The Energy Generation Megathread: Heated Exchanges

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > The Energy Generation Megathread: Heated Exchanges

Adenoid Dan: Mar 8, 2012; The Hobo Serenader; Lipstick Apathy

Thermal pollution from cooling can be a real issue, that will depend on the site.

It's a thing with coal power too though.

# ? Jun 14, 2023 18:37

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 8, 2024 07:13

PhazonLink: Jul 17, 2010

everything is "non renewable" because all matter was created in the big bang about 14ish billion years ago.

also sea water and soil has enough trace elements to power earth until the sun goes ~~red giant~~ the sun boils the oceans away.

# ? Jun 14, 2023 19:25

Phanatic: Mar 13, 2007; Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

DrSunshine posted:

From the PDF, the argument goes:

This sounds like a specious argument to me, honestly, but I wouldn't know where to begin.

There�s nothing special about nuclear in this regard. Other generation also involves boiling water and using it to spin turbines. If they magic-wanded D:T fusion plants into existence, those would also boil water to spin turbines.

Would they argue that �we shouldn�t build nuclear fusion plants because they use too much water?� Would they argue �we shouldn�t stop burning oil because it produces water?� �Those geothermal plants are boiling too much water!�

They�re dishonest morons. Boiling water does not remove it from the hydrologic cycle. Saying boiling water �consumes� it is like saying that rainwater gets consumed when it evaporates and the parking lot dries up.

And again, if we�re in such need of freshwater, desalination is a thing. You can desalinate water with heat. You can even get that heat for free while you�re generating electricity.

Phanatic fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Jun 14, 2023

# ? Jun 14, 2023 19:54

Phanatic: Mar 13, 2007; Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

The �oh but mining pollutes� is also very dumb.

Yes it does. And transporting the ore emits CO2.

But you can mine uranium. Or you can mine coal. Or you can mine rare earths. Or you can purify silicon.

These people sound like people who think uranium is just another fuel and do not understand that its energy density is millions of times greater than anything chemical. For each pound of stuff you mine and transport, uranium is going to give you millions of times more energy.

If they do understand that and are pretending they don�t, they�re not worth having a conversation with because they are not interested in honest discussion, just with lying to people.

# ? Jun 14, 2023 20:08

Flappy Bert: Dec 11, 2011; I have seen the light, and it is a string

Phanatic posted:

The �oh but mining pollutes� is also very dumb.

Yes it does. And transporting the ore emits CO2.

But you can mine uranium. Or you can mine coal. Or you can mine rare earths. Or you can purify silicon.

Hell, just how much copper do these people think we�ll start going through once we make electric cars, generators, more transmission lines, or lithium? There�s no dodging the need to get stuff out of the ground.

# ? Jun 14, 2023 20:25

DTurtle: Apr 10, 2011

DrSunshine posted:

[*]Nuclear plants must power down during droughts and heat waves

This is true and has already happened:

quote:

https://www.powermag.com/nuclear-power-production-curtailed-in-france-worsening-europes-energy-crisis/
High temperatures in river water are reportedly forcing Electricite de France SA (EDF) to cut power generation at some of its nuclear plants. The news is particularly troubling as several European nations struggle to cope with an energy crisis caused by gas cuts made by Russia in retaliation against sanctions placed on it due to the war in Ukraine.

River water is often used in many parts of the world to cool steam condensers at all types of thermal power plants, including at nuclear, coal, and gas-fired units. The water picks up heat as it passes through the condenser and returns to the river. However, regulators often place temperature restrictions on the cooling water to prevent harm to the environment, which could be caused if limits were exceeded.

Extreme heat and the driest July on record in France have caused river temperatures to reach certain thresholds that restrict nuclear plant output at some sites. Bloomberg reported that the Saint-Alban plant will operate �at a minimum of 700 megawatts, compared with a total capacity of about 2,600 megawatts� and that �reductions are also likely at the Tricastin plant, where two units will maintain at least 400 megawatts.� The minimum output limits reported by Bloomberg are presumably intended to maintain grid stability while plants restrict output to keep river water under the maximum permitted discharge temperatures.

...

