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when we say that angular momentum is conserved, we're not even really restricting this to ideal models. it is conserved, in absolute terms, in the real world, period. no wiggle room. I know that it's really weird to imagine Earth spinning around with a layer of viscous fluid that itself forms vortices and whatnot and not imagine that dispersion would slowly rob its angular momentum, but angular momentum is conserved
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Dec 24, 2023 21:59
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Yeah and the thing that is slowing the Earth's rotation is the moon, but of course angular momentum is still conserved within the Earth-Moon system, with the moon's orbit getting higher by 2cm per year as a result.
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Dec 24, 2023 22:34
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:We might (might) have some hope in this area thanks to fusion research. Still a long way off but possibly much less long than it seemed. Aside from the problems people have pointed out with these experiments in particular, all of the experimental fusion reactors that I've seen (including this one) use Deuterium-Tritium fusion, which is one of the easier variants to make work. The problem is that while you can get deuterium from sea water really easily, tritium decays too quickly to be found in nature and so we have to generate it, and the only way we have to do that generation comes from fission power plants. There's talk about making a breeder reactor, but a D-T fusion reaction only releases one neutron per fusion event. If you could capture those 100% efficiently (an engineering and physics miracle) and capture and store the tritium gas released 100% efficiently (another engineering miracle), you'd still only be able to breed exactly as much tritium as you put in. As far as I know, there's no real work on making tritium in a new way (I'm not sure what that way would even be), doing fusion in a way that doesn't require it, or making breeder reactors (including using a type of fusion that could breed more tritium than it takes in). Without any of that work, the stuff about "near-limitless source of clean power" that they love to throw into fusion hype is complete nonsense - your fusion fuel is extremely limited and requires 'dirty' nuclear plants to make. I'd love for fusion to be something workable, but it doesn't appear that anything we could do in a climate-relevant timeframe could be more than an adjunct to fission power.
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Dec 25, 2023 14:59
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Fission I think is perfectly clean enough and if we need fission plants to make fusion work on top of needing more fission plants in the near term to decarbonize than so be it. I assume of course that you don't disagree that fission power is also good to be clear. So I'm not disputing what you're saying. 
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Dec 25, 2023 15:05
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Yes, it would be nice if that forced us to increase fission power generation, but it's more likely just another large obstacle for fusion power. Practical Engineering did a great video on the building of ITER reactor. One eye-opener was the discussion about field coil manufacturing at 6:20. These components are so large they can't be build offsite. If a fusion plant needs specialized manufacturing facilities onsite it really doen't sound like something every city would have. Or even smaller countries. Fusion power is such a huge and long endeavour that I feel we are better of concentrating on building solar and wind power, energy storage and reducing energy consumption. After we have solved the climate crisis we can then take another look at fusion and see if we can make energy cheaper.
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Dec 25, 2023 15:43
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Or we can do multiple things at the same time. In terms of budget if we were trying to solve the climate crisis as if we were trying to win WW2 in terms of national effort and gdp expenditures (consider how the B-29 stratofortress project cost as much as the nuclear bomb, and the US also had a whole other strategic bomber project at the same time) the there's no reason not to throw a trillion dollars at fusion research and two trillion at Green energy and fission plants.
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Dec 25, 2023 16:00
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Phone posting so double post, basically fusion as many hypothetical advantages, but many of these engineering challenges need to be considered in context. It is still a nascent bespoke technology, with no infrastructure dedicated to it beyond the same infrastructure for other expensive technologically advanced cutting edge projects. If fusion power got to the point that yes, we can generate more energy than we can put in in practice, then with the proper amount of additional private and public investment then the infrastructure will be created to facilitate resolved what today seem like imposing engineering and production challenges. The coils for example, could be figured out how to be built smaller, or facilities created to facilitate a less expensive and less cumbersome means of manufacture. Currently there's no incentive for doing this because it is still a bespoke artisanal craft work. Not a integral part of the worlds energy economy, yet. There was a point where we could say the same thing about aircraft, or cars, or battleships, where there is a will and an incentive market or government economic forces will create the material conditions for there to be a way. Its the same thing for every other challenge about fusion that gets brought up, like the QA issues for quality of neutron contamination of neutron shielding etc, were not even at the point yet where the facilities to put real effort into the research and development of those solutions are on any drawing board because there's no point yet. Its worth it to increase funding and get fusion closer sooner because it will consequently move up the timeline for thinking about considering those other issues. And of course finally green energy is currently just as impossible as fusion is for solving the climate crisis, only mass deployment of nuclear reactors can decarbonize the economy and continue to enable economic growth and first world loving standards. Like the "reduce energy consumption" is impossible if we mean anything other than "continue to make our consumption more efficient" because energy consumption by every law of modern economics must increase.
