Why I Advocate Renewable Energy Sources

[lpetrich]

But as utility-scale battery installations become more common, we will see less spinning reserve, and eventually fewer peakers.

Nice handwave in that last paragraph. When is 'eventually'?

Are you claiming that nuclear power plants do not need to be supplemented with peakers?

What I described is already starting to happen:
Utility-scale batteries challenge peakers - Evaluation Engineering
Tesla’s giant battery in Australia made around $1 million in just a few days | Electrek
Lithium ion batteries replace gas fired electric peakers
Have We Reached Peak Peaker? 'I Can't See Why We Should Build a Gas Peaker After 2025' | Greentech Media
How Big Is the Peak Capacity Market for Batteries? | Greentech Media
Just How Much Business Can Batteries Take From Gas Peakers? | Greentech Media

 

[Treedbear]

...
Every house having a ten metre (30ft) crane with a 36 tonne weight on it isn't going to be anywhere close to as cheap or as practical as a pumped storage hydropower plant in the mountains.

I was thinking of something like a simple 10 meter tall structure with a pulley system attached to a motor/generator with the mass composed of something much denser than water such as gravel or stone. Or maybe using lead storage batteries that both serve as dead weight and electrical storage. As the batteries are drained they also lower in height to maintain charge.

 

[bilby]

...
Every house having a ten metre (30ft) crane with a 36 tonne weight on it isn't going to be anywhere close to as cheap or as practical as a pumped storage hydropower plant in the mountains.

I was thinking of something like a simple 10 meter tall structure with a pulley system attached to a motor/generator with the mass composed of something much denser than water such as gravel or stone. Or maybe using lead storage batteries that both serve as dead weight and electrical storage. As the batteries are drained they also lower in height to maintain charge.

One big problem is that generators need to turn rapidly to be efficient. You can use a gearbox to make a slowly descending weight turn a generator at high speed, but gearboxes have their own efficiency issues.

So far, nobody has come up with a better gravity storage system than hydropower. But perhaps they will one day. I'm not holding my breath though, hydropower has a lot of advantages and is very efficient. And even so, the amount of storage required to make intermittent renewables viable is huge, and vastly exceeds to number of suitable hydropower sites.

 

[bilby]

But as utility-scale battery installations become more common, we will see less spinning reserve, and eventually fewer peakers.

Nice handwave in that last paragraph. When is 'eventually'?

Are you claiming that nuclear power plants do not need to be supplemented with peakers?

Yes, but only because it's true.

https://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/nea-news-29-2-load-following-e.pdf

Accountants don't like it, because running flat out 24x7 helps to pay off the construction costs quickly, and get into profits sooner. But it's not a problem from an engineering perspective, and the French 'load follow' with their nuclear power plants, and have for some time.

What I described is already starting to happen:
Utility-scale batteries challenge peakers - Evaluation Engineering
Tesla’s giant battery in Australia made around $1 million in just a few days | Electrek
Lithium ion batteries replace gas fired electric peakers
Have We Reached Peak Peaker? 'I Can't See Why We Should Build a Gas Peaker After 2025' | Greentech Media
How Big Is the Peak Capacity Market for Batteries? | Greentech Media
Just How Much Business Can Batteries Take From Gas Peakers? | Greentech Media

It's a VERY small start. That big battery in SA can supply power for minutes. To adequately support intermittent renewables, without dependence on fossil fuel, it needs to be weeks.

And a million dollars might sound like a lot to Dr Evil, but it really isn't - particularly in comparison to the cost of the battery to begin with. Arbitrage is profitable, but it's not fixing the real problem - finding a way to stop using fossil fuel quickly and completely.

 

[lpetrich]

We have the technology to extract uranium from seawater for a similar cost to mining it*; ...

