The Energy Generation Megathread: Heated Exchanges

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mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

The Swiss are having a referendum to ban nuclear power because "Fukushima". It's currently 40% of their energy :v:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38120559

# ¿ Nov 27, 2016 09:52

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 04:31

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

And now they're Westinghosed ( :canada:

)

# ¿ Mar 31, 2017 09:59

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

I haven't looked too hard into that before but my impression was that China wasn't that China has a lot of nuke plants, it was that they were building more new ones. Unlike pretty much everyone else.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2020 15:41

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

First time I'm hearing about the RR plant, this is pretty interesting. What are the chances they'll hit those cost estimates though? Well maybe after Brexit it will be under $78/MWh after all...

Family Values posted:

Were they intentionally going for 'Mothra egg' with this design or was that a happy coincidence?

They were going for your mom's dildo

# ¿ Jan 29, 2020 01:23

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

Heck Yes! Loam! posted:

Has there been any advancement on using potential energy storage methods?

How efficient is using renewables to lift a big weight into the air and then let it fall slowly to release the potential?

I get that it is reliant on excess renewables but I am curious how it fares against things like hydro or pressurized holes in the ground.

I don't know about "advancement" but someone came up with this loving thing:

# ¿ Jun 4, 2021 23:19

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

Aethernet posted:

The UK's climate change committee estimates achieving Net Zero will cost the country less than 1% of GDP over the next thirty years. This is less than the trend rate of growth, so standards of living will improve. Assuming adequate distribution of wealth, of course, which is partly a separate question but one a sensible climate policy could aid in.

What's true for the UK isn't necessarily true for developing countries, which is most of them unfortunately .

# ¿ Jun 8, 2021 19:30

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

New report just dropped (a week ago). Apparently 5% of power plants generate 75% of global (power generation) carbon emissions. They also probably generate a huge chunk of total electricity too since they're all huge coal plants, but still seems like pretty good news if we could replace them with renewables or nukes (lol). According to them this should be enough to cut total global emissions by 20% which seems absolutely massive.

code:

Table 2. Top ten polluting power plants in 2018 and 2009.a

2018
Plant name      Country  Tons of CO2   Fuel    Age   MW     Relative Intensity
1 Belchatow     Poland   37,600,000    Coal    27    5298    1.756
2 Vindhyachal   India    33,877,953    Coal    14    4760    1.485
3 Dangjin       S. Korea 33,500,000    Coal    10    6115    1.473
4 Taean         S. Korea 31,400,000    Coal    12    6100    1.481
5 Taichung      Taiwan   29,900,000    Coal    22    5834    1.282
6 Tuoketuo      China    29,460,000    Coal    10    6720    1.450
7 Niederaussem  Germany  27,200,000    Coal    38    3826    1.451
8 Sasan Umpp    India    27,198,628    Coal     3    3960    1.401
9 Yonghungdo    S. Korea 27,000,000    Coal     9    5080    1.481
10 Hekinan      Japan    26,640,000    Coal    21    4100    1.394

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/most-of-the-power-sectors-emissions-come-from-a-small-minority-of-plants/

If this really checks out, imo we should finance their decommissioning and replacement asap. This has to be a much better ROI than planting trees and what not.

mobby_6kl fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Aug 13, 2021

# ¿ Aug 13, 2021 15:13

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

Let's just hook up carriers and ice breakers to the grid. Or build a bigger plants on the decks of older carriers!

Phanatic posted:

Pretty sure you mean 'global carbon emissions from the power sector.'

Right, 75% from power sector, 20% of total as I mentioned later. I'll edit to make it clearer

Heck Yes! Loam! posted:

Its a crime that we aren't replacing these with nuclear.

Yeah for all the talk about meeting the climate targets... there are your low-hanging fruits. 20% sounds like would get us there or pretty close.

