The Remarkable Progress of Renewable Energy

[Bomb#20]

CH₄ + 2O₂ -> CO₂ + 2H₂O + ️
2H₂O + ️ -> 2H₂ + O₂
----------------------------------
CH₄ + 2O₂ -> CO₂ + 2H₂+ O₂

I get your point about using natural gas to generate electricity. But one would not do that -- one would get the electricity from renewable energy sources.

FIFY.

Getting electricity from renewable energy sources means getting electricity from natural gas -- the more renewables you put on the grid, the more you need natural gas peaker plants to deal with the unwillingness of Mother Nature to match her deliveries of sunlight and wind to the times when people want electricity.

I'm not concerned with Mr. Petrich's preposition. I'm concerned with reality.

"As of 2020, the majority of hydrogen (∼95%) is produced from fossil fuels by steam reforming of natural gas and other light hydrocarbons, partial oxidation of heavier hydrocarbons, and coal gasification."​

So what? With enough electrolysis, we will see the end of those fossil-fuel sources.

With enough electrolysis, you generated the electricity to carry out enough electrolysis, which implies you used nuclear reactors rather than renewables.

 

[lpetrich]

Getting electricity from renewable energy sources means getting electricity from natural gas -- the more renewables you put on the grid, the more you need natural gas peaker plants to deal with the unwillingness of Mother Nature to match her deliveries of sunlight and wind to the times when people want electricity.

That's why there's a lot of research into energy storage, so one won't need natural-gas peaker plants.

 

[Swammerdami]

A lot of these questions can be better understood by looking at actual numbers (dollars or joules). For example, in this important reaction pair:

2H2O + ️ -> 2H2 + O2
2H2 + O2 -> 2H2O + ️
----------------------------------
️ -> ️

How many kwh of retail electricity do you recover per kwh of retail electricity consumed? One big problem with hydrogen as fuel is the cost of storing or transporting it, but these costs are avoided when hydrogen generated during daylight (or high winds) is then burned just half a mile away at nighttime (or on windless days). Minimal transport is needed; and storage for just 12 hours. (Or convert the hydrogen to ammonia, which is also valuable and less expensive to transport.)

Similarly a comparison between renewables and nuclear would be easier if we looked at hard numbers and projections. Of course this is going to run into difficulties. For example, one alleged drawback to nuclear is the risk of weapons proliferation: What dollar cost do we associate with Senegal or Burma getting H-bombs?

 

[Bomb#20]

That's why there's a lot of research into energy storage, so one won't need natural-gas peaker plants.

But the most efficient, safe and cost-effective way to compactly store large amounts of energy is already known.

Show

Uranium

 

[bilby]

A lot of these questions can be better understood by looking at actual numbers (dollars or joules). For example, in this important reaction pair:

2H2O + ️ -> 2H2 + O2
2H2 + O2 -> 2H2O + ️
----------------------------------
️ -> ️

How many kwh of retail electricity do you recover per kwh of retail electricity consumed? One big problem with hydrogen as fuel is the cost of storing or transporting it, but these costs are avoided when hydrogen generated during daylight (or high winds) is then burned just half a mile away at nighttime (or on windless days). Minimal transport is needed; and storage for just 12 hours. (Or convert the hydrogen to ammonia, which is also valuable and less expensive to transport.)

Similarly a comparison between renewables and nuclear would be easier if we looked at hard numbers and projections. Of course this is going to run into difficulties. For example, one alleged drawback to nuclear is the risk of weapons proliferation: What dollar cost do we associate with Senegal or Burma getting H-bombs?

Proliferation is a massive red herring.

Hydrogen bombs require fusion expertise and you cannot get that from power plants, which are exclusively fission based.

And making fission bombs (A-bombs, not H-bombs) using a modern (ie post-1960s) power reactor is so difficult and expensive that you are always better off just having a separate weapons program and leaving your power plants alone.

Making A-bombs either requires high enrichment of uranium, which a power plant can’t help with other than by providing electricity to the enrichment plant (that could just as well come from any other generation technology); Or production of 239Pu that contains only a trace of 240Pu - something that a power generation plant does very poorly.

In every case of a nation developing an A-bomb apart from India, the bomb was developed before their first power reactor was even built. In some cases (eg North Korea) they have A-bombs and no nuclear power program at all. In India, their bomb program uses its own Pu production reactors that don’t generate electricity.