*http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar_url?url=https://www.nature.com/articles/280665a0&hl=en&sa=X&scisig=AAGBfm32i0MT3nHW39KSkEvPN_oDrpUQBg&nossl=1&oi=scholarr(paywall)
http://pubs.acs.org/toc/iecred/55/15#UraniuminSeawater
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-seawater-extraction-makes-nuclear-power-completely-renewable/

I will believe it when I see it. It has two big problems:

• Contamination. It works by chemical affinity, and selecting out uranium ions will be awfully difficult. There are numerous other metal ions in seawater, and also such positive ions as ammonium (NH4+) and amino ions (-NH2 becoming -NH3+).
• Saturation. Will captured uranium ions be able to diffuse inward? Otherwise, they will saturate the surface -- and likely do so alongside a whole lot of contaminants.

Are you claiming that nuclear power plants do not need to be supplemented with peakers?

Yes, but only because it's true.

https://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/nea-news-29-2-load-following-e.pdf

But that is not close to typical. Most nuclear power plants are run as baseload generators, with constant output.

It's a VERY small start. That big battery in SA can supply power for minutes.

But it seems good enough for peaks that short.

To adequately support intermittent renewables, without dependence on fossil fuel, it needs to be weeks.

For complete success, maybe, but one can go a long way with partial solutions.

 

[bilby]

I will believe it when I see it. It has two big problems:

• Contamination. It works by chemical affinity, and selecting out uranium ions will be awfully difficult. There are numerous other metal ions in seawater, and also such positive ions as ammonium (NH4+) and amino ions (-NH2 becoming -NH3+).
• Saturation. Will captured uranium ions be able to diffuse inward? Otherwise, they will saturate the surface -- and likely do so alongside a whole lot of contaminants.

Yes, but only because it's true.

https://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/nea-news-29-2-load-following-e.pdf

But that is not close to typical. Most nuclear power plants are run as baseload generators, with constant output.

Well obviously. Most are part of mixed grids that use (mostly) gas for load following. Where they are not (as in France), they can load follow just fine.

It's a VERY small start. That big battery in SA can supply power for minutes.

But it seems good enough for peaks that short.

To adequately support intermittent renewables, without dependence on fossil fuel, it needs to be weeks.

For complete success, maybe, but one can go a long way with partial solutions.

Sure. but so far, nobody is going a long way with these partial solutions. They have barely taken their first baby steps.

How long do we need to burn fossil fuels while we wait? How long can we afford to wait?

 

[lpetrich]

Turning to nuclear fusion, its raw material, deuterium or hydrogen-2, is much more abundant than the raw materials for nuclear fission, uranium and thorium.

But it has a big difficulty. Usable nuclear-fission reactions are caused by absorbing neutrons and they also release neutrons, making them continue. Neutrons are electrically neutral, meaning that they do not have to go very fast to hit their targets. However, nuclear-fusion reactions require jamming the raw-material nuclei fast enough so that they can overcome their electrostatic repulsion enough to touch each other. That means making the raw material *very* hot, and keeping it from dispersing for a long enough time.

So far, most controlled-nuclear-fusion efforts have used either magnetic confinement or inertial confinement. Magnetic confinement uses a magnetic field to keep the hot raw material from escaping, while inertial confinement involves making a pellet of the raw material and shooting laser beams at it. The outer parts get blown off and push in the inner parts. Neither technique has been very successful, and a third technique, cold fusion, is a complete failure. The only nuclear-fusion success that we have had is with hydrogen bombs, and those are not very controlled.

So I would not want to bet on controlled nuclear fusion becoming practical anytime soon.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The most commonly-used storage technology is pumped hydroelectric generation. It is often used with nuclear reactors, because nuclear reactors cannot be throttled very fast. The reactor pumps water uphill into a reservoir at night, and during the day, the water is let back down through turbogenerators, making electricity to supplement the reactor's electricity. This technique has a problem that is shared with hydroelectricity in general: the need for rugged topography to produce big height differences for making big gravitational-potential differences.

That is why are a variety of alternatives are currently being researched: improved lithium-ion batteries, flow batteries, compressed air in mines, even loaded railcars pulled uphill then allowed to go downhill.

While there are alternatives being considered that doesn't mean any of them are practical yet.

Li-Ion: Until we make something much more durable this is not practical. At present you'll pay more for the batteries than the power they hold over their lifetime.