Reuters reported in July that production restrictions had also been placed on the Bugey plant, which is also on the Rhone River, and on the Blayais plant and the Golfech plant, which are both on the Garrone River. The maximum river temperature before restrictions kick in at the Bugey plant is 26C, while that at the Golfech, Tricastin, and Saint-Alban plants is 28C, and Blayais is 30C, according to Reuters.

Of course this isn't the case everywhere, but it has to be considered when looking for sites for new plants and existing plants have to somehow deal with it.

DrSunshine posted:

Building nuclear plants won't replace coal plants: they take too long to build: This is due to siting restrictions and the time it takes to obtain funding ( I don't have figures or facts on hand for this)

This is usually an argument with regards to taking action that has an effect immediately. It is a lot easier to build a huge amount of solar or wind power with a quick ramp up in comparison to nuclear power plants. A ramp up of nuclear power starting today will not have an effect for at the very least 5 to 10 years and more. This is not only due to regulations, but due to other engineering and safety work that needs to be done. Nobody has really presented a solution for making that happen faster.

DrSunshine posted:

Using nuclear plants to address climate change has huge downsides and risks: increasing accidents, nuclear waste, proliferation, and increased environmental damage from uranium mining

The counter argument here is simple: None of the cited dangers have to do with climate change. In the very worst case (catastrophic nuclear meltdown) nuclear power plants can only have catastrophic regional effects on a timeline of decades at most. Climate change has the potential for catastrophic global effect on a timeline of centuries.

DTurtle fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Jun 14, 2023

# ? Jun 14, 2023 21:30

Phanatic: Mar 13, 2007; Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

DTurtle posted:

This is true and has already happened:

It's not true.

quote:

Of course this isn't the case everywhere, but it has to be considered when looking for sites for new plants and existing plants have to somehow deal with it.

Which means the claim isn't true. It's false. "Cars overheat when stuck in traffic" isn't true by virtue of my old Taurus.

# ? Jun 14, 2023 21:45

VictualSquid: Feb 29, 2012; Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

Yes, all thermal power generation uses up water. This also happens with power consumption in many situations.
Afaik, the water usage is fairly independent of the actual heat source.
Some cooling water is lost as steam into the atmosphere in order to cool the rest of the water to bring it to a temperature where it can be safely returned to the river. The alternative would be to discharge hot water and kill the ecosystem.
And because power plants take in good fresh river water near populated areas they contribute to water shortages in those regions. Fairly minorly afaik compared to agriculture and water reservoir evaporation. Though I don't know how the size compares to renewable adjacent sources like hydro power reservoir evaporation. I guess they are similar actually, but it is a dumb contest.

I do think it is the most real environmental challenge for nuclear power. The obvious solution is to not build the plants in region where water shortages are expected. If you are running them besides a high renewable grid, you already have those big long power-lines for load balancing.

# ? Jun 14, 2023 21:47

DrSunshine: Mar 23, 2009; Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!

DTurtle posted:

This is true and has already happened:

Appreciate this.

The "long timescale for ramp-up" argument is pretty valid when our goal is net-negative within <20 years or so, so if I'm discussing with an interlocutor that believes "All energy can be provided by wind, water, and solar", and given that it's a lot faster to build up a whole lot of wind and solar right now, the argument then becomes "What, then, is the point of nuclear now?" I'm kind of at a loss when it comes to arguing for that, because I feel like if I hold to every other counterargument thus far presented, it becomes at best an argument for not reducing nuclear. If anything, the time to start on thousands of new nuclear projects would have been about 35 years ago, when I was born.

In that case, then, is there a good argument to counter "All necessary power generation can be provided by wind, water, and solar", with the argument I want to make: "Nuclear has a big role to play in getting to net-negative CO2"?

# ? Jun 14, 2023 22:05

VictualSquid: Feb 29, 2012; Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

DrSunshine posted:

Appreciate this.

The "long timescale for ramp-up" argument is pretty valid when our goal is net-negative within <20 years or so, so if I'm discussing with an interlocutor that believes "All energy can be provided by wind, water, and solar", and given that it's a lot faster to build up a whole lot of wind and solar right now, the argument then becomes "What, then, is the point of nuclear now?" I'm kind of at a loss when it comes to arguing for that, because I feel like if I hold to every other counterargument thus far presented, it becomes at best an argument for not reducing nuclear. If anything, the time to start on thousands of new nuclear projects would have been about 35 years ago, when I was born.

