The Remarkable Progress of Renewable Energy

[bilby]

The idea of "wind storage" came to mind.

It was considered, but global baked bean production turns out to be entirely inadequate for grid-scale systems.

 

[bilby]

More excuses for doing nothing better for disposal of nuclear waste permanently.

Why not do the right thing? We have large deposits of toxic coal ash with no plans to deal with that. Toxic brown fields that in recent years, remediation and clean up efforts have stopped. And more. There is always excuses for failures to solve pollution problems. And that is a problem.

The EPA has responsibility to get browfild sites cleaned. Trump budgets demanded 26% percent cuts to the EPA budget. Radical GOP clowns in Congress want to eliminate EPA all together. Only recently has the Biden administration managed to reinstate the oil and petroleum excise taxes to fund brown field cleanups. Outraging extremist GOP politicians. It is not just nuclear waste problems we have to fight.

I will note that the amount of coal ash is magnitudes larger than nuclear waste. We wouldn't need radiation proof levees to hold in massive pools of radioactive material.

Coal ash is quite radioactive.

In fact, coal power plants discharge vastly more radioactive material into the environment than nuclear plants do.

When the Calder Hall nuclear power plant* in the UK was closed, the loss of its electrical supply meant that alternative arrangements were needed to power the adjacent facilities, particularly the ThORP fuel reprocessing plant, whose license required a source of on-site electrical power in case of a grid failure.

The operators, BNFL, decided that the most efficient solution would be to build a small coal fired generating facility onsite. However, this plan had to be scrapped, as it was determined that the radioactive material released by such a coal power plant would significantly exceed the permitted levels set out in the site licence.

Coal power plant waste contains quite significant amounts of Radon, which goes straight into the atmosphere, and so much Uranium that fly ash typically contains about a tenth of the concentration of Uranium as is found in commercially mined Uranium ores.

In addition to Uranium, fly ash contains non-trivial amounts of radioactive Thorium, and the various non-volatile decay products of these two elements, mostly Radium. The volatile radioisotopes just go up the chimney, where (just like the Carbon Dioxide) they cease to exist, and never need to be thought about ever again.






* Calder Hall was the world's first full scale commercial nuclear power plant, and was operational from 1956-2003. It was, like most of the very earliest nuclear power plants, built as a dual use facility, making both electricity and weapons grade plutonium, and like all such plants, wasn't particularly efficient in either role. Nevertheless, it operated as a power plant for 47 years, having been designed with a twenty year lifespan.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Here in the U.S. coal is dying. Eventually bad old coal ash will no longer be created in vast piles. Now about those casks of nuclear waste you seem to think we need more of.....

 

[bilby]

Here in the U.S. coal is dying. Eventually bad old coal ash will no longer be created in vast piles. Now about those casks of nuclear waste you seem to think we need more of.....

What about them?

Are you seriously still trying to insinuate that they are problematic, despite having been asked repeatedly to explain why you think that they are, and having repeatedly dodged the question?

If you can't tell us what the problem is, then why should anyone be concerned about them?

Don't be shy. Tell us all why they are a problem.

And, for the record (and as you really should know, if you had been paying attention), we don't "need more of them"; They are just the best (by far) of our options. Not having nuclear waste means having lots more of something that's doing a great deal more harm to both humans and the wider environment.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There are many projects underway to find cheap ways to store renewable energy other than using natural gas. It is a matter of engineering. Financing.

Physics doesn't allow it. It forbids it.

There are a large number of projects for industrial sized batteries not based on lithium.

Industrial sized batteries? Please, think about it. Ignoring the issues of redundancy, how small can you squeeze a power plant into? That is what you are asking for. Lead, Lithium... it doesn't matter unless we are talking something like matter / anti-matter (<--- not feasible on planet). The capacity to store power (not merely make it with more common elements) is a fixed limit. We already have an idea what that limit is.

Oh, come on now. Gravity battery hoisting a chunk of neutronium!

Never mind that we can't produce it and that it isn't stable in less than .2 solar mass sizes, those are just minor problems.

And unless you encase your neutronium in helium you'll have a big problem with it transmuting nearby materials, eventually ending up with lead and bismuth or if the flux is great enough it could break past that into the really nasty stuff in row 7.

(Helium acts as a natural barrier against transmutation because if He4 captures a neutron it very quickly spits it back out--the neutron ends up slowed and finally decays to a proton. Likewise bismuth is a barrier as it decays to polonium which quickly decays back to lead. That one can be overcome by hitting it fast enough.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Coal power plant waste contains quite significant amounts of Radon, which goes straight into the atmosphere, and so much Uranium that fly ash typically contains about a tenth of the concentration of Uranium as is found in commercially mined Uranium ores.