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Dec 25, 2023 16:09
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we also have negative 20 years to address climate change. we can afford no delay in installing zero carbon generation capacity. future technologies are cool and all, but waiting for them to materialize before addressing climate change is as deadly stupid as not doing anything about an arterial bleed because you know an ambulance is half an hour away.
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Dec 25, 2023 16:12
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Potato Salad posted:we also have negative 20 years to address climate change. we can afford no delay in installing zero carbon generation capacity. This has been trotted out since the 80's and all it has really done is be a cudgel for long term projects such as a spun up nuclear industry ala France in the 60's through 70's. It is probably the singular most effective argument against nuclear in Australia - we need to act now so a 10 year nuclear plant/30 year nuclear build out is just too long so let us put all our bickies into solar and wind paired up with yet un-invented bulk energy storage methods.
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Dec 25, 2023 17:01
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It isnt obvious to me that potato is dissing either fusion, fission, or renewables. In particular we should and I agree be building nuclear fission plants en mass. We should also be rolling out more renewables, where it makes sense, etc, and take whatever next steps new technology enables. But we should also to be clear, be investing in hypothetical technologies. We never know what technology will succeed and further revolutionize everything. Fusion would be obviously good for humanity if it reaches a state beyond novelty. So we should be investing in it. It is a hideous strawman for anyone to suggest that suggest that the choice is a trinary between fission, fusion, and renewables. We can do all three. We've been building new nuclear plants (China mainly), the US has been rolling out a lot of renewables, Germany is soiling itself. And private and government efforts at fusion research has been making incremental progress, and I assume some effort is being made for better storage, and better transmission of renewable energy. We should be funding all of these vastly more than they currently are, and treat climate change is the existential threat it is, in which case we can afford a few boondoggles to throw trillions of money at even if it only lights it on fire. No one who takes the threat seriously should care.
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Dec 25, 2023 17:35
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empirically we can do one of the three
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Dec 25, 2023 19:24
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MightyBigMinus posted:empirically we can do one of the three An odd claim that seems at odds with reality? Fusion research and investment is ongoing with multiple promising startups and experiments running, we also have various countries building new nuclear fission plants. And multiple countries are investing in renewables, what can't we do? If you're claim is "empirically we can only expand renewables" aside from being incorrect on its face, they empirically cannot actually decarbonize the economy because they require currently fission, natural gas, coal, etc for baseload power and their ability to side step this is just as hypothetical and far off as fusion. But I dunno, you're argument is a little vague.
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Dec 25, 2023 19:36
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Pantaloon Pontiff posted:Aside from the problems people have pointed out with these experiments in particular, all of the experimental fusion reactors that I've seen (including this one) use Deuterium-Tritium fusion, which is one of the easier variants to make work. The problem is that while you can get deuterium from sea water really easily, tritium decays too quickly to be found in nature and so we have to generate it, and the only way we have to do that generation comes from fission power plants. There's talk about making a breeder reactor, but a D-T fusion reaction only releases one neutron per fusion event. If you could capture those 100% efficiently (an engineering and physics miracle) and capture and store the tritium gas released 100% efficiently (another engineering miracle), you'd still only be able to breed exactly as much tritium as you put in. That's false. Well, sort of. Yes, the D-T reaction produces only a single neutron, but at that point there are multiple reactions possible. In addition to n + 6Li -> T + a + 4.8 MeV there's also n + 7Li + 2.5 MeV -> T + a + n It's that second one that would be useful for achieving a breeding ratio > 1. Mixing in beryllium makes things even better: n + Be -> 2A + 2n - 3 MeV.
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Dec 25, 2023 19:51
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MightyBigMinus posted:empirically we can do one of the three Empirically we could do one of the three in the past and now we can do a different one.