In that case, then, is there a good argument to counter "All necessary power generation can be provided by wind, water, and solar", with the argument I want to make: "Nuclear has a big role to play in getting to net-negative CO2"?

The main thing here is that building up the support grid that is needed for 100% renewables is more expensive then obvious and not actually much quicker then building nuclear.
There is also the chance that will prove to be actually impossible, though I personally find it unlikely. I still think we should build more nuclear plants to be sure. Because all those investments aren't actually mutually exclusive in a society that actually takes climate change seriously.
So it is not a big role, it is a plan b in case we do not manage to create the grid technologies/social reforms necessary for 100% renewable.
Those investments also should have been done 30 years ago.

Re: degrowth: I do think that becoming a society that can handle planned power usage reductions in reaction to disasters is 100% necessary for unrelated reasons, which could also massively reduce the needed storage capacity. But that is also a process that will take longer then building new nuclear plants.

VictualSquid fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Jun 14, 2023

# ? Jun 14, 2023 22:22

VideoGameVet: May 14, 2005; It is by caffeine alone I set my bike in motion. It is by the juice of Java that pedaling acquires speed, the teeth acquire stains, stains become a warning. It is by caffeine alone I set my bike in motion.

Adenoid Dan posted:

Thermal pollution from cooling can be a real issue, that will depend on the site.

It's a thing with coal power too though.

Didn�t France have to shut down some plants because they were hitting up a river too much?

# ? Jun 14, 2023 22:31

Pander: Oct 9, 2007; Fear is the glue that holds society together. It's what makes people suppress their worst impulses. Fear is power.

And at the end of fear, oblivion.

As part of FLEX, nuclear plants do have to consider weather BDBEEs (beyond design basis extreme events), including extreme heat/drought potential safety impacts. I did the analyses for a few nuclear stations in PA, where earthquakes and blizzards were most plausible to generate a loss of off-site power and full site blackout conditions. We had to postulate those worst case events, and then devise strategies to keep the plants safe.

Operations going dark is not even a consideration, you will always assume that during an extreme drought it's better practice to shut down while you have water and power to ensure there is zero risk if you lose it. This is just what happens when dealing with gen 2 plants that need external, powered cooling.

The counter argument would be that future plants constricted would not be gen 2, and passive cooling designs lower risks and reduce the need for preemptive safety shutdowns.

# ? Jun 14, 2023 22:39

FistEnergy: Nov 3, 2000; DAY CREW: WORKING HARD; Fun Shoe

I'm not even sure what a 100% renewable grid would look like or be operated. Hydro is only available in select locations (and climate change will significantly change the conditions), and wind/solar can't ramp up or down and provide no frequency stability or inertia to the grid.

# ? Jun 14, 2023 22:40

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

~batteries everywhere~

or maybe hydrogen which is what Germany seems to have planned

# ? Jun 14, 2023 22:42

DrSunshine: Mar 23, 2009; Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!

FistEnergy posted:

I'm not even sure what a 100% renewable grid would look like or be operated. Hydro is only available in select locations (and climate change will significantly change the conditions), and wind/solar can't ramp up or down and provide no frequency stability or inertia to the grid.

The answer I've seen touted is "microgrids". Distributed renewable networks, so I guess the energy is redirected from places that do have it to places that don't?

# ? Jun 14, 2023 22:42

VictualSquid: Feb 29, 2012; Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

FistEnergy posted:

I'm not even sure what a 100% renewable grid would look like or be operated. Hydro is only available in select locations (and climate change will significantly change the conditions), and wind/solar can't ramp up or down and provide no frequency stability or inertia to the grid.

The 4 options are:
1) Become a society that can survive a power usage reduction if the weather report demands it. aka degrowth.
2) Invent and build large amounts of storage systems. The old techbro favourite.
3) Lay many really long cables so that Germany can use Japanese solar during the night. The world peace advocate favourite.
4) Declare nuclear (and to a lesser extend biofuel) to be renewable. The current techbro favourite.
5) All the above, my favourite.