Flow: Possibly in the future, they're not ready yet.

Compressed air: To get even moderate efficiency you need some pretty big storage tanks. (However, for small scale use there may be some improvements possible--mount the compressor and expander in a loop off your HVAC system. If the building needs heat, run air through the loop while storing power. If the building needs cooling run air through the loop while drawing power. This could also be used in some industrial settings where there is a use for more heat/cool.) In practice it is limited to where there are underground features that are big enough as constructing the storage for a utility-scale system is simply impractical.

Pumped hydro: Works, but there aren't very many places with suitable geology and the amount of water needed is humongous--while it's not directly consumed you have evaporation losses.

Railcars: A joke. The energy per railcar is simply too low.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A myth? We have no long-term storage option. Our entire stock of the stuff is in "temporary storage" with no ultimate plan for what to do with it all. How is this a lie?

And I've seen the Yucca Mountain facility myself; the concerns about it are not imaginary. Even if, as your link claims, a failure of the facility wouldn't cause mass contamination of the countryside, a seismic event would still end its usefulness as a storage facility; you'd have to start over elsewhere, and the whole sixty year long debacle would hit reset.

The problem is purely political, not scientific.

 

[Politesse]

A myth? We have no long-term storage option. Our entire stock of the stuff is in "temporary storage" with no ultimate plan for what to do with it all. How is this a lie?

And I've seen the Yucca Mountain facility myself; the concerns about it are not imaginary. Even if, as your link claims, a failure of the facility wouldn't cause mass contamination of the countryside, a seismic event would still end its usefulness as a storage facility; you'd have to start over elsewhere, and the whole sixty year long debacle would hit reset.

The problem is purely political, not scientific.

Are you claiming that geology is not a science?

 

[bilby]

A myth? We have no long-term storage option. Our entire stock of the stuff is in "temporary storage" with no ultimate plan for what to do with it all. How is this a lie?

And I've seen the Yucca Mountain facility myself; the concerns about it are not imaginary. Even if, as your link claims, a failure of the facility wouldn't cause mass contamination of the countryside, a seismic event would still end its usefulness as a storage facility; you'd have to start over elsewhere, and the whole sixty year long debacle would hit reset.

The problem is purely political, not scientific.

Are you claiming that geology is not a science?

Read the article I linked to above (here it is again: https://thoughtscapism.com/2017/11/04/nuclear-waste-ideas-vs-reality/)

The geologists know burying spent nuclear fuel is safe. The nuclear industry knows that dry cask storage is more than safe enough to be safer than any other industry's waste handling. And let's not try to chase perfection; Like running from a lion, you don't need to outrun the lion, you just need to outrun your companions.

Nuclear waste has harmed nobody in sixty years. For nuclear power as an industry (including its waste) to be as dangerous as the coal power it replaces, and therefore not worth doing on safety grounds, would require a Chernobyl sized accident many times a day. So far, the death toll from spent fuel in the sixty year history of the technology is zero, with zero injuries, and zero reason to expect that to change.

Spent fuel storage as done today is the safest industrial activity in human history. If safety is your concern, literally everything other than commercial nuclear power would be the best place to start. The only reason to look at spent nuclear fuel storage would be as an exemplar of the very best approach to industrial waste management.

 

[Politesse]

Are you claiming that geology is not a science?

Read the article I linked to above (here it is again: https://thoughtscapism.com/2017/11/04/nuclear-waste-ideas-vs-reality/)

The geologists know burying spent nuclear fuel is safe. The nuclear industry knows that dry cask storage is more than safe enough to be safer than any other industry's waste handling. And let's not try to chase perfection; Like running from a lion, you don't need to outrun the lion, you just need to outrun your companions.

Nuclear waste has harmed nobody in sixty years. For nuclear power as an industry (including its waste) to be as dangerous as the coal power it replaces, and therefore not worth doing on safety grounds, would require a Chernobyl sized accident many times a day. So far, the death toll from spent fuel in the sixty year history of the technology is zero, with zero injuries, and zero reason to expect that to change.