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Dec 25, 2023 20:26
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Saukkis posted:After we have solved the climate crisis lmao
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Dec 25, 2023 21:47
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Fusion research is interesting and should continue, but I suspect that the real benefit will be in spin off technologies and material engineering, rather than cheap, & clean electricity production. I'd rather see more money going into fission plants, particularly if we can commercialise a move away from the once-through fission paradigm we have now. Sure, breeders have proliferation concerns but who cares if they are being used by declared nuclear powers that already have more plutonium than they know what to do with. Start building plants that can be actinide incinerators and greatly reduce the need to store high and mid level waste.
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Dec 26, 2023 01:39
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Electric Wrigglies posted:This has been trotted out since the 80's and all it has really done is be a cudgel for long term projects such as a spun up nuclear industry ala France in the 60's through 70's. It is probably the singular most effective argument against nuclear in Australia - we need to act now so a 10 year nuclear plant/30 year nuclear build out is just too long so let us put all our bickies into solar and wind paired up with yet un-invented bulk energy storage methods. The early history of nuclear energy in Australia was the British poisoning a bunch of people with their haphazard bomb testing in South Australia, then the mining companies poisoning a bunch of people with their haphazard uranium mining practices in the Northern Territory. Most of the victims in both cases were indigenous. The reason nuclear is dead in Australia today is building solar/wind and pumped storage is much cheaper, but the reason it was dead 40 years ago was people looking at the local history and going gently caress that I'd rather have coal.
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Dec 26, 2023 03:19
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slorb posted:The early history of nuclear energy in Australia was the British poisoning a bunch of people with their haphazard bomb testing in South Australia, then the mining companies poisoning a bunch of people with their haphazard uranium mining practices in the Northern Territory. Most of the victims in both cases were indigenous. IIRC renewables in Australia have shown no real ability to handle base load without fossil fuels which is again, disastrous for the long term problems of climate change; so it kinda sounds like because of previous tragedy people have decided to double down on more tragedy.
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Dec 26, 2023 03:38
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Australia and New Zealand's aversion to nuclear is a purely political problem that can be solved with dumping enough money into a PR campaign. Its a decade where we have shown empirically that people are very easy to sway through marketing.
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Dec 26, 2023 04:41
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M_Gargantua posted:Australia and New Zealand's aversion to nuclear is a purely political problem that can be solved with dumping enough money into a PR campaign. Its a decade where we have shown empirically that people are very easy to sway through marketing. Beep boop. This is why everyone took the COVID vaccine, because the money the government dumped into PR easily overwhelmed the free conspiracy theories.
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Dec 26, 2023 04:47
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Phanatic posted:Beep boop. I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not but world wide vaccination rates are at 70%, which figuratively speaking is "everyone" with the US rate being 75.5%. Getting 75% of people in favour of nuclear power would be likely plenty for electoral politicking purposes.
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Dec 26, 2023 04:57
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Electric Wrigglies posted:This has been trotted out since the 80's and all it has really done is be a cudgel for long term projects such as a spun up nuclear industry ala France in the 60's through 70's. It is probably the singular most effective argument against nuclear in Australia - we need to act now so a 10 year nuclear plant/30 year nuclear build out is just too long so let us put all our bickies into solar and wind paired up with yet un-invented bulk energy storage methods. I forget what you call it when people falsely lay agency/blame at the feet of activists. In truth, all the power has always been in the hands of the fossil fuel industry and it probably will continue to rest there forever. "Actually, Asking For Better Things / Urgency has been used as a cudgel against progress, maybe if you stopped asking for action NOW, THEN fossil interests would allow long-term planning to happen!  "
Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 05:10 on Dec 26, 2023 |
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Dec 26, 2023 05:04
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I don't agree that the industry is all powerful, interests groups and influence shifts; and fossil fuel influence and reach has definitely been on the decline in the US.
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Dec 26, 2023 05:07
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I refuse to believe that any relatively-informed parties take any of the greenwashed excuses trotted out by politicians and civil servants captured by fossil interests at face value, and I do consider you to be a well-informed and good poster. Edit: Like, your post points out that it's wielded as a cudgel. Surely, that means you don't that excuse seriously, right? Unless you're trying to wield "it's wielded as a cudgel" as a cudgel itt Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 05:23 on Dec 26, 2023 |
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Dec 26, 2023 05:15
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I'm not sure but I feel a little confused rereading part of this exchange and wondering if maybe signals got crossed somewhere.
