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Post by cyrilr on Aug 10, 2013 20:23:31 GMT 9.5
AGR overcame the carbon monoxide reaction problem by using a re-entrant system to cool th graphite to the reactor inlet temperature rather than the outlet temperature. This also improves graphite lifetime, though you have to be careful not to cool it down too much: you get the Wigner energy buildup, which was the initiator (though not the root cause, which was insufficient design for annealing run temperatures)for the Windscale accident in the UK. I still prefer coating with silicon carbide. Above the Wigner energy temperature, reaction of graphite with CO2 is slow but not zero. If graphite reacts with CO2 to form CO, then one might consider the use of carbon monoxide as a coolant: considerably less oxidising than carbon dioxide, too bad about the relatively high toxicity. Does it have a supercritical transition at reasonable temperatures?
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Post by cyrilr on Aug 10, 2013 20:16:14 GMT 9.5
Actually after the Chernobyl accident, the people who lived nearby were told they were utterly doomed and could just forget about any sort of future or healthy offspring, yes they were actually told this by many authorities and the media. The social and phychological effects have been dire. People have often adopted a fatalistic attitude, not thinking about their career, excessive alcohol consumption, excessive smoking, bad nutrition, etc. All these increase chances of afflicting various cancers.
This is, sadly, one of the biggest and unlearned lessons of Chernobyl: fear and stress cause a lot more damage than the actual ionizing radiation. This important lesson is unlearned, as proven again by Fukushima, were 100,000 people were evacuated and stressed to death and misery. For no good reason; we don't evacuate Tokyo, even though living in Tokyo is far more dangerous than 20 mSv/year of ionizing radiation. Once again nuclear energy is put to standards that nothing else in our society is, even though pretty much anything in our society is more dangerous than nuclear power (eating peanut butter as an example is considerably more dangerous than living next to a nuclear powerplant).
It is odd, however, that people in Belarus (Chernobyl area) have (over the entire population) among the lowest cancer incidences of all of Europe and Eurasia.
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Post by cyrilr on Aug 10, 2013 0:22:38 GMT 9.5
Bill Hannahan's original paper isn't bad as far as a single document goes. www.coal2nuclear.com/energy_facts.htmThe late Cohen's book is a more elaborate read, but deals very well with most of the hysteria of anti-nukes. One of the best books on nuclear power ever, and freely available in full on the web. Well worth a reference. Gives the anti-nukes something to chew on. www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/
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Post by cyrilr on Aug 9, 2013 20:42:36 GMT 9.5
You have no idea what you're talking. The Japanese bomb study isn't old, it's still ongoing. It's the largest, most expensive epidemiological study in human history. We know more about radiation than any other toxin, in part due to that study.. Complete nonsense. The type of exposure from bombs is very different than that from nuclear power (even during accidents). This is like saying, we know a lot about the effects of drinking alcohol by looking at people who drink 50 glasses of alchol once a month. In fact it is clear to see that this would not be useful in trying to determine the effects of alchol with people who drink just 1-2 glasses a day but never more than that per day. Sorry, you're once again completely missing the point. No one doubts that radiation causes biological damage. What we doubt is how this damage gets translated to actual negative health effects. Eating food causes huge amounts of DNA damage, but there are many biological processes which can repair this damage, and if it can't be repaired there are further levels of biological defense such as cell termination. In your analogy, the pound of CO2 has zero effect on warming because it is absorbed by the various sinks available on this planet. Plants become more productive with more CO2. Ocean conveyor belts sequester CO2 in the form of dead sea creatures over geological time. It is only when you exceed the capacity of these sinks (ie much faster than geological tim) that the warming starts to show up. If we emitted 1 billion tonnes of CO2 per year, there would never ever be a global warming problem. Not in 100 years, not in 1000 years. But we emit more than 30 billion tonnes a year, a rate that can't be dealt with by the various sinks and processes on earth. Your analogy isn't bad, your attitude to science is.
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Post by cyrilr on Aug 9, 2013 3:02:26 GMT 9.5
LNT is pseudo science. It uses all sorts of fudge factors such as dose rate fudge factors to make the model work. This is itself an admittance of the model's gross error. Oh yeah, it's linear, if we just fudge out all the stuff that isn't linear, such as dose rate. Pseudo science, indeed. LNT predicts that the world population, which "collectively" receives some 20 billion millisieverts worth of natural background radiation, is getting killed off at a rate of 2 million people a year. (10000 mSv kills one person according to this model). This is what the model predicts. If Bob Applebaum believes in this model, he must therefore believe that the feeble background radiation around us is killing more people than HIV/AIDS. who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/A model that predicts death rates without knowing neither individual dose nor dose rate is not just wrong, it's arrogant. You cannot predict something you don't know enough about. LNT people base their beliefs on an old Japanese bomb survivor data, which is not relevant to nuclear power (the exposure is not prompt like a bomb). This is silly.