I had in mind some sort of UN Power agency that would just go around and replace old coal plants with standardized nuclear plants, free of charge for the recipient. Politically though it would be suicidal, I'm pretty sure, but I'd much rather go in that direction than deal with $5 carbon offsets on my flights and other nonsense.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2021 20:30

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

Yep there aren't many jobs all things considered but you can see the amount of stink the Poles raised over the Turow coal mine: https://eulawlive.com/insight-the-t...trajan-shipley/

Saukkis posted:

The article and report doesn't make it clear if these plants are excessively inefficient or just unusually large coal plants. The report talks about the intensity, but it's relative to other fossil fuel plants and coal plants probably are more intensive compared to oil and natural gas plants. But if the top-10 are just operating at the average coal plant efficiency, then it doesn't really matter whether you decommission one of them or 10 smaller coal plants, except for the people living nearby who have to deal with most of the non-CO2 emissions.

Or it might be better to decommission smaller plants.It's probably more efficient to transport to coal to one huge plant than ten smaller ones. And if we some day come up with an effective CCS system, then these huge plants are the prime candidates for deploying it, as mentioned at the end of the article. If these huge plants are less efficient than average for some reason, maybe they have outdated boiler and generators, then they should be easier to upgrade than smaller. You can only renovate small portion of the plant while the rest keep operating, instead of shutting down the whole of smaller plant for a year.

The intensity is definitely vs all other fossil plants so I'm not sure if these are particularly bad in terms of efficiency, I suspect they're just the largest in absolute amount. So you're probably right and it might be even better to close a bunch of smaller, less efficient plants. But it feels like it should be easier to sell it as replacing 1:1 the single largest polluting plant.

Although as the Turow situation shows, people will get mad either way.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2021 00:52

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

There's this famous chart that usually gets brought up:

I don't know how realistic this is, because it looks like those Itanium sales projections, but it's clearly underfunded if we're expecting to see anything out of it.

# ¿ Aug 27, 2021 14:42

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

Imo good insulation is by far the biggest factor for buildings. The climate here is pretty temperate but still there are +40c and -20c days here occasionally. Opening the windows and letting it cool overnight, then closing them and the external blinds, is basically enough to keep reasonably pleasant the whole day without fans or AC. Very little hearing is needed in winters too, though some of that is the neighbors cranking their hear up for no reason.

Phanatic posted:

Ah, cool, all our problems have been solved.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/09/17/whitest-paint-created-global-warming/8378579002/

Young lady, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

Radiating heat into space is a thing: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03911-8

# ¿ Sep 21, 2021 23:44

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

Maybe an RTG source would be easier to DIY?

# ¿ Oct 12, 2021 23:04

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

Kaal posted:

Well hydro certainly disrupts the local environment, and it can cause issues with a variety of wildlife, but it's definitely a matter of relativity. Fossil fuels are a huge ecological problem - they're breaking the entire planet. Mineral mining is a big ecological problem too - they devastate forests and poison entire regions. Hydro is comparatively quite green, and most of the ecological drawbacks involved happened decades ago when those rivers were dammed in the first place. Salmon aren't being threatened by challenges in navigating the fish ladders - it's because fossil fuels and deforestation are warming the rivers beyond livability.

Even the most dire estimates for GHG emissions from rotting vegetation due to dams are several times smaller than a coal plant per kilowatt-hour. This impact varies widely due to the local topology and environment, and obviously is essentially a single-time cost due to construction rather than one generated over and over due to fossil fuel combustion. So older dams (like the TVA dams or many of the others built in the 1930s) have long ago mitigated their ecological impact through decades of clean green energy.

https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/environmental-impacts-hydroelectric-power

What about all the concrete. IIRC cement is a significant issue and dams require a ridiculous amount of it.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2021 09:30

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

Nuclear energy too cheap to measure? Where have I heard this before?

Honestly I'm not sure how that makes any sense considering how expensive it actually is.

# ¿ Oct 25, 2021 21:32

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

Germany is pretty uniquely expensive though, and most EU is around French level regardless of how much nuclear they have going.

I guess I'm still not following your economic argument. How can the low fuel & operation cost be possibly bad? I mean if that's the problem, why not employ personal butlers for the janitors on site or something? Or use champagne to cool the used fuel?