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Dec 26, 2023 05:20
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slorb posted:The early history of nuclear energy in Australia was the British poisoning a bunch of people with their haphazard bomb testing in South Australia, then the mining companies poisoning a bunch of people with their haphazard uranium mining practices in the Northern Territory. Most of the victims in both cases were indigenous. Building something that doesn't achieve the full scope is nearly always cheaper than something that does (current renewable tech doesn't decarbonise Aus on its own, outside of a massive pumped storage hydro buildout (significantly worse environmentally than nuclear). Current renewables is cheap because it is picking the eyes out of the market and leaving the expensive bit to coal/gas (and a bit of hydro). That's not to say that renewables shouldn't be continued apace as there is still a lot more work they can do in Aus - especially east coast. What I am saying is in 10 years, it will be either lots of natural gas or it will be nuclear to do a good final chunk of the generation. I don't think uranium mining has been any more ruinous than any other mining? Ranger etc have had spills etc but at a guess, less impact in Northen Territory in its history than each year of air travel in the Northern Territory. And on the Maralinga tests, it was not just the indigenous communities (the impact upon which the cities previously didn't care about in the slightest and now only do with reluctance) as the wind took the fallout over Winton, Longreach, Barcaldine etc although quite rural so also not cared about by the cities either. In any case, I was in the protests regarding compensation for the tests and I think memories is all that resulted. Greenpeace's equating nuclear power with nuclear weapons and the then current impending doom of mutually assuared distruction was waaaay more effective.
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Dec 26, 2023 05:24
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Raenir Salazar posted:IIRC renewables in Australia have shown no real ability to handle base load without fossil fuels which is again, disastrous for the long term problems of climate change; so it kinda sounds like because of previous tragedy people have decided to double down on more tragedy. You recall wrong. Australia is one of the best candidates for 100 renewable in the world so I have no idea where you got that idea from.
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Dec 26, 2023 06:00
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Because Australia's power needs still require baseload generation, which at 100% renewables will require an ecologically worrying scale of batteries.
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Dec 26, 2023 06:27
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Son of Rodney posted:You recall wrong. Australia is one of the best candidates for 100 renewable in the world so I have no idea where you got that idea from. It's been brought up multiple times in the thread that Australia actually cannot reach 100% renewables with current technology, it will still need base load generation no matter how many solar panels and windfarms get built out and battery storage/transmission isn't at a state which can handle sudden short falls of wind or night time.
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Dec 26, 2023 06:42
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Son of Rodney posted:You recall wrong. Australia is one of the best candidates for 100 renewable in the world so I have no idea where you got that idea from. I think his theory is based on that the best hydro is already pretty much tapped out in Aus and is pretty minor say as compared to Brazil or Scandanavia and as is shown in WA, natural gas is the solution for solving intermittency when you don't have hydro and don't want nuclear. Maybe future technology will allow for excess generation from overbuilt solar/wind to be dumped into ammonia or hydrogen production but to do it that way is going to be hugely capital intensive. E) and yeah, batteries are for grid support services (frequency stability, surges, etc), not for grid storage. Batteries are not remotely close to grid scale storage. Electric Wrigglies fucked around with this message at 06:48 on Dec 26, 2023 |
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Dec 26, 2023 06:44
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https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/technology-rejuvenate-old-solar-panels solar panels can be rejuvenated by this technology to a degree, says this article Also did you guys know there is 33 grams of deuterium in every cubic metre of seawater (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 26, 2023 07:13
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https://www.sciencealert.com/quantum-batteries-could-provide-a-new-kind-of-energy-storage-by-messing-with-time this article talks about better batteries when messed with at the quantum level
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Dec 26, 2023 07:41
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TheMuffinMan posted:https://www.sciencealert.com/quantum-batteries-could-provide-a-new-kind-of-energy-storage-by-messing-with-time Please stop posting your nonsense clickbait articles here.
