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Trabisnikof posted:Ooof, a rather damning quote in there “Obviously we have had to make assumptions, but what we can say is that our predictions suggest that fusion won’t be vastly more expensive than fission.” Isn't it a little premature to talk about cost when you have no idea how to actually implement a technology? How can you even begin to take their cost model seriously?
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Feb 6, 2016 22:58
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silence_kit posted:Isn't it a little premature to talk about cost when you have no idea how to actually implement a technology? How can you even begin to take their cost model seriously? The whole point of the paper was to develop a model to say "fusion could possibly be economically feasible."
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Feb 6, 2016 23:29
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Trabisnikof posted:The whole point of the paper was to develop a model to say "fusion could possibly be economically feasible." I think the real point of the paper was to promote a possible application for high temperature superconductors. All I'm saying is that those cost numbers don't mean anything since they have no idea on how to build a fusion reactor. They may as well have published the costs of a fusion power plant from SimCity.
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Feb 6, 2016 23:44
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Trabisnikof posted:The whole point of the paper was to develop a model to say "fusion could possibly be economically feasible." All we need is about 1030 kg of hydrogen and let gravity take care of the rest. Fusion is easy.
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Feb 6, 2016 23:49
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Lurking Haro posted:Would amorphous metals fare better under neutron radiation? Short answer is no. When amorphous metals were kind of a new thing, lots of people speculated that they might have good resistance to radiation damage. The reasoning was: radiation damage in crystalline materials is caused by the formation of defects; defects are deviations from the ideal crystal structure; amorphous materials do not have a crystal structure; therefore amorphous materials cannot have defects and are less susceptible to radiation damage!  This argument was mostly made because there weren't good theories regarding defects in amorphous metals. It also ignored whole classes of defects which do not really have anything to do with deviations from crystla strucutre, and instead involve mesoscopic irreguarities like imcrovoids/cracks, and localized regions of high stress. In particular, materials exposed to strong radiation--amorphous or otherwise--get atoms knocked all around in sort of random ways, and this can create local changes in density; atoms get clumped together in some places, while voids or gaps form elsewhere. The presence of such irregularities, totally irrespective of whether or not there is an "ideal" crystal structure to compare them too, can cause unwanted changes in the mechanical properties of any material. Additionally, they can cause swelling, and the creation of cracks or stress concentration sites. Experimental evaluation of amorphous metals under intense radiation have been underwhelming, and have generally shown that simply being amorphous, in and of itself, does not confer any robustness to radiation damage. A bigger issue, though, is that for neutron radiation, it wouldn't matter anyway. Neutron radiation is extremely penetrating, and amorphous metals, due to the high quench rates required, can only be practically employed as coatings or small specimens; you can't make the whole inside of a Tokamak out of them. Amorphous metals more suitable for bulk structural applications will necessarily require lower quench rates, which means they will be aggressively kinetically stabilized, which more likely than not will produce a brittle, hard to machine metal with very poor thermal conductivity. There is also the problem that since amorphous metals are thermodynamically metastable, you can't as easily "heal" radiation damage by annealing, the same way you can with other materials. Overall, as far as anyone knows, the sheer intensity and energy of the neutron radiation in a fusion reactor will proper gently caress any material. The good news is that the mechanical requirements of the plasma vessel are unremarkable compared to something like a fission reactor, so hopefully your Tokamak or whatever can just happily hum along for a few decades making GBS threads all over its insides, and it won't really matter cause all it has to do is keep standing upright. Most studies/estimates indicate that radiation damage to the structural components of a fusion reactor will not be important. A bigger concern, especially with a large scale Tokamak, is instrumentation. ITER/DEMO in particular will require like a half dozen different Rube Goldbergesque active stabilization measures, with attendant high-precision and low-latency monitoring instruments, just to keep it from destroying itself. Monitoring, recognizing, and correcting plasma instabilities in a Tokamak will require an absolutely heroic engineering effort, and asking people to do it in a super-intense fast neutron environment is, frankly, hilarious. Morbus fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Feb 7, 2016 |
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Feb 7, 2016 00:20
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Shortly after my post I also found that amorphous metals suck for any application involving heat due to the low glass transition temperature. Good to know that the neutron radiation doesn't affect the structure much. I understand that the reactor wall only has work against 1 atmosphere outside pressure versus multple atmospheres to keep the water from boiling in a water-cooled fission reactor. I'm disappointed there isn't much more research in spherical reactors, whatever confinement methods they might use. I guess trading in surface area for an easier magnetic field in a Tokamak doesn't work out as intended.