The hybrid reactors designed in the 1950s and ‘60s to make both electricity and Pu for weapons were all pretty shit at both jobs. The UK’s Magnox design generated pathetic amounts of both products; The USSR’s RBMK design was both pathetic and astonishingly and stupidly dangerous, and remains the only reactor type in history that has managed to kill people not employed at the plant.

As the Koreans demonstrate, a nation state that wants an A-bomb has no need of a nuclear power generation capability at all; And (per South Korea) a nation state that has lots of nuclear power stations and is under serious military threat from a nuclear armed neighbour will nevertheless not necessarily seek to develop a bomb of their own.

If Senegal or Myanmar want an atom bomb, they will develop one whether or not they have a nuclear power industry. Just like North Korea did; And for that matter, just like the USA did.

 

[bigfield]

But what are they going to do with all the left-over C after they extract their hydrogen from their CH₄?

Except that renewable-energy hydrogen production is with electrolysis:

2H2O + ️ -> 2H2 + O2

No carbon release anywhere in this process.

Furthermore, once one has one's hydrogen, one can make ammonia with the Haber-Bosch process:

N2 + 3H2 + -> 2NH3

One can make hydrocarbons and oxyhydrocarbons with the Fischer-Tropsch process:

x*CO2 + (2x+y/2-z)*H2+ -> CxHyOz + (2x-z)*H2O

These can then be used as fuels and chemical feedstocks, and even for carbon sequestration.

Ammonia would be easier to store and transport than hydrogen, but the technology for ammonia-fuelled turbines is still in development.

For example, Mitsubishi is developing a (mere) 40MW generator.

Mitsubishi Power | Mitsubishi Power Commences Development of World's First Ammonia-fired 40MW Class Gas Turbine System -- Targets to Expand Lineup of Carbon-free Power Generation Options, with Commercialization around 2025 --

･ Utilizing technology that enables 100% direct combustion of ammonia will contribute to formation of ammonia fuel supply chain･ Commercialization wil

power.mhi.com

As far as I can tell, ammonia is difficult to use as a fuel because it is slow-burning.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Proliferation is a massive red herring.

Hydrogen bombs require fusion expertise and you cannot get that from power plants, which are exclusively fission based.

But that's not a huge obstacle. The knowledge is out there.

And making fission bombs (A-bombs, not H-bombs) using a modern (ie post-1960s) power reactor is so difficult and expensive that you are always better off just having a separate weapons program and leaving your power plants alone.

No, they've built a working bomb out of reactor-grade plutonium and it went boom. AFAIK the details are classified.

As the Koreans demonstrate, a nation state that wants an A-bomb has no need of a nuclear power generation capability at all; And (per South Korea) a nation state that has lots of nuclear power stations and is under serious military threat from a nuclear armed neighbour will nevertheless not necessarily seek to develop a bomb of their own.

If Senegal or Myanmar want an atom bomb, they will develop one whether or not they have a nuclear power industry. Just like North Korea did; And for that matter, just like the USA did.

Want scary? I've seen a paper that presents the basics for a pure-fusion bomb. I'm sure the author was deliberately omitting details, but since he had numbers he must have worked them out. Basically, it used staged explosives to compress a magnetic field and create fusion in a D-T pellet, and used the energy from that to set off a larger secondary. No mention was made of using that to set off an even larger tertiary but since the secondary was able to survive long enough to detonate I see no reason a tertiary wouldn't. It lacked the fission core of the secondary that a Teller-Ulam bomb uses, relying entirely on the compression to initiate the fusion burn.

 

[bilby]

No, they've built a working bomb out of reactor-grade plutonium and it went boom. AFAIK the details are classified.

It’s easy to do that. The challenge is getting it to go boom with any significant force, because the Pu240 tends to cause premature chain reaction initiation, breaking the warhead up before it finishes imploding.

It’s basically useless to build a usable weapon of war; It’s interesting in controlled conditions to people who are in the research phase.

Pu240 spontaneous fission causing unpredictable and unwanted high neutron flux is one reason why the Manhattan Project took so long, and cost so much.

If making A-bombs were as easy as the proliferation scaremongering from the anti nuclear power lobby suggests, the Manhattan Project would have been wrapped up in a fortnight at a cost of a few thousand dollars.

