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The optimum strategy for a minimum cost (both financial and environmental) electricity system, is very different from the sum of the optimum strategies for individual components in that system.

Which is why free markets are a shit way to manage infrastructure.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Nobody has “proven the impossibility” of a sudden, radical, transformative advance in technology. Some such things have happened in the past.

Sure. But batteries work by manipulating electrons. There's a hard physical limit to their capacity per kg, set by the ratio between the amount of mass in the atoms that make them up, and the number of electrons that each atom carries.

The best ratio comes from Hydrogen, with just one nucleon per electron. But gases make poor battery materials, and hydrogen isn't solid (or even liquid) at reasonable temperatures and pressures.

The best solid (at room temperature and pressure) is Lithium, with six nucleons and three electrons - tnough only one of those electrons is easy to use.

Some simple math tells the sad story. Modern lithium batteries might improve at most tenfold (this is being very generous) due to further refinements, so lets say that we can multiply battery capacity by ten without new materials.

Then lets magically grant the ability to use all three electrons. Now we have batteries thirty times as good as today's.

Then we will magically invent a way to replace lithium with solid hydrogen, to double capacity again. We now have sixty times the energy density we have today, and because magic, let's pretend it costs exactly the same.

A sixty fold increase in storage capacity is as much as we can dare to imagine, and it's still four or five orders of magnitude too little.

Ultimately, a battery is just reversible chemistry. Burning hydrogen, or carbon, is half of the job of battery storage. Reversing that combustion is the other half. And the energy density of the process is physically limited to the binding energy of a hydrogen atom's electron to its proton. That's an absolute, hard physical limit. No amount of technological wizardry can beat it (or, due to thermodynamics, even reach it).

The only physically possible way to store more energy using matter - ie atoms - is to store it using nuclear forces, rather than just the electromagnetic one.

Two nitpicks:

1) The energy per electron isn't the same for every atom. It's not that we use lithium because we can get 1/3 of it's electrons, but that we use it because the electron is tightly enough bound (high voltage per cell), yet can be stripped for storage purposes.

https://xdb.lbl.gov/Section1/Table_1-1.pdf

If my memory is right you actually get the maximum energy from carbon, not lithium. It's just not practical to actually use.

2) Your analysis does not address supercapacitors. While they currently can't rival batteries I'm not aware of theoretical limits on their power.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Maybe we ought to ask the question whether it will be possible to sustain a high-tech industrial civilization without fossil fuels.

It seems to me that no matter what you throw into the mix — hydro, solar, wind, nuclear —all those things require fossil fuels to build and maintain. Can they be built by some alternative method? I don’t know. Can nuclear power be used to build nuclear plants? Solar to build solar panels? What if it turns out we can’t have the civilization we have without fossil fuels?

Why wouldn't it be? In the worst case you use your nuclear power to crack water to get fuel for things that require fuel.

Now, if there is no way to do it without fossil fuels that's the Fermi Paradox answer.

 

[bilby]

If my memory is right you actually get the maximum energy from carbon, not lithium. It's just not practical to actually use.

Of course it is. We use carbon now, specifically because it's an excellent store of energy. That's what got us into this mess.

Batteries are just combustion, but slowed down and made to run in both directions.

It's all just shuffling electrons around.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

how can wind or solar possibly help?

By generating juice off the grid - especially when the grid goes down. Centralization brings vulnerability.

Civilization can't survive an extended grid-down event. In theory the grid can be black started, but that's assuming things are still intact. Very soon they will not be. Having your own ability to generate gives you a bit of extra survival time but that's it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The reality is that renewables are sufficiently unreliable that their only value is in reducing fuel use by fossil fuel generators. Good for the environment, but the consumer is going to get soaked because the generating capacity is basically duplicated.

It's not "good for the environment" though, because it renders less viable those technologies for which fuel use is less important, while rendering more viable those where fuel use is a major component of cost.

Wind and Solar thereby promote the burning of fossil fuel, particularly gas; And demote hydropower and fission, for whom fuel is a trivial cost, with capital costs dominating.

Their net impact on the environment, as a consequence of their economic impact on other generation technologies, may well be sharply negative.

And because they are uncontrollably intermittent, wind and solar always imply other technologies (whether it is other generation, or some kind of storage).

Looking at wind and solar while ignoring the costs of these unavoidable additional activities is just as unforgivable, and as distorting, as looking at fossil fuel costs, while ignoring the cost of emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The optimum strategy for a minimum cost (both financial and environmental) electricity system, is very different from the sum of the optimum strategies for individual components in that system.

Which is why free markets are a shit way to manage infrastructure.

The current grid with renewables emits less carbon than it would without.

I agree it's not the ideal solution but it is a local optimum.

 

[bilby]

The energy per electron isn't the same for every atom.

It doesn't need to be; for my analysis to hold requires only that it's in the same order of magnitude.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PsEppdvgRisz5xAHG/fermi-estimates

 

[bilby]

I agree it's not the ideal solution but it is a local optimum.

Local optima are traps. They need to be avoided, even though doing so requires considerable effort.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The problem with renewable is it isn't the solution that gets you to the target.

The bigger problem is that it makes getting to the target more difficult.