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Feb 7, 2016 01:57
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zimboe posted:Blow the asteroidal metal into a foam lighter than water, shape it as a re-entry vehicle (like an Apollo capsule), de-orbit it into the ocean (attached thrusters needed), tow it (or the fragments) into port. That is literally Planetary Resources' plan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVzR0kzklRE&t=1693s
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Feb 8, 2016 08:19
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https://twitter.com/SuzanneWaldman/status/699956331185188864 Energiewende doesn't look very good.
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Feb 17, 2016 21:13
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Pander posted:https://twitter.com/SuzanneWaldman/status/699956331185188864 No you see ve very slowly and expensively establish ze overly complex energiewende to deal wiz ze need to quickly decrease greenhouse gas emissions
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Feb 17, 2016 22:04
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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I'm looking for an article examining build rates of nuclear power plants in the United States vs other countries. Cannot remember the comparison exactly, but iirc it demonstrated that cost and build time could be reduced by different regulatory environments. Anyone have that handy?
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Mar 11, 2016 06:36
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Kudaros posted:I'm looking for an article examining build rates of nuclear power plants in the United States vs other countries. Cannot remember the comparison exactly, but iirc it demonstrated that cost and build time could be reduced by different regulatory environments. Anyone have that handy? That sounds like an acceptable premise, in so much as I'm sure if you remove the regulatory requirements, the cost goes down. Of course, if you change the regulatory environment, you'd change the safety outcome and risk profiles too. US nuclear is so safe and such an exemplar example of risk planning because the regulatory structure requires it.
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Mar 11, 2016 16:21
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Plant operation regulation in the states is where it needs to be. ONR set a high bar for a long time.
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Mar 11, 2016 16:31
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Part of the complexity of the regulatory structure is because most plants in the US are one-of-a-kind construction. A utility would select a local or national A&E firm to build a plant, and based on the desired size, generation, and location, a unique plant emerges. The benefit of this arrangement is that, ideally, it is structured to perfectly meet the challenges of where it is built. The downside is that a common failure mode or design flaw may have dozens of different fixes. It is difficult to development simple regulatory codes with such a diverse nuclear fleet. There is little hope of regulatory change until common, modular designs become the norm, with no special snowflakes. Being able to conclusively prove in an approved Safety Analysis Report that such a plant is sufficiently advanced to meet or exceed the intent of past regulations is another necessary step. If you can prove your plant will passively cool itself down even under a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, then expansive regulatory requirements for emergency water security and redundancy become unnecessary. Much as I'd like to hope otherwise, we're years away, and nobody care enough to expedite the process (either by expanding NRC staff and budget to reduce review time, or some other means).
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Mar 12, 2016 02:37
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Also one major movement in nuclear safety right now is to move from conservative estimates to best estimate plus uncertainty, now that we have the analysis tools necessary to do that. That should drop the costs of construction a fair bit at ~some point~ because there's a lot more being learned about what 's being built into plants that's just not necessary.
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Mar 12, 2016 05:13
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There was a specific article which is proving difficult to find because it is a somewhat distant memory and the details are fuzzy. But now that it has been mentioned, I think it had to do with essentially cloning designs with minor variations to suit site requirements. And this actually happened. In any case, what do regulations for coal power plants look like in comparison? In certain parts of the US it seems that slurry spills into rivers and such are almost routine (once or twice a decade for my region), but little fanfare given despite what I imagine must be tremendous environmental damage. Does anyone know of any data sources regarding coal power plant incidents?
