SimpleDon
Veteran Member
The important point is that solar and wind are not even close to being base generation, the vast majority of the power that we need. They are simply just a way to generate some power without generating carbon dioxide.
There is no reasonable method for storing the large amounts of power that would be required to allow solar and wind to provide base power, not to mention that the total installed base of solar panels would have to be about three times the installed base power generation, with twice that number in storage capacity.
What is needed in the medium term 10 to 20 years is a zero carbon emitting, high density, central power generating method.
Fortunately we have such a technology available. Unfortunately for a lot of very bad reasons we are not using it. Nuclear power. It is trapped in an almost perfect storm of bad thinking from both the right and the left.
Unfortunately, it's got one big problem: Slow throttle.
If you want to run the entire country on nukes the plants have to be running at a level sufficient to cope with the peaks at all times. Any industrial firm that can make use of vast amounts of power with no say as to when it will be delivered would love it (my impression is that some electrolytic processes qualify) but it would mean the cost per kwh would go up substantially.
I am only talking about base power, for which the current, high pressure, water cooled reactors are good for. We need a fourth generation of nuclear reactors that aren't water-steam high pressure reactors but which heat a gas. They would be low pressure reactors that would throttle well and would be nuclear self-regulating, not require the stand by water cooling, a molten salt reactor for example. Gas medium allows higher temperatures and more thermodynamic efficiency than steam.
Having the fuel in the molten salt means that the reactor is much more efficient ’burning' its uranium. Current static fuel rod designs use only about 2% of the energy from the fuel before the nuclear waste accumulates and the reactor has to be shutdown and the rods redistributed and partially replaced. In a molten salt reactor the waste products can be removed from the salt and new fuel introduced while the reactor is running. You have much less waste then. A molten salt reactor could even be partially fueled with today's waste, solving another problem and retrieving most of the 98% of the energy that current reactors throw away. About twenty years down the pike from whenever we would start seriously to work on it.
We are doing it again Loren, hijacking a thread.