Spent fuel storage as done today is the safest industrial activity in human history. If safety is your concern, literally everything other than commercial nuclear power would be the best place to start. The only reason to look at spent nuclear fuel storage would be as an exemplar of the very best approach to industrial waste management.

Someone who looks at an energy solution - any energy solution - and sees only upsides is not capable of scientific thought. There are many things that I support politically when it comes to energy production, but none that I see as "doctrine" that should not be investigated and considered carefully. In one respect or another, all systems of energy production carry cost and risk; it is a question of whether or not the risk is acceptable and whether it can be mitigated (which is what I am suggesting we do), not whether it exists.

What, exactly, is your defense of the Yucca Mountain site, if that is what you're trying to do? Do you deny that it is sitting along the edge of an obvious strike-slip fault?

 

[bilby]

Are you claiming that geology is not a science?

Read the article I linked to above (here it is again: https://thoughtscapism.com/2017/11/04/nuclear-waste-ideas-vs-reality/)

The geologists know burying spent nuclear fuel is safe. The nuclear industry knows that dry cask storage is more than safe enough to be safer than any other industry's waste handling. And let's not try to chase perfection; Like running from a lion, you don't need to outrun the lion, you just need to outrun your companions.

Nuclear waste has harmed nobody in sixty years. For nuclear power as an industry (including its waste) to be as dangerous as the coal power it replaces, and therefore not worth doing on safety grounds, would require a Chernobyl sized accident many times a day. So far, the death toll from spent fuel in the sixty year history of the technology is zero, with zero injuries, and zero reason to expect that to change.

Spent fuel storage as done today is the safest industrial activity in human history. If safety is your concern, literally everything other than commercial nuclear power would be the best place to start. The only reason to look at spent nuclear fuel storage would be as an exemplar of the very best approach to industrial waste management.

Someone who looks at an energy solution - any energy solution - and sees only upsides is not capable of scientific thought.

What, exactly, is your defense of the Yucca Mountain site, if that is what you're trying to do? Do you deny that it is sitting along the edge of an obvious strike-slip fault?

The Yucca Mountain site is stupid and massive overkill that represents an attempt to reason with the unreasonable. I have no intention of defending it, but for perhaps the opposite reasons to those you might imagine.

Please read the article at https://thoughtscapism.com/2017/11/04/nuclear-waste-ideas-vs-reality/. It's not particularly long, it's easy to read and not full of jargon, and it includes links to it's sources and to more detailed information for anyone who is skeptical of its claims.

I don't 'see only upsides'. But I do recognise that all the other options have VASTLY more important and significant downsides.

And I honestly don't care what your opinion is of my thinking abilities; I am NOT asking you, or anyone else, to take my word for anything. Please, check it out for yourself. Don't trust me, don't trust the lobbyists from the anti-nuclear movement, trust the actual science.

I don't NEED to persuade you of my ability to engage in scientific thinking. I just need YOU to engage in it, and to follow the facts where they lead.

 

[James Brown]

Someone who looks at an energy solution - any energy solution - and sees only upsides is not capable of scientific thought.

What, exactly, is your defense of the Yucca Mountain site, if that is what you're trying to do? Do you deny that it is sitting along the edge of an obvious strike-slip fault?

The Yucca Mountain site is stupid and massive overkill that represents an attempt to reason with the unreasonable. I have no intention of defending it, but for perhaps the opposite reasons to those you might imagine.

Please read the article at https://thoughtscapism.com/2017/11/04/nuclear-waste-ideas-vs-reality/. It's not particularly long, it's easy to read and not full of jargon, and it includes links to it's sources and to more detailed information for anyone who is skeptical of its claims.

I don't 'see only upsides'. But I do recognise that all the other options have VASTLY more important and significant downsides.

And I honestly don't care what your opinion is of my thinking abilities; I am NOT asking you, or anyone else, to take my word for anything. Please, check it out for yourself. Don't trust me, don't trust the lobbyists from the anti-nuclear movement, trust the actual science.