In addition to Uranium, fly ash contains non-trivial amounts of radioactive Thorium, and the various non-volatile decay products of these two elements, mostly Radium. The volatile radioisotopes just go up the chimney, where (just like the Carbon Dioxide) they cease to exist, and never need to be thought about ever again.

Wow! I knew it was hot but I didn't realize it was that hot.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Here in the U.S. coal is dying. Eventually bad old coal ash will no longer be created in vast piles. Now about those casks of nuclear waste you seem to think we need more of.....

But the existing piles still exist, spewing their radioactivity into the environment uncontained.

 

[bilby]

Coal power plant waste contains quite significant amounts of Radon, which goes straight into the atmosphere, and so much Uranium that fly ash typically contains about a tenth of the concentration of Uranium as is found in commercially mined Uranium ores.

In addition to Uranium, fly ash contains non-trivial amounts of radioactive Thorium, and the various non-volatile decay products of these two elements, mostly Radium. The volatile radioisotopes just go up the chimney, where (just like the Carbon Dioxide) they cease to exist, and never need to be thought about ever again.

Wow! I knew it was hot but I didn't realize it was that hot.

To be fair, it's more that Uranium ore isn't particularly hot either.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Here in the U.S. coal is dying. Eventually bad old coal ash will no longer be created in vast piles. Now about those casks of nuclear waste you seem to think we need more of.....

Those casks are much much smaller than the quantities of rare earth metals we'd need to develop "industrial batteries" that we can't build out enough of to manage the intermittent wind and solar sources of energy. It isn't even close.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Here in the U.S. coal is dying. Eventually bad old coal ash will no longer be created in vast piles. Now about those casks of nuclear waste you seem to think we need more of.....

But the existing piles still exist, spewing their radioactivity into the environment uncontained.

Right. So we don't have to do anything at all about it, right? Perhps we could slap the shit out of U.S. right wing politicians who still champion coal use? For starters. And these vast piles of ash mean we don't have to do anything about tons of casks of radioactive material. Because "Whatabout".

 

[Elixir]

these vast piles of ash mean we don't have to do anything about tons of casks of radioactive material

Those vast piles of coal ash don’t mean ANYTHING regarding casks of radioactive waste. The fact that those casks don’t represent a threat to anyone or anything, is what means we don’t have to do anything about them.
What do you think we should be doing about the Oklo reactor?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Coal power plant waste contains quite significant amounts of Radon, which goes straight into the atmosphere, and so much Uranium that fly ash typically contains about a tenth of the concentration of Uranium as is found in commercially mined Uranium ores.

In addition to Uranium, fly ash contains non-trivial amounts of radioactive Thorium, and the various non-volatile decay products of these two elements, mostly Radium. The volatile radioisotopes just go up the chimney, where (just like the Carbon Dioxide) they cease to exist, and never need to be thought about ever again.

Wow! I knew it was hot but I didn't realize it was that hot.

To be fair, it's more that Uranium ore isn't particularly hot either.

I was thinking in terms of the amount of uranium.

Since the fly ash is already extracted and pulverized would it be economic to mine?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Here in the U.S. coal is dying. Eventually bad old coal ash will no longer be created in vast piles. Now about those casks of nuclear waste you seem to think we need more of.....

But the existing piles still exist, spewing their radioactivity into the environment uncontained.

Right. So we don't have to do anything at all about it, right? Perhps we could slap the shit out of U.S. right wing politicians who still champion coal use? For starters. And these vast piles of ash mean we don't have to do anything about tons of casks of radioactive material. Because "Whatabout".

Why slap them about?

Just throw them in the piles of fly ash!

 

[bilby]

Coal power plant waste contains quite significant amounts of Radon, which goes straight into the atmosphere, and so much Uranium that fly ash typically contains about a tenth of the concentration of Uranium as is found in commercially mined Uranium ores.

In addition to Uranium, fly ash contains non-trivial amounts of radioactive Thorium, and the various non-volatile decay products of these two elements, mostly Radium. The volatile radioisotopes just go up the chimney, where (just like the Carbon Dioxide) they cease to exist, and never need to be thought about ever again.

Wow! I knew it was hot but I didn't realize it was that hot.

To be fair, it's more that Uranium ore isn't particularly hot either.

I was thinking in terms of the amount of uranium.