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Mar 15, 2016 06:23
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Kudaros posted:In any case, what do regulations for coal power plants look like in comparison? In certain parts of the US it seems that slurry spills into rivers and such are almost routine (once or twice a decade for my region), but little fanfare given despite what I imagine must be tremendous environmental damage. A lot of coal plants are very very old and are only operational because they are grandfathered in for regulations. There's actually been a fairly large switch over to natural gas as those coal plants are replaced and building "cleaner" coal plants is too onerous.
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Mar 15, 2016 06:38
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http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/17/obama-backed-solar-plant-could-be-shut-down-for-not-producing-enough-energy/ Has even one of these government-backed solar projects turned out to be anything other than an expensive boondoggle?
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Mar 19, 2016 20:01
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-Troika- posted:http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/17/obama-backed-solar-plant-could-be-shut-down-for-not-producing-enough-energy/ I wouldn't conflate solar thermal, which is what the link is referring to, with solar photovoltaic technologies (aka solar cells). The price of electricity generated by solar cells is still dropping.
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Mar 19, 2016 20:15
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-Troika- posted:http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/17/obama-backed-solar-plant-could-be-shut-down-for-not-producing-enough-energy/ Well solar thermal is still an experimental technology which is why they had to get a loan guarantee from the government instead of being able to get it from private industry.
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Mar 19, 2016 20:20
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-Troika- posted:http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/17/obama-backed-solar-plant-could-be-shut-down-for-not-producing-enough-energy/ IIRC, nearly all of the successful solar projects have government backing
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Mar 19, 2016 20:21
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I'm assuming you get all your information from pro fossil fuel sources that think global warming is a hoax, so it may surprise you that there is more than one solar plant and more than on technology. PV has been deployed in large scale fairly successfully. But hey the problems faced by one technology indicate that we should probably just give up and just build more coal forever.
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Mar 19, 2016 20:38
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freezepops posted:I'm assuming you get all your information from pro fossil fuel sources that think global warming is a hoax, so it may surprise you that there is more than one solar plant and more than on technology. PV has been deployed in large scale fairly successfully. But hey the problems faced by one technology indicate that we should probably just give up and just build more coal forever. You're tilting at a windmill that the poster didn't erect. He wasn't attacking solar power, he was attacking government funding of solar power. If PV can be deployed in a large scale economically, why is the government taking peoples' tax money and spending it on *solar power tech that isn't working*? Isn't this just another situation where a private entity stands to profit and all the risk is borne by the taxpayer? Why should anyone support that?
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Mar 19, 2016 21:29
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Phanatic posted:You're tilting at a windmill that the poster didn't erect. He wasn't attacking solar power, he was attacking government funding of solar power. If PV can be deployed in a large scale economically, why is the government taking peoples' tax money and spending it on *solar power tech that isn't working*? Isn't this just another situation where a private entity stands to profit and all the risk is borne by the taxpayer? Why should anyone support that? Same reason the government has funded all research, the benefits to the general public, even including the failures, is worth it. I'm not anti-fusion, but if we want to talk about government money spent on energy tech without a working outcome, solar thermal loans are a drop in the bucket compared to fusion. At least Ivanpah connected to the grid and if it really is contrails that helped to drat it, that seems a lesson worth learning once.
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Mar 19, 2016 21:38
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-Troika- posted:http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/17/obama-backed-solar-plant-could-be-shut-down-for-not-producing-enough-energy/ Yes. QuarkJets posted:IIRC, nearly all of the successful solar projects have government backing Not anymore. In 2008, there were 22MW of utility-scale PV solar projects in the US. There was not one large, >100 MW facility. There was demand though and there were a number of projects that there was demand for but not enough financing available. The DOE stepped in to secure $4.6B of loan guarantees to support the construction of the first five utility-scale PV projects larger than 100MW. These were Agua Caliente, Mesquite Solar, Antelope Valley Solar Ranch, California Valley Solar Ranch, and Desert Sunlight. The success of these first 5 projects >100 MW created a market for large scale solar PV and there are now 22 utility-scale solar plants >100MW, all 17 after those first 5 were privately funded. Concentrating solar has some theoretical advantages over traditional solar, namely that with molten salt heat storage, it could generate power at all hours of the day. Again, there were projects that had been planned out but no one willing to fund them so the DOE stepped in and secured $5.8B in loans for Ivanpah, Crescent Dunes, Genesis, Mojave, and Solana. Ivanpah is the one that's having troubles and it is the largest of the 5.