# ? Jun 14, 2023 22:44

KillHour: Oct 28, 2007

DrSunshine posted:

The answer I've seen touted is "microgrids". Distributed renewable networks, so I guess the energy is redirected from places that do have it to places that don't?

You mean like that time in my neighborhood last year where there was a bit more AC usage than normal due to a heat wave and a substation literally blew up, then two more substations tried to take on the new load caused by a substation missing and also blew up?

Yeah - our grid is totally able to handle something like that without completely rebuilding it from the ground up.

# ? Jun 14, 2023 22:45

DrSunshine: Mar 23, 2009; Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!

Yeah, so on that account I also wanted to learn more about base load power and that debate wrt renewables because I do recall seeing that debated here.

# ? Jun 14, 2023 22:48

DTurtle: Apr 10, 2011

DrSunshine posted:

Appreciate this.

As a small addendum to this part: As others above have mentioned this is not something completely negating the possibility of using nuclear power plants, but it is something that has to be considered and compensated for through siting, technological/engineering investments, potential reduced power output at critical high need times (due to air conditioning), and so on.

DrSunshine posted:

The "long timescale for ramp-up" argument is pretty valid when our goal is net-negative within <20 years or so, so if I'm discussing with an interlocutor that believes "All energy can be provided by wind, water, and solar", and given that it's a lot faster to build up a whole lot of wind and solar right now, the argument then becomes "What, then, is the point of nuclear now?" I'm kind of at a loss when it comes to arguing for that, because I feel like if I hold to every other counterargument thus far presented, it becomes at best an argument for not reducing nuclear. If anything, the time to start on thousands of new nuclear projects would have been about 35 years ago, when I was born.

In that case, then, is there a good argument to counter "All necessary power generation can be provided by wind, water, and solar", with the argument I want to make: "Nuclear has a big role to play in getting to net-negative CO2"?

Well, as someone who believes that it is probably possible to "provide all energy needs by wind, water and solar" here are my suggestions:
1. Goal is to get to net-negative CO2 and stay there for a long time. That means that there is basically infinite need for energy this century. Nuclear is an extremely low CO2 source of energy (with CO2 extraction net-negative?).
2. Using nuclear power for base load reduces the difficulty of dealing with intermittency and storage for renewables. If those problems can be solved without nuclear power, then we can still use nuclear power for CO2 capture and retire them if/when they aren't profitable or useful. If those problems can't be solved, then it would be bad to then have to wait another 10-15 years to get a solution via nuclear power.
3. Whats the real harm being done by throwing out wads of cash at a solution that might turn out to be not economically viable in 10 or 15 years? Maybe throwing wads of money that way can actually, really, finally make one of the many (failed) attempts of rapid construction at reasonable cost of nuclear power? And if not, then some companies go bankrupt and you've wasted a lot of cash and effort. It only becomes a problem if you use nuclear power in order to reduce the drive for renewable energy (which is what happened in Germany and why I hate the FDP and CDU and am very fine with nuclear power finally being dead and buried here).
4. It is never too late to start reducing CO2 emissions. Every little bit of CO2 not emitted helps. There is no tipping point at which outputting more CO2 won't make the problem worse.

FistEnergy posted:

I'm not even sure what a 100% renewable grid would look like or be operated. Hydro is only available in select locations (and climate change will significantly change the conditions), and wind/solar can't ramp up or down and provide no frequency stability or inertia to the grid.

mobby_6kl posted:

~batteries everywhere~

or maybe hydrogen which is what Germany seems to have planned

Hydrogen is what the EU has planned. Creating enough storage for hydrogen is possible. If the hydrogen is further converted to methane, then the existing storage for natural gas is already enough to cover all possible needs.

DTurtle fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Jun 14, 2023

# ? Jun 14, 2023 22:53

QuarkJets: Sep 8, 2008

DTurtle posted:

This is usually an argument with regards to taking action that has an effect immediately. It is a lot easier to build a huge amount of solar or wind power with a quick ramp up in comparison to nuclear power plants.