Since the fly ash is already extracted and pulverized would it be economic to mine?

Probably not. Uranium is generally produced as a coproduct of other mining operations as it is, rather than being mined exclusively. Mines like Ranger or Mary Kathleen, that were exclusively uranium producers, tend to be on the richest ore bodies, and even so are the first to close when world uranium prices fall. Most uranium comes from places like Olympic Dam, which would still produce uranium even if the price were to fall dramatically, because they're getting it essentially free of charge as a consequence of their copper and gold production.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Cheap electricity storage?

....
Two of humanity's most ubiquitous historical materials, cement and carbon black (which resembles very fine charcoal), may form the basis for a novel, low-cost energy storage system, according to a new study. The technology could facilitate the use of renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and tidal power by allowing energy networks to remain stable despite fluctuations in renewable energy supply.

The two materials, the researchers found, can be combined with water to make a supercapacitor — an alternative to batteries — that could provide storage of electrical energy. As an example, the MIT researchers who developed the system say that their supercapacitor could eventually be incorporated into the concrete foundation of a house, where it could store a full day’s worth of energy while adding little (or no) to the cost of the foundation and still providing the needed structural strength.
....

MIT engineers create an energy-storing supercapacitor from ancient materials

MIT engineers created a carbon-cement supercapacitor that can store large amounts of energy. Made of just cement, water, and carbon black, the device could form the basis for inexpensive systems that store intermittently renewable energy, such as solar or wind energy.

news.mit.edu

 

[Tigers!]

Cheap electricity storage?

....
Two of humanity's most ubiquitous historical materials, cement and carbon black (which resembles very fine charcoal), may form the basis for a novel, low-cost energy storage system, according to a new study. The technology could facilitate the use of renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and tidal power by allowing energy networks to remain stable despite fluctuations in renewable energy supply.

The two materials, the researchers found, can be combined with water to make a supercapacitor — an alternative to batteries — that could provide storage of electrical energy. As an example, the MIT researchers who developed the system say that their supercapacitor could eventually be incorporated into the concrete foundation of a house, where it could store a full day’s worth of energy while adding little (or no) to the cost of the foundation and still providing the needed structural strength.
....

MIT engineers create an energy-storing supercapacitor from ancient materials

MIT engineers created a carbon-cement supercapacitor that can store large amounts of energy. Made of just cement, water, and carbon black, the device could form the basis for inexpensive systems that store intermittently renewable energy, such as solar or wind energy.

news.mit.edu

That is most interesting. Worth Keeping a eye on.
Though 2 points leap out at me
1. Making cement is very carbon intensive. Lots of CO₂ production to make batteries/capacitors is not what is being looked for.
2. You could not use it to charge an EV at night at your house

 

[lpetrich]

I carefully read that article, and I don't quite see how it's going to work. I'm guessing that they make two kinds of conductive material and mix them in with an insulating material. Type 1 only sticks to type 1 and the insulator, and typ2 only sticks to type2 and the insulator. Type 1 and type 2 sticking together will create a short circuit, and there must be some way of avoiding that. The type 1 and type 2 materials then become capacitor electrodes.

I'd like to see an actual capacitor demonstrated before I can take it very seriously.

 Capacitance - (charge) = C * (voltage)

C = (eps) * (area) / (separation) = (eps) * (volume) / (separation)^2

eps = electrical permittivity, and is usually a few times its vacuum value.

separation = separation of the two electrodes

So for greater energy density, one must push the separation down, and that is what this research is trying to do.

 

[Elixir]

it could store a full day’s worth of energy

If that is the case, then why does this follow?

You could not use it to charge an EV at night

???

 

[bilby]

it could store a full day’s worth of energy

If that is the case, then why does this follow?

You could not use it to charge an EV at night

???

Indeed.

There again, given that this technology doesn't exist, why not claim that it could store a week, month, year, or even lifetime of energy? While we're making shit up and all.

 

[Tigers!]

it could store a full day’s worth of energy

If that is the case, then why does this follow?

You could not use it to charge an EV at night

???

I was unclear.
From the article
"The team calculated that a block of nanocarbon-black-doped concrete that is 45 cubic meters (or yards) in size — equivalent to a cube about 3.5 meters across — would have enough capacity to store about 10 kilowatt-hours of energy, which is considered the average daily electricity usage for a household. "
In an Aussie's thinking when they buy storage batteries for their house, one use would be to power their shiny new EV at night. A Tesla Model 3 > 30kw to recharge. You could not use the specs they gave to charge your EV and run your house at night.