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Mar 19, 2016 22:04
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Phanatic posted:You're tilting at a windmill that the poster didn't erect. He wasn't attacking solar power, he was attacking government funding of solar power. If PV can be deployed in a large scale economically, why is the government taking peoples' tax money and spending it on *solar power tech that isn't working*? Isn't this just another situation where a private entity stands to profit and all the risk is borne by the taxpayer? Why should anyone support that? New technologies are often held back by economies of scale. Being the first adopter is always a money loser, but being the millionth adopter is a money winner because now the technology is widespread and cheap. Government subsidies to kick-start the industry and make it profitable right off the bat gets over that hurdle. The subsidies aren't supposed to last forever, just until the industry is cost-competitive. Subsidy programs are inherently gambles. If a technology ends up withering, its a waste. The ones that pay off more than make up for the losers, though. This is what we're seeing with PV. Government subsidies have created enough demand to drive the price down rapidly. Soon they won't be needed. The industry will fight like dogs to keep them, though, for obvious reasons.
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Mar 19, 2016 22:39
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Phanatic posted:You're tilting at a windmill that the poster didn't erect. He wasn't attacking solar power, he was attacking government funding of solar power. If PV can be deployed in a large scale economically, why is the government taking peoples' tax money and spending it on *solar power tech that isn't working*? Isn't this just another situation where a private entity stands to profit and all the risk is borne by the taxpayer? Why should anyone support that? Part of the problem is that fossil fuels can externalize a significant portion of their costs; living near a coal power plant is really bad for your health, but the people who own the coal power plant don't pay that cost. Government funding helps to level the playing field in a world where not all costs are born by investors.
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Mar 19, 2016 23:24
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Phanatic posted:You're tilting at a windmill that the poster didn't erect. He wasn't attacking solar power, he was attacking government funding of solar power. You are aware that the other methods I was referring too also included government loan money? There is also the simple fact that when Ivanpah was approved six years ago, the results were uncertain. It was possible that the energy storage capabilities and potentially lower cost of energy input by using mirrors instead of PV arrays would make a plant like Ivanpah economically successful. However, with ZERO plants having been constructed at the scale of Ivanpah it was difficult to estimate the risk and potential for payback. This kind of project is where government money is well spent, on new technology that is unproven in a pilot project that hopes to prove the effectiveness of a new technology. Phanatic posted:If PV can be deployed in a large scale economically, why is the government taking peoples' tax money and spending it on *solar power tech that isn't working*? Isn't this just another situation where a private entity stands to profit and all the risk is borne by the taxpayer? Why should anyone support that? How do we know that PV can be deployed economically on a large scale? Because another DOE loan funded a different 290MW solar project that used PV panels, a plant at Agua Caliente AZ. As for cost borne by the tax payer, I am not entirely sure what you mean. When looking into the DOE loan program I have only found details referencing that it is in the black and has made money overall. ($5 billion according to huffington post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-silver/the-doe-loan-program-is-a_b_6263958.html) Regarding the final point about public risk vs private gains I'm not sure what your point is exactly. That government shouldn't have any part in the electric utility industry? Thats literally impossible. Are you arguing the government should be the entity to construct these plants and maintain ownership? If so, those points are far beyond the DOE loan program which was created in an environment where the general trend has been to use government money funding contractors and general market liberalization of the energy grid. This is not a critique that is specific to solar power as coal, nuclear, wind and natural gas energy resources also receive considerable support from government entities.