Is it? I would guess this is true if you only look at nameplate capacity (which for solar and wind is practically fiction) and don't bother building any energy storage

# ? Jun 14, 2023 23:46

DTurtle: Apr 10, 2011

QuarkJets posted:

Is it? I would guess this is true if you only look at nameplate capacity (which for solar and wind is practically fiction) and don't bother building any energy storage

At its peak - before Chernobyl - nuclear power managed two years of increasing energy production by more than 600 TWh in a single year. Source
Renewable energy production has been doing that for the last decade. In the last four years production actually increased by more than 1000 TWh each year. Again, actual production. Source

DTurtle fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Jun 15, 2023

# ? Jun 15, 2023 00:12

QuarkJets: Sep 8, 2008

DTurtle posted:

At its peak - before Chernobyl - nuclear power managed two years of increasing energy production by more than 600 TWh in a single year. Source
Renewable energy production has been doing that for the last decade. In the last four years production actually increased by more than 1000 TWh each year. Again, actual production. Source

That answers a different question - how much energy production actually changed each year. The question asked was whether it's hypothetically faster to build a large amount of energy production from renewable sources than nuclear sources. I think that the answer depends on how the problem is constrained. If you need to provide 10 GW of baseload power year-round without carbon sources in the mix then I suspect nuclear power will fare better than wind/solar, mostly because it wouldn't require energy storage. If you loosen the constraints to allow natural gas and coal power to cover intermittency then that's probably no longer the case

# ? Jun 15, 2023 02:13

DTurtle: Apr 10, 2011

Now you are adding various constraints and additional qualifiers, changing the scenario to a completely unrealistic one deliberately aimed at emphasizing the biggest problem of renewables, while completely ignoring the problems of nuclear power.

We can instead simply look at history. During the height of the nuclear boom phase, nuclear power expansion was a small fraction of the (still accelerating) renewable energy boom happening over the last decade.

The fact of the matter is that right now, right this moment renewables are already ramping up very, very quickly and eating into the amount of energy produced by fossil fuels. Storage hasn�t stopped that ramp up from happening. The difference between capacity and actual production hasn�t stopped that from happening. Intermittency hasn�t stopped that from happening.

Reality has shown that renewable energy production can ramp up a lot faster than nuclear power production. Hell, it can ramp up so quickly that you can see the immediate effects of politics on renewable energy production on a year to year basis when you start looking into single countries or states.

# ? Jun 15, 2023 05:36

His Divine Shadow: Aug 7, 2000; I'm not a fascist. I'm a priest. Fascists dress up in black and tell people what to do.

Reality has also shown that all this massive ramp up of renewables is worth less per unit of power as well than a lesser but steady and reliable amount of generation. That's what europe desperately needs now.

Renewables can be built out massive on a name plate basis and provide loads of power, in certain times. But it's a problem, the same problem as it always was. We could really really need a smaller amount of reliable fossil free generation to counteract all these wildass disruptive swings.

# ? Jun 15, 2023 06:36

Dameius: Apr 3, 2006

DTurtle posted:

Now you are adding various constraints and additional qualifiers, changing the scenario to a completely unrealistic one deliberately aimed at emphasizing the biggest problem of renewables, while completely ignoring the problems of nuclear power.

We can instead simply look at history. During the height of the nuclear boom phase, nuclear power expansion was a small fraction of the (still accelerating) renewable energy boom happening over the last decade.

The fact of the matter is that right now, right this moment renewables are already ramping up very, very quickly and eating into the amount of energy produced by fossil fuels. Storage hasn’t stopped that ramp up from happening. The difference between capacity and actual production hasn’t stopped that from happening. Intermittency hasn’t stopped that from happening.

Reality has shown that renewable energy production can ramp up a lot faster than nuclear power production. Hell, it can ramp up so quickly that you can see the immediate effects of politics on renewable energy production on a year to year basis when you start looking into single countries or states.

Not that this would invalidate your point on its own, but I'd be hesitant to compare industrial build out capacity for energy across such a large time span as pre-chernobyl and now and draw too many conclusions or make many definitive statements when you're viewing it purely from nameplate capacity coming online. The world and energy markets are in just such different places.

# ? Jun 15, 2023 07:16

Wibla: Feb 16, 2011

Solar is great, but where do you get power from at night?

# ? Jun 15, 2023 08:33

QuarkJets: Sep 8, 2008

DTurtle posted:

Now you are adding various constraints and additional qualifiers.