I don't NEED to persuade you of my ability to engage in scientific thinking. I just need YOU to engage in it, and to follow the facts where they lead.

Love this line:

To quote George Monbiot from the Guardian: “while nuclear causes calamities when it goes wrong, coal causes calamities when it goes right, and coal goes right a lot more often than nuclear goes wrong.”

 

[Politesse]

Love this line:

To quote George Monbiot from the Guardian: “while nuclear causes calamities when it goes wrong, coal causes calamities when it goes right, and coal goes right a lot more often than nuclear goes wrong.”

I am not, in any sense, arguing for coal power plants, which do disastrous and demonstrable harm to Nevada every single day. The two systems are barely even comparable in terms of environmental, aside from the resource and water extraction issues which affect both. But I do not need to argue for coal power in order to object to the absence of a viable long term solution for nuclear disposal. I don't even need to argue against nuclear power production in general, and indeed I do not. My only beefs with the proliferation of nuclear power are the above issue, and the blatant political inequality of picking and choosing which nations are "allowed" to have it.

 

[lpetrich]

Here are some renewable-energy enthusiast sites:
Cleantech News — Solar, Wind, EV News (#1 Source) | CleanTechnica
Renewable Energy World - News, Resources, Companies, Jobs and more
Green Technology | Clean Tech & Renewable Energy News
Energy Transition – The Global Energiewende

If you look carefully, you can find out what they don't talk about. A big one is synthetic fuels. I've seen many more articles about electric cars than about synfuels. This lacuna I find rather curious, since it is hard to compete with liquid hydrocarbons as a vehicle fuel. Liquid hydrocarbons have much higher usable-energy densities than batteries, and they are easy to store and handle. Batteries would be impractical for ships and airplanes.  Energy density collects some numbers, but in a rather disorganized way.

Most renewable-energy sources are best adapted for making electricity, and that is also true of nuclear reactors. So one would start by electrolyzing water. This gives us hydrogen, and it can be used as a fuel. But to store it, it must be either pressurized or liquefied, and the latter is very difficult. Its boiling point is about 20 K, about 1/15 of room temperature.

One then combines this hydrogen with carbon dioxide, in what is called the Fischer-Tropsch process, and doing so makes hydrocarbons and water. One can also make oxygenated compounds like methanol, CH3OH, in this fashion. The CO2 can be obtained from the air, thus making a closed cycle.

The chemistry of doing so is well-understood, and it has been done off-and-on since the early 20th century. Recently, it has had success in the form of making synthetic motor oil. Though it costs more than petroleum-derived motor oil, it has nevertheless had enough success to the point that some car makers recommend using only it. But I think that its price premium is tolerable for these reasons:

• One buys much less of it than vehicle fuel.
• It has a well-deserved reputation for superior performance, congealing much less than "oil from oil".

That superior performance may also be the source of its main performance drawback -- it tends to leak through some engine seals.

If synfuel technology can make motor oil, then I'm sure that it can make plastic and synthetic rubber. So we won't need fossil fuels for those.

 

[Max Rockatansky]

Rather than one or the other, the future will probably entail a combination of solar, wind, etc, along with Nuclear.

Or something completely new. Either way, the lack of a sustainable, renewable energy source is one of the things that hinders the advancement of civilization and leaves war on the table as a solution in a never ending competition for resources.

 

[bilby]

Here are some renewable-energy enthusiast sites:
Cleantech News — Solar, Wind, EV News (#1 Source) | CleanTechnica
Renewable Energy World - News, Resources, Companies, Jobs and more
Green Technology | Clean Tech & Renewable Energy News
Energy Transition – The Global Energiewende

If you look carefully, you can find out what they don't talk about. A big one is synthetic fuels. I've seen many more articles about electric cars than about synfuels. This lacuna I find rather curious, since it is hard to compete with liquid hydrocarbons as a vehicle fuel. Liquid hydrocarbons have much higher usable-energy densities than batteries, and they are easy to store and handle. Batteries would be impractical for ships and airplanes.  Energy density collects some numbers, but in a rather disorganized way.