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Mar 20, 2016 01:36
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I've been reading a book on geographical discovery last millenium, and the same capitalistic roadblocks that exist today existed then. As an example, people believed that the world ended at a certain point along the West African coast, so no one was willing to fund an expedition South of that point. It took the Portuguese decades of effort to sail South of that point, eventually reaching the southern coast of Africa and then India and China. This wound up being a ridiculously profitable trade route for Portugal, but private funding for discovering the route simply didn't exist because sailing around in the Mediterranean was easier and more reliably profitable, and because everyone assumed that there was no navigable route around Africa If we didn't use public funding for discoveries in the public interest we'd probably still be wondering whether it's possible to discover a sea route to Asia. Opposition to public funding of science is in the same category as geocentrism, flat earth theory, and other backwards beliefs. It's not just anti-science, it's anti-progress
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Mar 20, 2016 22:57
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I became curious about this after reading about ITER and the stellarator in Germany and so on, but I lack the technical vocabulary to research this on my own, so I figure I'd ask this thread -- Is there a word for "methods of obtaining energy from heat or light that don't involve a steam engine"? Like, the way solar PV directly generates electricity. Or is heating water and using it to turn a turbine the absolute most efficient or practicable design we have?
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Apr 10, 2016 15:59
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Direct conversion? Steam turbine tech is ubiquitous because water is plentiful and steam is loaded with high energy density.
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Apr 10, 2016 16:07
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DrSunshine posted:I became curious about this after reading about ITER and the stellarator in Germany and so on, but I lack the technical vocabulary to research this on my own, so I figure I'd ask this thread -- Well, there's the photoelectric and thermoelectric effects. Steam is really only an energy carrier, since the actual electric energy is generated by magnet fields. You can even use molten metals to induce a field.
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Apr 10, 2016 16:28
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Lurking Haro posted:Well, there's the photoelectric and thermoelectric effects. Right, but it seems like the best design we have for getting heat from a reaction (be it nuclear or fossil fuels) is to basically heat up a lot of water and use the steam to turn some wheels. That hasn't changed since the 19th century! The issue I have with that is that you're losing potential energy due to frictional effects and inefficiencies in conversion for every stage you add to it. It would be (theoretically speaking) more efficient if we could somehow turn that reaction heat into current at the moment of creation, or close to it.
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Apr 10, 2016 16:36
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DrSunshine posted:Right, but it seems like the best design we have for getting heat from a reaction (be it nuclear or fossil fuels) is to basically heat up a lot of water and use the steam to turn some wheels. That hasn't changed since the 19th century! The issue I have with that is that you're losing potential energy due to frictional effects and inefficiencies in conversion for every stage you add to it. It would be (theoretically speaking) more efficient if we could somehow turn that reaction heat into current at the moment of creation, or close to it. A thermodynamic engine could at best achieve 95% efficiency converting sunlight into electricity at room temperature. This is the most most most ideal theoretical limit for solar cells which doesn't take into account how they actually work. The best solar cell you could buy to put on your roof only has 23% efficiency though. Solar cells are pretty inefficient. For example, in the most popular solar cell design with the most popular solar cell material, 2/3rds of the energy from blue light immediately upon absorption in the solar cell is thrown away and lost as heat. For red light, 1/3rd of the energy is immediately lost as heat. Taking the realities and losses of this popular scheme into account, the ideal solar cell efficiency is 34%. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Apr 10, 2016 |
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Apr 10, 2016 16:42
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DrSunshine posted:Right, but it seems like the best design we have for getting heat from a reaction (be it nuclear or fossil fuels) is to basically heat up a lot of water and use the steam to turn some wheels. That hasn't changed since the 19th century! The issue I have with that is that you're losing potential energy due to frictional effects and inefficiencies in conversion for every stage you add to it. It would be (theoretically speaking) more efficient if we could somehow turn that reaction heat into current at the moment of creation, or close to it. The main efficiency loss (as you said) is the conversion of energy state. The problem is that there's not really a good way to turn coal (or uranium, etc) into electricity, and there's not really that good a way to turn heat into electricity either (without using water, etc). The efficiency I see for steam-turbine plants of all kinds is around 33-36%. That's still a sight better than solar is at the moment, even ignoring the low energy density of solar energy. computer parts fucked around with this message at 16:47 on Apr 10, 2016 |
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Apr 10, 2016 16:44
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DrSunshine posted:Right, but it seems like the best design we have for getting heat from a reaction (be it nuclear or fossil fuels) is to basically heat up a lot of water and use the steam to turn some wheels. That hasn't changed since the 19th century! The issue I have with that is that you're losing potential energy due to frictional effects and inefficiencies in conversion for every stage you add to it. It would be (theoretically speaking) more efficient if we could somehow turn that reaction heat into current at the moment of creation, or close to it. If you roll a solution to do that out on a commercial scale, you're a billionaire
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Apr 10, 2016 16:49
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blowfish posted:If you roll a solution to do that out on a commercial scale, you're a billionaire Huh, so I guess there aren't really any alternatives on the horizon that we know of, for now? I was sure that someone more tapped into solid-state physics or materials science or something would know.