Renewables cause a crash in wholesale prices during sunny or windy periods. This is a big problem for base load generators, as it makes some of their generation valueless.

I'm tired of "economics" being the reason we can't go to a carbon neutral power source, as if we are unable to manage that part of it. If the Government could manage literally trillions of fucked up debt, it can handle volatility in electricity prices. We just have to prioritize it. I'm tired of "capitalism" making progress impossible. That is the exact opposite of what it is supposed to be capable of accomplishing.

Economics are a measure of resource use. You can't simply ignore it any more than you can ignore any other resource limit.

The reality is that renewables are sufficiently unreliable that their only value is in reducing fuel use by fossil fuel generators. Good for the environment, but the consumer is going to get soaked because the generating capacity is basically duplicated.

You can generate up to about 40% of electricity from intermittent renewables, as long as you are happy to massively distort the market such that the only way to get the remaining 60% is from fossil gas*.

We need to lower carbon yesterday. We can't build nuclear plants fast enough to manage that short-term. So we need an interim.

Renewables aren't an interm.

If you want to eliminate fossil fuel burning, then you need to adjust the market conditions to make fossil fuel burners pay the (currently externalised) cost of their carbon dioxide emissions - ie, you need a carbon tax.

No, we need to build nuclear plants. The US didn't need to land on the moon. Other than the engineering breakthroughs, the US gained little economically from the Moon race. But we made it a priority. We can do that with nuclear power.

Those engineering breakthroughs were of great value to society.

All the world's lowest emitters of carbon dioxide have grids powered mostly by hydroelectricity and/or nuclear. Boasting, cherry-picking, and propagandising aside, we need to pick options that actually lower total system emissions. Not just emissions from the bits of tne system you want to show off, nor just emissions at the times that show your favourite technology at its best, but across the entire system, over the entire year.

We need to cut emissions. Renewables help. But we need something else. In light that we can't flood enough territory to make hydro work, we need the other carbon neutral thing. But that will take decades. And we need something now, well decades ago. So we need to put those pieces together, which can be done by intelligent people who understand economics and engineering.

There's exactly one thing that fits the requirements: nuclear. And we need to modify the rules so all the nuts don't get to challenge it over and over and over.

I wasn't ignoring economica, I was saying we can manage it. We aren't building out nuclear at all at the moment, and when we actually start to, it will take decades without obstruction. We need an interim to poorly patch the system in the meantime. Of course we need that to be the actual plan in the first place.

 

[bilby]

What if it turns out we can’t have the civilization we have without fossil fuels?

Well, that's an interesting alternative history question.

Fossil fuels are not required to get to a civilisation of similar advancement as that of the early eighteenth century; We know this, because at the beginning of the eighteenth century, very little fossil fuel was being used, and where it was in use, there were alternatives that were more widely used for each application.

Nothing that happened before 1700AD depended upon fossil fuels; Our alternative history timeline diverges only with the start of the Industrial Revolution.

So, in a speculative world in which the Earth is identical in every way, except that it has no coal, mineral oil, or natural gas, could we have had an industrial revolution?

Well, it certainly wouldn't have looked much like the one we did have.

But the scientific advances made in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries were only partly driven by industrial demands. Fundamental physics probably would have advanced more slowly, but there don't seem to be any obstacles that would have completely stopped an alternative timeline from developing nuclear energy without fossil fuels.

Even in the absence of heavy industry, scientific research and the development of technologies would have still been driven (as they had been in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) by the desire to get an 'edge' over rival nations, in war and in commerce.

Fossil fuels, being cheap and abundant, drove rapid industrialisation, and that drove rapid technological advances. In our alternative world, the industrial revolution could have started with nuclear fission to make steam, rather than with burning coal - a bare-bones reactor is so simple it has even occurred naturally, and is certainly able to be constructed without fossil fuel use, or any engineering more advanced than a wheelbarrow. If you don't care about the health or life of your workforce too much. Which the people in charge in our actual Industrial Revolution certainly didn't.

Our alternate world, with zero fossil fuel, would look quite different from the real world we currently inhabit; But I don't see any reason to think that the end result would be any less advanced technologically, or any less civilised politically, than the one we actually inhabit.

I do rather like (as an alt-history sci-fi concept) the idea of Isambard Kingdom Brunel building nuclear powered steamships, trains, and steelworks, standing in his top hat supervising, while teams of expendable labourers stack up graphite and uranium blocks by hand, until the pile gets hot enough to raise steam.

 

[bilby]

We aren't building out nuclear at all at the moment, and when we actually start to, it will take decades without obstruction.

Decades with obstruction. A few years without.

Japan’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant Unit 6 is the world’s fastest-built nuclear power plant, taking only 39 months for completion, while of Korea’s Wolseong Nuclear Power Plant Reactor 3 took 49 months to build.

Source

A serious program to build lots of reactors as fast as possible should be able to complete a given plant in around 2-3 years; Perhaps even less if they are built to a standardised design by teams who repeatedly build the same design over and over.

Nuclear power was the fastest way to get low carbon electricity online, up until 2016 (the last year for which I have data); My guess would be that it still is. Certainly it isn't dramatically slower than intermittent renewables, in terms of our capability to build generating capacity.


Source