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Post by cyrilr on Aug 8, 2013 16:38:03 GMT 9.5
One of advantage of helium is its conductivity, sqrt(44/4)~3.3x CO2. Apart from superior cooling of the core, it also allows for a smaller heat exchanger after the working gas leaves the turbine. The website (and wiki entry) for EM2 seems to be unaware of the need for that cooling stage. Other serious questions seem to be fumbled too. The start-up description seems to promise no-reprocessing initially, then goes on to promise reprocessing (how?) for its own used fuel. Beryllium is a moderator and neutron multiplier, but I would have thought a reflector should be steel. If the proposal really is serious, they had better tidy up their website. Actually the conductivity of helium is not much use. Its density is too low. Supercritical CO2 is very dense, that more than makes up for the lower thermal conductivity. S-CO2 also has excellent density change that gives better reactivity feedback and better natural circulation. Natural circulation drops the pants off of conduction. Conduction as a heat removal path is quite a poor one. It is one of the reasons why helium cooled reactors have low power density. Compare to say a fluoride salt cooled version: same TRISO fuel, higher power density, much lower peak accident temperatures. The S-CO2 turbomachinery and heat exchangers are far more compact than helium versions. It's liquid-like density versus flimsy gas. Reflectors can be most materials. Beryllium is good because it scatters well and moderates well. It also has a neutron production from (n,2n) reaction. It makes for very high neutron efficiency. Steel is a non-moderating reflector. This has it's uses, in some cases reflectors must be non-moderating to prevent thermalizing the spectrum (as in fast reactors) and in other cases the neutron losses can actually increase with a moderating reflector (because it increases the power and thus neutron production near the edge of the reactor where neutrons are more likely to be lost).
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Post by cyrilr on Aug 8, 2013 16:28:37 GMT 9.5
[cyrilr/b] --- Why is there any coating at all? To prevent the fuel particles from getting dislodged. This is especially important for pebble beds with moving fuel. But even with solid fuel and offline refuelling like GT-MHR, there's always a possibility of thermal stress cracking, water ingress matrix oxidation, or other fuel matrix failure. If that happens you want the fuel particles to stay in the damaged fuel so that you can replace the fuel element and start up the reactor again.
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Post by cyrilr on Aug 8, 2013 16:22:59 GMT 9.5
Engineerpoet, see this site welcons.com/tritium.html The site claims tritium was highest in the 60's and that most studies are for exposure for 1 year that comes up with 1000's of bq/L (Very deceiving isn't it). The evaluation hear is over life time of 70 years. Also rates are published for adults, divide by 3 to 8 for under 1 year or more if during conceiving period. All so if it is drinking water or water in food stuffs makes it less safe. Your reference does not provide a shred of evidence to support any of your claims. Not a single documented casualty from tritium. Ever. That's the main thing here. Risks, risks, risks. They are everywhere. If you stand outside a lot you get a higher risk of getting killed by a meteorite strike. However, there is not a single documented casualty from meteorite strikes. It is one thing to suggest the risk of meteorite kills is not zero. It is entirely another to suggest we must all be forced to live deep underground to prevent anyone from being killed by meteorites. Your website is about "the five pillars of wellness". You do not seriously think we can take you serious now? The LNT model should NOT be used for tiny doses and exposures. Even the advocates of this model admit that. The only ones that misuse this already flawed theory of linear damage (which is not seen in any other toxicological field) are anti-nuclear zealots pretending to be knowledgeable about radiation and it biological effects.
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Post by cyrilr on Aug 8, 2013 7:54:14 GMT 9.5
The World Health Organisation recommends a limit of 10000 Bq/l for drinking water. This limit is based on extensive testing and expert review, and then taking a much lower value still (after reading up on it, I would gladly drink 100000 Bq/l tritium in my water).
The US limit is completely unbased. In fact it is so absurd that many have argued it is a political limit, meant to protect domestic LWR industry from CANDUs.