Most renewable-energy sources are best adapted for making electricity, and that is also true of nuclear reactors. So one would start by electrolyzing water. This gives us hydrogen, and it can be used as a fuel. But to store it, it must be either pressurized or liquefied, and the latter is very difficult. Its boiling point is about 20 K, about 1/15 of room temperature.

One then combines this hydrogen with carbon dioxide, in what is called the Fischer-Tropsch process, and doing so makes hydrocarbons and water. One can also make oxygenated compounds like methanol, CH3OH, in this fashion. The CO2 can be obtained from the air, thus making a closed cycle.

The chemistry of doing so is well-understood, and it has been done off-and-on since the early 20th century. Recently, it has had success in the form of making synthetic motor oil. Though it costs more than petroleum-derived motor oil, it has nevertheless had enough success to the point that some car makers recommend using only it. But I think that its price premium is tolerable for these reasons:

• One buys much less of it than vehicle fuel.
• It has a well-deserved reputation for superior performance, congealing much less than "oil from oil".

That superior performance may also be the source of its main performance drawback -- it tends to leak through some engine seals.

If synfuel technology can make motor oil, then I'm sure that it can make plastic and synthetic rubber. So we won't need fossil fuels for those.

This is a technology I like, and I suspect it will play a big role in the decarbonisation of our global energy consumption.

One thing I have not seen mentioned is the potential to use hydrocarbons made in this way as a storage solution to rival not just vehicle batteries but also grid power batteries (which I suspect can never be sufficiently cheap to play a significant role).

Syngas peakers, road vehicles and synfuel or nuclear ships, along with nuclear, some wind, and some solar, to generate the electricity for all that, seems to me like the only non-disastrous way of the future.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A myth? We have no long-term storage option. Our entire stock of the stuff is in "temporary storage" with no ultimate plan for what to do with it all. How is this a lie?

And I've seen the Yucca Mountain facility myself; the concerns about it are not imaginary. Even if, as your link claims, a failure of the facility wouldn't cause mass contamination of the countryside, a seismic event would still end its usefulness as a storage facility; you'd have to start over elsewhere, and the whole sixty year long debacle would hit reset.

The problem is purely political, not scientific.

Are you claiming that geology is not a science?

Reprocess the fuel. At that point all of the generally considered approaches will work fine for containing what's left.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Love this line:

To quote George Monbiot from the Guardian: “while nuclear causes calamities when it goes wrong, coal causes calamities when it goes right, and coal goes right a lot more often than nuclear goes wrong.”

I am not, in any sense, arguing for coal power plants, which do disastrous and demonstrable harm to Nevada every single day. The two systems are barely even comparable in terms of environmental, aside from the resource and water extraction issues which affect both. But I do not need to argue for coal power in order to object to the absence of a viable long term solution for nuclear disposal. I don't even need to argue against nuclear power production in general, and indeed I do not. My only beefs with the proliferation of nuclear power are the above issue, and the blatant political inequality of picking and choosing which nations are "allowed" to have it.

The problem is you don't get to choose only your fantasy solution. Renewables are not ready for prime time. It's nuke or fossil fuel, there is no third choice.

And what politics are you talking about? Anybody who wants peaceful nuclear power isn't going to have a problem. The countries that are having problems are the ones who are looking for bombs, not for electricity.

- - - Updated - - -

If you look carefully, you can find out what they don't talk about. A big one is synthetic fuels. I've seen many more articles about electric cars than about synfuels. This lacuna I find rather curious, since it is hard to compete with liquid hydrocarbons as a vehicle fuel. Liquid hydrocarbons have much higher usable-energy densities than batteries, and they are easy to store and handle. Batteries would be impractical for ships and airplanes.  Energy density collects some numbers, but in a rather disorganized way.

Synfuels are not a power source. They are a power storage system.

- - - Updated - - -

One thing I have not seen mentioned is the potential to use hydrocarbons made in this way as a storage solution to rival not just vehicle batteries but also grid power batteries (which I suspect can never be sufficiently cheap to play a significant role).

The efficiency is way too low.