The margin between the market rates and your cost of generation is what pays off the initial investments so you want the costs as low as possible (and marker rates as high as possible). A few plants aren't going to bring down the maker prices significantly at all.

Your previous post and this makes much more sense to me:

Owling Howl posted:

Nuclear is a terrible investment vehicle. It frequently goes 100% over budget and is delayed by a years to decades. When you finally get it built there's intermittent sources to compete with so you face price uncertainty that may be affected by politics. In the decade(s) it takes you to build it other technologies may have been developed or matured and been rapidly deployed changing the fundamental assumptions of your business model. You don't know how cheap solar or wind is in decades or how much of it there is or what batteries cost or if new types of storage have been developed or if it's now cheap enough to store in hydrogen or methanol or if suddenly geothermal or something else takes off. All of this uncertainty is priced in.

Conversely you can build a wind or solar park in 6 months. Construction is simple and straightforward and when it's built you know you can always beat competitors on price because you have no fuel costs.
...

The engineering breakthrough needed would have to be on making the initial construction much more simpler, faster, and cheaper. Some of the challenge is red tape but there's also just inherently a lot of safety-critical poo poo that's very expensive to do right.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2021 15:36

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

You definitely want to run nuclear at 100% for economic reasons if nothing else. Which is why it should've looked like this:

With the rest filled by wind or hydro or gas. Solar might be the cheapest per MWH of capacity when it's sunny but you still have to pay to build and maintain whatever is generating at night

# ¿ Nov 14, 2021 03:00

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

But... why wouldn't you run them 24/7 if you have enough capacity? Solar isn't free in financial terms but also all those panes take resources and energy to build. Maybe I'm missing something but I don't see how it would make sense to idle them for 8-12 hours every day.

E: incidentally this seems to be what France is doing

https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/power-generation-energy-source

They could probably double the wind and solar output to get rid of a good chunk of has but this seems to work out pretty well

mobby_6kl fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Nov 14, 2021

# ¿ Nov 14, 2021 22:51

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

Capt.Whorebags posted:

If there is zero marginal cost of generation then sure, why not run them 24/7.

Solar/wind have an extremely low generation cost and can probably outbid any other source. So it comes down to build costs and the returns you can get on those which is high for renewables but not negligible for nuclear either. If renewables bid into the market at $1/MWh, can nuclear outbid?

I'm not advocating decommissioning nuclear, I think you need more of them, lots more. But they'll make most of their money at night when few other generators can (assuming a forced decline of fossil fuels).

It'll be interesting to see if we really do get "too cheap to meter" power during the day or if some ideological bent stops it from happening. Use that sweet, sweet, solar generated electron flow during the day to pump water uphill, charge batteries, desal water, generate hydrogen etc.

Marginal cost is certainly not zero, but basically everything still has to run like normal so I'm thinking it has to be pretty drat low. But that's just guessing really.

Of course this is well into SimCity fantasy scenarios since nobody is actually building all those nukes.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2021 02:17

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

Grouchio posted:

Hope the Euro winter energy crisis spawns a bigger than ever push for renewables in those markets.

No, everyois blaming renewables for these prices

# ¿ Dec 20, 2021 08:58

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

Zudgemud posted:

Paving the Sahara in solar panels is fun in a vacuum but as far as I know we still lack all of the following things to make it work:
The storage or energy transfer capacity to move the power to where it is needed
Political will of both the users and producers
Material resources
Local stability to be able to use that efficiently.

In essence if you are going to centralize electricity production it would be better to plop down a powerplant nearer to the end point users in a safe place, be that a massive fusion plant in Paris or Accra or wherever else that needs it.