The truth is there is not a single documented injury or death due to tritium exposure. This is not surprising at all, considering the low energy beta radiation, very short biological half life, and lack of concentration in specific organs...
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Post by cyrilr on Aug 7, 2013 23:44:18 GMT 9.5
The media are having a field day with this.
Rather than admitting that the media have done great harm with their hyperbole, and have undercovered the actual disaster which was more than 10000 dead from drowning in the tsunami or being crushed by the earthquake, the media are now once again involved in a new hyperbole. This time we're all going to die because water leaks into the ocean. Wow.
They don't mention the fact that even if all the water would be dumped into the ocean, the ecological impact would be less than the fishing ship fleet of a small village. But we don't hear about fishing ships as being looming disasters.
Needless to say I've lost all faith in the major media. They have proven time and again to be incapable of balanced view and reporting.
There was a time when being a journalist was an esteemed profession. Today any moron who can type on a keyboard can be a journalist. Very sad.
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Post by cyrilr on Aug 7, 2013 23:37:46 GMT 9.5
Even if you can get enough helium, theres a big cost to using it. Bearings and seals are very difficult (expensive) because of the tight tolerances that must be held. Helium is very light so difficult to engineer for a turbine.
CO2 has negligible neutron activation. If you wish to pick nits, helium produces some tritium and contaminants in the helium produce activated products as well. But neither CO2 nor helium have troublesome activation in the sense that it would require costly engineering or added waste disposal.
Unfortunately, graphite reacts with CO2 to an equilibrium with lots of CO. This degrades the graphite fuel.
Silicon carbide coating in stead of graphite could solve the problem, and has many other mechanical advantages (silicon carbide is strong and hard so makes for better coating than graphite which is soft and weak).
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Post by cyrilr on Jul 18, 2013 20:52:39 GMT 9.5
Counter-study? Not necessary. A simple look at how high Spain's feed-in-tariff must be to get even a few CSP plants deployed, shows that 5 cents per kWh is magic pixie dust. And a Gemasolar plant costing $23000/kWe is not going to produce power at 5 cents/kWh either. Not even for 20 cents per kWh, in fact.
Somehow we are supposed to believe a factor of 5 cost reduction. With a very conventional technology - mirrors, trusses, concrete, steam turbines. Not going to happen. The SEGS plants built decades ago were cheaper than modern plants, because of materials and labor inflation that is higher than any learning curve effect. Adding giant tanks of hot salt, with all the insulation, freeze protection etc. isn't helping the cost to go down, as evidenced by Gemasolar and Andasol plants.
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Post by cyrilr on Jun 30, 2013 23:49:42 GMT 9.5
How fast the well declines is not really that important I think. Its more about how much gas you extract from the wells in that time, if you have a continuous well drilling programme then you can keep production stable, without requiring "exponential" increases in drilling. If the wells decline fast, then the reservoir as a whole will also decline fast. Reservoirs are finite in size, and the amount of gas per liter of reservoir for shale gas is actually quite small. It's nothing compared to oil (not to mention nuclear fuels, even ordinary dirt has orders of magnitudes more energy value per liter of dirt than shale formations have gas).
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Post by cyrilr on Jun 30, 2013 7:56:32 GMT 9.5
As I understand it, shale gas wells deplete more than 80% (ie less than 20% of initial production) in 5-10 years or so. Such decline rates are universal. That makes shale gas not just another bubble, but a dangerous hole we're digging into. As time goes by, more and more wells have to be drilled, it's fighting a fight that we'll lose exponentially. It's like having a credit card debt and getting more and more credit cards just to pay the interest. Downward spiral of misery.
With these depletion rates, shale gas isn't transitional. Imagine if you build a 1000 MWe nuclear powerplant and after 5 years it's only producing 200 MWe. Pretty devastating case against such an energy source.
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Post by cyrilr on Jun 10, 2013 21:46:10 GMT 9.5
Most of the releases at Fukushima weren't from the venting operations, but due to containment bypass. Basically, leaks through seals in the containment due to overpressure, overtemperature (these are organic seals that don't like high temperature), plus bypass via backflow of the offgas system.
The reason for the overpressure and overheating was loss of cooling for the reactor. The heat produced by decay heating in the reactor was pushed out to the water in the containment, a so called pressure suppression system. This system has a certain amount of water so it can only condense so much steam (ie heat) from the reactor. When the capacity was exceeded (ie water becomes saturated, near boiling), the pressure suppression system stops functioning. Then the steam can't be condensed so you get higher pressure when venting the steam to the containment.