 

[bilby]

But that's not a huge obstacle. The knowledge is out there.

The knowledge is out there whether or not people build a civilian nuclear power generation system. No nuclear weapons state needed to build nuclear power plants in order to develop their bombs. Not one.

 

[bilby]

Want scary?

No. I want people to stop being scared of an industry whose commitment to safety makes the commercial aviation industry look like a bunch of devil-may-care cowboys.

 

[Swammerdami]

I reddened the herrings further when I mentioned H-bombs. Only nine countries have A-bombs; and of them perhaps only five — the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — have H-bombs. (That's Google's guess I think; CIA may have a better picture.)

A more practical threat, IIUC, is for a "dirty bomb" in which fission is not even involved. Just gather some highly radioactive material (e.g. waste from a nuclear reactor), shield it from radioactivity detectors, transport it to a population center or infrastructure hub, and blow it up with a conventional explosive. Presto! Deaths and catastrophe. You don't need plutonium, enriched uranium or even expertise. Are not nuclear reactors (of any type) or waste disposal sites the best places for a terrorist group — e.g. ISIS or Proud Boys — to acquire material for a dirty bomb?

I'm not trying to add to the climate of fear; and I DO agree that nuclear power — and conservation — are key parts of the way forward. But let's put all the cards face-up on the table.

 

[bilby]

I reddened the herrings further when I mentioned H-bombs. Only nine countries have A-bombs; and of them perhaps only five — the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — have H-bombs. (That's Google's guess I think; CIA may have a better picture.)

A more practical threat, IIUC, is for a "dirty bomb" in which fission is not even involved. Just gather some highly radioactive material (e.g. waste from a nuclear reactor), shield it from radioactivity detectors, transport it to a population center or infrastructure hub, and blow it up with a conventional explosive. Presto! Deaths and catastrophe. You don't need plutonium, enriched uranium or even expertise. Are not nuclear reactors (of any type) or waste disposal sites the best places for a terrorist group — e.g. ISIS or Proud Boys — to acquire material for a dirty bomb?

I'm not trying to add to the climate of fear; and I DO agree that nuclear power — and conservation — are key parts of the way forward. But let's put all the cards face-up on the table.

A dirty bomb is a brilliant terror weapon. Like a phoned in bomb threat, it strikes fear into people that massively outweighs any direct harm it can do, and can cause significant harm due to overreactions by the people whose job is to defend others from harm.

It’s a shit idea if you want to kill or injure anyone. But it’s great for scaring people shitless.

I do particularly like the ease with which you assembled it, and shielded it from detection.

Meanwhile on planet Earth, “waste from a nuclear reactor” is available in two flavours - not radioactive enough to be dangerous; And so radioactive that attempting to steal it would almost certainly be fatal.

The stuff in the latter category also has the minor impediment to theft of being encased in thick steel and concrete casks that are practically impenetrable, and are located in some of the best guarded locations on Earth. Attempting to steal high level waste would likely result in the deaths of the thieves from high speed lead poisoning, long before they got close enough to kill themselves by trying to half-inch stuff so hot that it’s literally glowing.

Stealing high level nuclear waste would be about as practical and easy as stealing molten iron from a particularly well guarded blast furnace.

But there’s no limit to the number of ways you can imagine nuclear power helping terrorists to kill people, when you are unconstrained by reality, and can just have a team of ninja supervillains handwave away any practical difficulties.

You may not be trying to add to a climate of fear, but you’re most assuredly a victim of it, if you believe your concerns expressed here to be reasonable or rational concerns that need to be taken into consideration.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

No, they've built a working bomb out of reactor-grade plutonium and it went boom. AFAIK the details are classified.

It’s easy to do that. The challenge is getting it to go boom with any significant force, because the Pu240 tends to cause premature chain reaction initiation, breaking the warhead up before it finishes imploding.

No, I meant it produced a reasonable yield for a fission bomb. Not a fizzle. I suspect it required a much more sophisticated imploder than an ordinary Pu design, though.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A more practical threat, IIUC, is for a "dirty bomb" in which fission is not even involved. Just gather some highly radioactive material (e.g. waste from a nuclear reactor), shield it from radioactivity detectors, transport it to a population center or infrastructure hub, and blow it up with a conventional explosive. Presto! Deaths and catastrophe. You don't need plutonium, enriched uranium or even expertise. Are not nuclear reactors (of any type) or waste disposal sites the best places for a terrorist group — e.g. ISIS or Proud Boys — to acquire material for a dirty bomb?