You're forgetting one

An artificial sun for when tour Sun isn't shining

# ¿ Jan 10, 2022 15:03

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

Potato Salad posted:

Lol is this in addition to the dozen+ hospitals he promised to build

He'll do it any day now with the 350m/week they're getting back

# ¿ Apr 8, 2022 14:16

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

My main pro-nuclear talking points recently have been that it's just insane to shut down functioning plants (unless there's a specfici safety issue) for two reasons:

The main cost of nuclear in terms money and CO2 is in construction/finance. That's now a sunk cost.
Even IF the capacity is replaced with renewables, unless there is 0 fossil power generation already, it means that nuclear was shut down instead of those fossil plants

The arguments for new plants is more challenging due to the constant cost overruns and delays, though IMO it's still worthwhile consideirng the benefits of consistent, independent power supply that doesn't need to deal with storage.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2022 18:23

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

CommieGIR posted:

That assumes we consume fossils fuels at a steady rate rather than a rapidly increasing one.

I think we could be ok with a reasonable transition to mostly renewables

# ¿ Jun 16, 2022 13:18

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

CommieGIR posted:

Norway is unique because they have the geography to support massive amounts of Hydro. That's very different. Its not something that can just be done anywhere.

Couldn't we just flood the Netherlands and use that to generate hydro power?

# ¿ Jun 16, 2022 14:08

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

Oil & Gas companies are also specialized in.. oil and gas. Nuclear would have almost no overlap with their expertise beyond like "project management" and "build stuff".

I don't see why some other greed capitalists wouldn't jump into it if it made sense. But over the decades, through cold war paranoia, Chernobyl and Fukushima, proliferation and other fears, we now have an environment where it' a very difficult and expensive proposition. IIRC one of the main killers are the high upfront costs, even with very low interest rates, it takes a very, very long time to start getting returns. You have to finance like $10b and it can take a decade before the plant is operational.

# ¿ Jun 17, 2022 10:32

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

Yes, it's another sad example of how the internet made us all stupid over time

# ¿ Jun 18, 2022 00:04

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

What didn't and still doesn't make sense is shutting down perfectly good nuclear plants. As we just went over repeatedly, most of the costs are upfront capital costs, or decommissioning... so running them as long as possible is the way to go.

Solar/Wind is great and all but it's not exactly apples to apples, since without including storage the actual output is in no way guaranteed to be anywhere near nameplate capacity.

# ¿ Jun 19, 2022 14:51

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

His Divine Shadow posted:

I think it would only be fair that wind power plant owners had to provide backup-power and factor in that in the price of wind power generated electricity. If your wind turbine is rated for 10 megawatts you should be held to producing that a minimum amount of the time, 80% perhaps. If you cannot fulfill this you will have to buy power elsewhere and factor that cost into the power sold from your power plants.

Yeah, I mentioned this earlier. Nuclear and wind/solar aren't really the same product. One provides like 80% of nameplate capacity 24/7, the other doesn't. I'm not saying it's bad, it would be great to have a solar panel and charge my car during the day for free, but comparing the costs directly doesn't make sense if solar can produce electricity at $1/kwh during the day and $∞/kwh at night.

# ¿ Jun 20, 2022 09:38

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

Electric Wrigglies posted:

Maybe I missed it but it would have been nice if they linked the actual paper - even if it is behind a paywall. I am always very suspicious of articles talking about what a resource implies/concludes without giving access to that resource for my own read.

Also, it would undoubtedly be very interesting reading for me.

Yes they do link it under the article and it's accessible without scihub

Sources of Cost Overrun in Nuclear Power Plant Construction Call for a New Approach to Engineering Design: https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext...Fshowall%3Dtrue

PDF (if direct link works): https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S2542-4351%2820%2930458-X

# ¿ Jun 22, 2022 23:55

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

Carbon tax basically already exists on fossil fuels in the form VAT and extra consumption tax here. Which is why it's over $2/liter so even without any minimal fuel efficiency standards, a 1l engine is still considered normal.