The qualifier of "let's not keep building fossil fuel power plants" was, I assumed, the point of the question

# ? Jun 15, 2023 09:12

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

Wibla posted:

Solar is great, but where do you get power from at night?

Easy, you just put the panels in space! https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/06/for-the-first-time-in-decades-congress-seems-interested-space-based-solar-power/

We've seen that you can transition the entire grid to nuclear in around 10-15 years or so (and could've been done with the whole thing 40 years ago), but the industry's been pretty crippled since then so who knows. I'm sure it would be possible if there was actual will to do it but :effort:

# ? Jun 15, 2023 09:31

Electric Wrigglies: Feb 6, 2015

mobby_6kl posted:

Easy, you just put the panels in space! https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/06/for-the-first-time-in-decades-congress-seems-interested-space-based-solar-power/

We've seen that you can transition the entire grid to nuclear in around 10-15 years or so (and could've been done with the whole thing 40 years ago), but the industry's been pretty crippled since then so who knows. I'm sure it would be possible if there was actual will to do it but

I think a lot of "what is possible" is being done by China. It does have the safety considerations of nuclear but no-where near the same level of NIMBYism or effective green resistance to nuclear. China had great ambitions of building out nuclear but tempered them over the last decade or so (but always in parallel with massive buildout of wind, hydro and solar and transition coal, gas, etc). China is approving new nuclear stations at a rate that can be supported by the scale up in heavy industrial capacity but also operators, supplier and regulator institutional knowledge.

To be fair, China installed 51 GW of hydro capacity in five years between 1015 and 2020 which is roughly what France generators total across all sources at any one time. Or another way, China has taken solar power from 2.6 TWhrs production in 2011 to 327.0 TWhrs in 2021. A massive increase over the 10 years (that I think is the large chunk of what DTurtle was talking about when he talked about a massive increase not impacting current grids) and is even more than the amount of extra thermal production that China did in one year from 2020 to 2021 (~316.1 TWhrs, from 5,330.2 TWhrs to 5,646.3k TWhrs). So China is building out a huuuuge electrical grid in line with being the world's factory and it reducing the carbon footprint of its grid is in effect reducing the carbon footprint of a large chunk of the worlds mfg.

TLDR, nuclear is going to take a while but there is no reason to hold it back as solar and wind are going to take a while as well.

# ? Jun 15, 2023 11:00

in a well actually: Jan 26, 2011; dude, you gotta end it on the rhyme

Electric Wrigglies posted:

I think a lot of "what is possible" is being done by China. It does have the safety considerations of nuclear but no-where near the same level of NIMBYism or effective green resistance to nuclear. China had great ambitions of building out nuclear but tempered them over the last decade or so (but always in parallel with massive buildout of wind, hydro and solar and transition coal, gas, etc). China is approving new nuclear stations at a rate that can be supported by the scale up in heavy industrial capacity but also operators, supplier and regulator institutional knowledge.

To be fair, China installed 51 GW of hydro capacity in five years between 1015 and 2020 which is roughly what France generators total across all sources at any one time. Or another way, China has taken solar power from 2.6 TWhrs production in 2011 to 327.0 TWhrs in 2021. A massive increase over the 10 years (that I think is the large chunk of what DTurtle was talking about when he talked about a massive increase not impacting current grids) and is even more than the amount of extra thermal production that China did in one year from 2020 to 2021 (~316.1 TWhrs, from 5,330.2 TWhrs to 5,646.3k TWhrs). So China is building out a huuuuge electrical grid in line with being the world's factory and it reducing the carbon footprint of its grid is in effect reducing the carbon footprint of a large chunk of the worlds mfg.

TLDR, nuclear is going to take a while but there is no reason to hold it back as solar and wind are going to take a while as well.

The problem with China nuclear enthusiasm is China still building coal; a few years ago they approved more new gw in coal plants in one year than their all entire current and planned nuclear generation. It�s that same generation boom we were talking about in the west in the 60s-80s.

Even without having to deal with many of the anti-nuclear boogeymen it�s still taking China like eight years to build modern nuclear plants, which is only marginally better than the world average.