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Apr 10, 2016 18:17
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DrSunshine posted:Right, but it seems like the best design we have for getting heat from a reaction (be it nuclear or fossil fuels) is to basically heat up a lot of water and use the steam to turn some wheels. That hasn't changed since the 19th century! The issue I have with that is that you're losing potential energy due to frictional effects and inefficiencies in conversion for every stage you add to it. It would be (theoretically speaking) more efficient if we could somehow turn that reaction heat into current at the moment of creation, or close to it. You're thinking of the Peltier Effect. There is some application for this, mainly in cooling. Some CPU coolers use it, as do portable coolers for automobiles. NASA has used thermoelectric generators for years. The Curiosity rover on Mars uses the heat of decaying plutonium to provide electricity for it, as do the Voyager space craft that have left the solar system. The efficiency of direct thermoelectric generation is typically around 5-8%. With really expensive materials and clever engineering, it can be possible to roughly double that. At it's very best, it's still far lower than photoelectric generation. A power plant using its heat to generate steam and then spinning a turbine is generally around 45% efficient, with incremental efficiency improvements continuing. Thus thermoelectric power generation is limited to niche applications where there is no other option. Its efficiency is far too low for general application. ETA: The reason thermoelectric conversion is so inefficient is due to thermal conductivity. To get a good voltage, you need a big temperature difference between the hot and cold sides. However, to get current to flow, you need good electrical conductivity. Those two needs contradict each other. Electrons carry heat when they move, so the current you generate also carries heat from the hot side to the cold. Things that are good at conducting electricity are also good at conducting heat, and vice versa. Electrical insulators are also thermal insulators. Thus, the ideal thermoelectric material would be a thermal insulator that is a high electrical conductor. Such materials do not exist, and I don't see any way they can. Getting electrons to move in a circuit while leaving their thermal energy behind seems rather difficult to achieve. Deteriorata fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Apr 10, 2016 |
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Apr 10, 2016 18:26
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DrSunshine posted:Huh, so I guess there aren't really any alternatives on the horizon that we know of, for now? I was sure that someone more tapped into solid-state physics or materials science or something would know. I think the best way to put it is that anyone approaching that capability will have assloads of poorly informed popular science articles about that progress. And so far, noone's gotten close enough to get the standard Generic Newspaper Says It's Just 30 Years Away article flood.
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Apr 10, 2016 18:37
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DrSunshine posted:Is there a word for "methods of obtaining energy from heat or light that don't involve a steam engine"? Like, the way solar PV directly generates electricity. Or is heating water and using it to turn a turbine the absolute most efficient or practicable design we have? As far as I knew both KAPL and Los Alamos are working on solid state voltaics designed specifically to work like PV cells but tuned to capture gamma rays from nuclear reactions. This is more of an offshoot of studies of gamma ray interaction with various materials. Not on the horizon for any sort of commercial application.
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Apr 10, 2016 18:53
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DrSunshine posted:Huh, so I guess there aren't really any alternatives on the horizon that we know of, for now? I was sure that someone more tapped into solid-state physics or materials science or something would know. I know you were thinking something different but molten salt in nuclear and csp solar has been on the rise. It's pretty cool in a solar application because the molten salt can provide thermal storage allowing the solar plant to continue generating electricity for hours after the sun set.
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Apr 10, 2016 19:18
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