The downside is that it's pretty regressive and all the "externalities" tend to be pulled out of the rear end to justify whatever number someone wants to reach. I think this wouldn't be very well received if it applied to electricity generation as prices are already pretty :eyepop:

# ¿ Jul 3, 2022 23:37

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

European Parliament backs listing nuclear energy, gas as 'green'
The proposal to label natural gas and nuclear energy as "green" as a guide for private investors was met with resistance along the way. But EU lawmakers ultimately gave it the green light.
https://www.dw.com/en/european-parliament-backs-listing-nuclear-energy-gas-as-green/a-62377411

Seems like some good news? Gas still gets a pass but under some conditions at least.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2022 19:07

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

AreWeDrunkYet posted:

Aren't there pretty solid stats about the carbon produced across the lifecycle of most power generation sources? Couldn't they set a metric like 0.25 kg of CO2 per kWh to define "green" energy?

Yes I'm sure they could, but there's a ton of politics around that since every country wants to protect their approach

# ¿ Jul 6, 2022 19:31

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

MightyBigMinus posted:

the constant bleating about germans failing nuclear often has some technically correct points but it just never ever makes a lick of sense in the context of american doing soooo much worse

like, their strategy is sub-optimal, their political compromises have made their energy transition go slower than the theoretical ideal...

but they're still way the gently caress ahead of us. they're still a comparative success story. focusing on the marginal wiggling of a few percent of coal/nuke here and there is so myopic its suspicious.

Not everything is about America

Nuclear is 12% according to that chart right there, that's not negligible. If you're 12% short you're really hosed because electricity demand is not very elastic.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2022 11:20

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

So I was playing with the French power generation reports here as I do whenever I need to explain to germany defenders why they're wrong
https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/power-generation-energy-source

But... there seems to be an issue. Nuclear output is like half of what it was in the winter and they're importing a ton instead. Although the total is also way lower, which makes sense if you're not using A/C and don't need as much heating and lighting.

Anyone knows what's up with this? Importing so much right now is not a good look.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2022 21:38

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

I found the SA data. Yeah they have 100% renewable days sometimes. And other days they have 100% gas days lol.

https://opennem.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=7d&interval=30m

Green is wind, yellow is solar. The apricotish is gas.

At a glance, it seems like they'd have to double the renewable capacity at least and then install enough storage to last a few days. How feasible this is, I don't know. But since our options basically batteries or pumped storage, seems like it would be non-negligible monetary and environmental cost.

E: yeah SA has the population of my city but area 13 more than the whole country haha
vvvv

mobby_6kl fucked around with this message at 14:14 on Jul 19, 2022

# ¿ Jul 19, 2022 13:51

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

That's just 565 megawatt-hours, looking at that South Australia chart above, they'd need the battery to be about 100 bigger just to last one windless day.

# ¿ Jul 19, 2022 16:25

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

I'm guessing it's 3,508 megawatt-hours. So this could store about 10 seconds of US power generation.

But if we extrapolate exponential growth, I'm sure it'll be sufficient very soon.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2022 13:34

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

I like giant flywheels. Great potential for rapid energy release.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2022 17:20

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

DTurtle posted:

This makes switching from coal plants to cool renewable generation with storage a simple three step process:

Bing, bong, boom!

So easy and simple!

Better invest in this extremely serious and quickly growing company before its too late. It is listed on the New York stock exchange after a completely serious and open merge with a SPAC in February. Starting at only $9.39 it quickly reached a high of $21.64 in April!
Please ignore that is has since lost 70% of its value and is currently trading at $6.63

Lol nice, bulldoze a park to install some solar panels next to this idiotic contraption.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2022 20:23

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 04:31

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

Yeah ok that French site lets you download the actual hourly data for the past year (though 2021 is 404 :tinfoil:

) so I had to gently caress around with it of course.

If they went full Germany and shut down the nukes, it seems that they'd need to increase the solar installed capacity by 5x and wind by 11x to average a monthly surplus. Then to make sure you never actually run out... 30,000,000 mWh of storage capacity. It's getting very late so I might've hosed something up, but seems like a lot!

Obviously there could be different optimal permutations depending on what's most cost effective etc., and this allows no imports as well.

E: oops, seems like the data points are every 30 minutes, so just 15,000,000 mWh?

mobby_6kl fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Jul 21, 2022

# ¿ Jul 21, 2022 22:18

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

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