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Dec 26, 2023 07:46
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Phanatic posted:Please stop posting your nonsense clickbait articles here. You should be more open-minded there are many things to unlearn
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Dec 26, 2023 07:50
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Raenir Salazar posted:It's been brought up multiple times in the thread that Australia actually cannot reach 100% renewables with current technology, it will still need base load generation no matter how many solar panels and windfarms get built out and battery storage/transmission isn't at a state which can handle sudden short falls of wind or night time. This thread also thinks nuclear is somehow, magically, against all reality a solution to climate change, so I'm a bit wary about those bring ups. Also I've mentioned it before: base load generation does not equal fossil or nuclear generators, it only means theres a necessary minimum power requirement that needs to be fulfilled. Wind can be baseload, solar can be baseload, the issue is not falling under a minimum threshold. I've read multiple studies and models over the years claiming it's completely feasible to get to 100 percent renewables in Australia, including this one . What are the arguments against this? Electric Wrigglies posted:I think his theory is based on that the best hydro is already pretty much tapped out in Aus and is pretty minor say as compared to Brazil or Scandanavia and as is shown in WA, natural gas is the solution for solving intermittency when you don't have hydro and don't want nuclear. Everything I've read or heard suggests Australia is absolutely abundant with potential hydro storage locations, this government brief is a good summary I assumed biogas, which is technically renewable, is equally feasible. Before battery and/or hydrogen become a major player I'd assume this would be tapped earlier as it's an established technology and relatively cost competitive. Being basically made of open space and renewable resources I've not seen anything to suggest that it could not become 100 percent (or as close to it as possible) quite quickly. You could of course argue about the semantics of a 100 percent vs say a 97 percent system, as those last few percentage points are the tricky ones, or the fact that australia has a spread out population with different grid requirements, but that's just arguing for the sake of it.
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Dec 26, 2023 11:04
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Son of Rodney posted:This thread also thinks nuclear is somehow, magically, against all reality a solution to climate change, so I'm a bit wary about those bring ups. Also I've mentioned it before: base load generation does not equal fossil or nuclear generators, it only means theres a necessary minimum power requirement that needs to be fulfilled. Wind can be baseload, solar can be baseload, the issue is not falling under a minimum threshold. So you're German right?
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Dec 26, 2023 14:36
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Traditional baseload generation is inherently very "stiff" because it's based on coal / nuclear / hydro generation that use huge synchronous generators that have a ton of rotational inertia*. This means they will absorb load fluctuation quite well without affecting the system frequency much (if at all). On the other hand, solar and to a degree wind use (HV) inverters that do not handle such spikes nearly as well, which means your entire grid loses stability as you add in more renewables based on wind and solar. That's on top of the varying output from solar. As an example, the Danish grid ran out of power reserves because of a big solar farm earlier in 2023.  TU article translated to English: https://s.wibla.net/2023-12-26_14-53-29.pdf There is work being done to control inverters in such a way that they can add stability, I have no idea how far along that work has come. * Sources: https://www.statnett.no/globalasset...m-i-endring.pdf (in Norwegian - focused on the Nordic power grid) https://aemo.com.au/-/media/files/electricity/nem/security_and_reliability/system-strength-requirements/ssr/system-strength-explained.pdf https://aemo.com.au/-/media/files/initiatives/engineering-framework/2021/application-of-advanced-grid-scale-inverters-in-the-nem.pdf Wibla fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Dec 26, 2023 |
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Dec 26, 2023 15:00
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We need two simple rules. Increasing CO2 is forbidden and your power plant needs to provide stable power at all times. The industry can then decide if they want to build renewables with large scale storage, nuclear, or coal plant with proven sequestration system.
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Dec 26, 2023 15:47
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Son of Rodney posted:This thread also thinks nuclear is somehow, magically, against all reality a solution to climate change, so I'm a bit wary about those bring ups. Also I've mentioned it before: base load generation does not equal fossil or nuclear generators, it only means theres a necessary minimum power requirement that needs to be fulfilled. Wind can be baseload, solar can be baseload, the issue is not falling under a minimum threshold. *There is CO2 generated from concrete production and they test the huge emergency diesel generators regularly.
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Dec 26, 2023 15:56
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If we're talking about a decarbonized grid in the scope of climate change we need to not forget that the grid will also need to provide a 1:1 replacement including future growth of every joule of energy oil is providing for the transportation industry which is going to be significant for whatever grid mix you're proposing. It will also be a very predictable, dare I say baseline (  ), demand.
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Dec 26, 2023 17:44
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