# ? Jun 15, 2023 13:46

cat botherer: Jan 6, 2022; I am interested in most phases of data processing.

mobby_6kl posted:

Easy, you just put the panels in space! https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/06/for-the-first-time-in-decades-congress-seems-interested-space-based-solar-power/

We've seen that you can transition the entire grid to nuclear in around 10-15 years or so (and could've been done with the whole thing 40 years ago), but the industry's been pretty crippled since then so who knows. I'm sure it would be possible if there was actual will to do it but

The issue with space-based panels is you still have to transmit the power to the ground with microwaves. The power density of the beam has to be low enough to not immediately fry birds or kill anyone if it gets off track. That limits you to on the order of tens of watts per square meter, so you're talking an absolutely enormous collector. Then there's also the problem of unavoidable diffraction, which scatters the beam out significantly.

In addition, the efficiency gains of space-based solar are much less compelling once inefficiencies of turning the energy to and from microwaves:

https://www.space.com/space-solar-power-pros-cons

quote:

Microwaves slide through Earth's atmosphere almost undisturbed, losing barely 5% of their energy during their journey from geostationary orbit, according to Airbus' calculations. Huge amounts of energy, however, are lost already at the plant and then at the rectenna when the electricity produced by the photovoltaic panels is turned into microwaves and then back to electricity.

"The system we used in our demonstration had end-to-end efficiency of about 5%," said Coste. "That's not something that would be operationally viable, even though the sunlight is free. For a space-based solar plant to make sense, the efficiency would have to be around at least 20%."

# ? Jun 15, 2023 16:05

Cantide: Jun 13, 2001; Pillbug

Electric Wrigglies posted:

I think a lot of "what is possible" is being done by China. It does have the safety considerations of nuclear but no-where near the same level of NIMBYism or effective green resistance to nuclear. China had great ambitions of building out nuclear but tempered them over the last decade or so (but always in parallel with massive buildout of wind, hydro and solar and transition coal, gas, etc). China is approving new nuclear stations at a rate that can be supported by the scale up in heavy industrial capacity but also operators, supplier and regulator institutional knowledge.

To be fair, China installed 51 GW of hydro capacity in five years between 1015 and 2020 which is roughly what France generators total across all sources at any one time. Or another way, China has taken solar power from 2.6 TWhrs production in 2011 to 327.0 TWhrs in 2021. A massive increase over the 10 years (that I think is the large chunk of what DTurtle was talking about when he talked about a massive increase not impacting current grids) and is even more than the amount of extra thermal production that China did in one year from 2020 to 2021 (~316.1 TWhrs, from 5,330.2 TWhrs to 5,646.3k TWhrs). So China is building out a huuuuge electrical grid in line with being the world's factory and it reducing the carbon footprint of its grid is in effect reducing the carbon footprint of a large chunk of the worlds mfg.

TLDR, nuclear is going to take a while but there is no reason to hold it back as solar and wind are going to take a while as well.

That could be true but I don't believe one number/statistic coming out of China. The whole system over there is geared to produce bullshit numbers

# ? Jun 15, 2023 16:39

cat botherer: Jan 6, 2022; I am interested in most phases of data processing.

Cantide posted:

That could be true but I don't believe one number/statistic coming out of China. The whole system over there is geared to produce bullshit numbers

You can't fake dams being built, or solar installations that cover multiple square kilometers. China is capable of infrastructure projects on a vast scale. I know that our enemies are all simultaneously stupid and incompetent but also dire threats, but sometimes it's worth taking a step back.

# ? Jun 15, 2023 16:42

Phanatic: Mar 13, 2007; Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

cat botherer posted:

You can't fake dams being built, or solar installations that cover multiple square kilometers.

You could absolutely fake that latter.

Not sure why you would, but you totally could.

cat botherer posted:

In addition, the efficiency gains of space-based solar are much less compelling once inefficiencies of turning the energy to and from microwaves:

I'm not sure why their end-to-end efficiency is such crap but conversion of microwaves into DC can be done at 85% efficiency, and even the cheap cavity magnetrons in your microwave oven are ~50% efficient at turning electricity into microwaves.

That doesn't make SBS a good idea in and of itself, but much higher efficiencies than what they demonstrated are possible.

Phanatic fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Jun 15, 2023

# ? Jun 15, 2023 17:00

cat botherer: Jan 6, 2022; I am interested in most phases of data processing.