Dirty bombs are only an economic threat, they would be unlikely to kill people.

If the bomb is hot enough to kill someone it would almost certainly have killed the people who made it.

Dirty bombs contaminate, they don't kill.

 

[Swammerdami]

You may not be trying to add to a climate of fear, but you’re most assuredly a victim of it, if you believe your concerns expressed here to be reasonable or rational concerns that need to be taken into consideration.

I was NOT trying to pander to anti-nuke fears. Just the opposite.

Renewables have their own hard-to-measure and controversial costs. Some concerns are ecological. And for intermittent power to be effective, big advances in battery technology are desired. (And the "Let's Go Brandon" ilk is worried about humans getting "mad cow" disease from wind turbines, or such.)

What I am suggesting is that the pros and cons of both paths be carefully assessed, and expected costs quantified, so that the choice becomes a hard-nosed cold-blooded calculation.

 

[bilby]

You may not be trying to add to a climate of fear, but you’re most assuredly a victim of it, if you believe your concerns expressed here to be reasonable or rational concerns that need to be taken into consideration.

I was NOT trying to pander to anti-nuke fears. Just the opposite.

Renewables have their own hard-to-measure and controversial costs. Some concerns are ecological. And for intermittent power to be effective, big advances in battery technology are desired. (And the "Let's Go Brandon" ilk is worried about humans getting "mad cow" disease from wind turbines, or such.)

What I am suggesting is that the pros and cons of both paths be carefully assessed, and expected costs quantified, so that the choice becomes a hard-nosed cold-blooded calculation.

Great.

It’s a seventy year old technology. When are you planning to start, and do those of us who already did that, really need to wait while you catch up?

It’s not even as though it were a close decision. We can pretty much rule out fossil fuels, as the costs of climate change are so high that they just can’t compete.

We are left with only two technologies currently able to produce power on demand, nuclear and hydro; And two that require expensive storage, wind and solar.

How expensive is that storage? Well, it doesn’t exist, so the amount of money needed to buy it today is infinity dollars. That price will probably fall; But chemistry sets limits on how far it can fall, and it almost certainly cannot fall far enough to ever be competitive. And if it does, it will probably be too late.

Wind and solar are only viable if supported by either fossil gas, or high-grade handwavium.

 

[No Robots]

Storage issues for solar are reduced to the point of elimination as the global transmission system expands. This system will likely make use of ultra-high voltage transmission for efficient long-distance transmission (1000s of km).

 

[skepticalbip]

Storage issues for solar are reduced to the point of elimination as the global transmission system expands. This system will likely make use of ultra-high voltage transmission for efficient long-distance transmission (1000s of km).

Are you really expecting that there will be power lines from the night side of the planet to the day side? A power grid linking Africa, Europe, Asia, North America, and South America? That cities in North America during their night will be using solar power from solar cells in Africa during Africa's day? When do you think such a grid could be in operation?

We already have an electrical grid using high voltage transmission at 155KV to over 500KV and typical transmission distances are less than 500 miles. High voltage AC transmission reduces power loss due to resistance but losses due to corona discharge increase as the voltage increase.

 

[bigfield]

Storage issues for solar are reduced to the point of elimination as the global transmission system expands. This system will likely make use of ultra-high voltage transmission for efficient long-distance transmission (1000s of km).

I didn't realise there was a global transmission system in the first place.

There's the project to transmit electricity from Australia to Singapore, which is interesting but insignificant in the context of a project to power one side of the planet from the other.

Australia-Asia Power Link - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[No Robots]

From the link I provided:

As noted above, China is the first to employ 1,000,000 Volt (1,000 kV) transmission lines and has begun an aggressive plan to interconnect major provinces with UHV lines. As noted in a recent Forbes article, Ultra-High Voltage Transmission Can Break China’s Cycle Of Energy Dependence, China has already demonstrated transmission at distances of 2,500 km, with lines up to 5,000 km being planned.

So, yes, I do expect a global transmission system wherein night and day will not be an issue and hence nor will be storage.