Phanatic posted:

You could absolutely fake that latter.

Not sure why you would, but you totally could.

I suppose that's true. It's just nonsensical to just decide everything China does is "fake", when they have an ample track record of completing enormous infrastructure projects quickly.

# ? Jun 15, 2023 17:04

ChaseSP: Mar 25, 2013

There are methods of generating power through solar radiationto generate heat after sunlight is no longer available via instead of using photoeletctric cells you can instead heat up a massive amount of sodium salts to use to boil water that'll keep doing so for a bit.

# ? Jun 15, 2023 17:27

cat botherer: Jan 6, 2022; I am interested in most phases of data processing.

ChaseSP posted:

There are methods of generating power through solar radiationto generate heat after sunlight is no longer available via instead of using photoeletctric cells you can instead heat up a massive amount of sodium salts to use to boil water that'll keep doing so for a bit.

The unfortunate thing with concentrated solar thermal is that it only works with direct sunlight, which pretty much limits it to deserts (not that that's a dealbreaker). It's also quite a bit more expensive than PV at this point. On the other hand, I've seen a solar power tower IRL and it is crazy badass and that should make up for these disadvantages.

There's another thermal storage method that pretty cool IMO: molten silicon storage.

https://www.solarpaces.org/mit-proposes-pv-to-discharge-energy-from-2400c-silicon-thermal-storage/

One issue with molten sodium is that it is relatively low temperature, IIRC around 600 C. Sunlight has the thermodynamic temperature close to that of the surface of the sun, around 6000C. Molten salt storage thus loses a lot of potential thermodynamic efficiency. In contrast, molten silicon storage can get to 2400C. In addition, silicon has one of the highest specific heats of any material - which means the energy density can be huge.

The catch is that 2400C too hot for existing turbines, although it would be possible to make turbines capable of dealing with those temps (I don't think there's a big existing market). This group got around that by using multi-junction photovoltaics to convert radiant heat/light from the silicon to energy. Multi-junction PVs are more efficient and can operate at much higher temperatures and power output/area compared to regular ones. It's still not as efficient as turbines, but that would be a surmountable problem.

# ? Jun 15, 2023 18:04

Electric Wrigglies: Feb 6, 2015

ChaseSP posted:

There are methods of generating power through solar radiationto generate heat after sunlight is no longer available via instead of using photoeletctric cells you can instead heat up a massive amount of sodium salts to use to boil water that'll keep doing so for a bit.

yeah, but the advancement of that tech fell in a heap for the same reasons that are advanced why nuclear can't make sense, because photovoltaics and wind produce instantaneous non-dispatchable electricity cheaper and there is still plenty of already built dispatchable power still in the grid.

# ? Jun 15, 2023 18:07

cat botherer: Jan 6, 2022; I am interested in most phases of data processing.

Electric Wrigglies posted:

yeah, but the advancement of that tech fell in a heap for the same reasons that are advanced why nuclear can't make sense, because photovoltaics and wind produce instantaneous non-dispatchable electricity cheaper and there is still plenty of already built dispatchable power still in the grid.

"Dispatchable power" in this case is fossil fuels. That's what we need to get away from. If you think nuclear "can't make sense", fossil fuels really really can't make sense.

# ? Jun 15, 2023 18:18

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 8, 2024 07:13

VideoGameVet: May 14, 2005; It is by caffeine alone I set my bike in motion. It is by the juice of Java that pedaling acquires speed, the teeth acquire stains, stains become a warning. It is by caffeine alone I set my bike in motion.

Phanatic posted:

You could absolutely fake that latter.

Not sure why you would, but you totally could.

I'm not sure why their end-to-end efficiency is such crap but conversion of microwaves into DC can be done at 85% efficiency, and even the cheap cavity magnetrons in your microwave oven are ~50% efficient at turning electricity into microwaves.

That doesn't make SBS a good idea in and of itself, but much higher efficiencies than what they demonstrated are possible.

I attended Gerald K O'Neill's Princeton Space-based solar power conference (1980) and much of those predictions were based on a Space Shuttle cost to orbit that ended up being off by a magnitude or more.

# ? Jun 15, 2023 18:22

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > The Energy Generation Megathread: Heated Exchanges

«‹›349 »