What makes this worse is hydrogen, in case of Fukushima coming from the overheating fuel that reacts the zircalloy cladding with water, to produce hydrogen and oxidized cladding, which fails the cladding, releasing radionuclides to the vessel, and then to containment. The hydrogen is also pushed out to the containment, one big problem with hydrogen is that it can't be condensed in the pressure suppression system, so even if suppression pool cooling was available, there would still be a large pressure rise just from the hydrogen. Without cooling for the suppression pool, which was the case at Fukushima, there's both excess steam and hydrogen which means a big pressure rise, failing the seals of the containment.
There are various design remedies, all focus on two things, passive cooling to prevent steam pressurization in a station blackout, and hydrogen control. Hydrogen control could be either recombiners or just increase the pressure capability of the containment (so that all of the hydrogen can be accomodated in the containment).
Modern reactors such as ESBWR use both passive cooling and inerted containments with 100% hydrogen storage capability.
I work in the field of industrial safety analysis. From a safety analysis perspective, preventing is better than accomodating, and accomodating is better than mitigating, so with reliable passive cooling you don't need to accomodate hydrogen, and accomodating hydrogen is better than filtered venting.
In addition, the main issue for the venting operations at Fukushima is that the venting systems needed power and instrument air. Pretty stupid, like designing an airbag of a car to only work when the car is fully intact. When the chances are pretty fat, that if you need the airbag, the car isn't intact anymore. It was well known, even in the 1970s, that the primary cause of core damage for these reactors is loss of electricity. So you don't design mitigating systems (filtered venting) to need power. That's just bad design.
So, yes, in my opinion, filtered venting is not that great an idea. Cooling capability is priority number one. Without cooling, you need to vent a lot, and have huge plant damage and cleanup costs. With cooling, you don't need venting systems, avoid plant damage, and cleanup costs. Importantly you also avoid entire countries forcing to shut down all you nuclear plants, kind of nice to have if you're a nuclear utility.
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Post by cyrilr on Jun 7, 2013 23:42:59 GMT 9.5
Really, how does unreliable expensive, diffuse, boutique power displace a supposed monopoly of reliable, affordable, concentrated power? It is true that utilities have a monopoly on practical, concentrated, affordable power supply. Solar enthusiasts are very jealous of this monopoly. Out of spite and defeat, solar people have produced a monopoly of their own. The most damaging solar monopoly is the monopoly of stupidity and shallow energy analysis. You all know what I'm talking about. Pretty pictures and superlatives in flashy magazines, rather than hard, apples to apples, numbers comparisons of our current predicament. The renewables industry has this monopoly.
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Post by cyrilr on Jun 7, 2013 23:37:50 GMT 9.5
First Sod claims a "massive" increase in PV for Japan. The link Sod provides shows a projected increase of up to 9.4 GWp. This delivers, at an average capacity factor of 15%, about 12 TWh. Japan needs more than 1000 TWh. Thus, the "massive" increase, spurred on by massive subsidies, produces an extra 1.2% of the nation's power. Very massive.
Then the article goes on to say that the growth is due to massive subsidies. Which is not consistent with Sod's claim that solar is cheaper than nuclear.
Sod then claims that Fukushima makes nuclear expensive. The truth is that the high costs of Fukushima are due to radiophobia, which is expensive and dangerous, not due to actual radiation risks. Furthermore, Fukushima is perfectly preventable. Build modern passive plants, don't need electricity. And build them on a hill, just in case. Problem solved.
I am left with just one question. Does Sod actually believe his own nonsense, or is he smart enough to understand his own lies and internal inconsistency?
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Post by cyrilr on May 27, 2013 19:09:03 GMT 9.5
So let's play devil's advocate, and use Jim's suggestion of 93000 as a credible upper bound for Chernobyl death toll.
According to Hansen, nuclear power has saved 1.84 million people. Substract 93000 and nuclear has still saved 1.75 million lives.
So what is Jim's point in the first place? The use of an old unsafe (runaway prone) reactor with no containment and that was run by would-be-terrorist Sovjets for operators, that no-one is building today, has slightly reduced the number of lives saved by nuclear power worldwide.
It's amazing to think how robust nuclear power is. Despite all that abuse, maldesign, corruption and complacency, nuclear power has saved many lives and is the safest energy technology we have today (lowest death rate per TWh).
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Post by cyrilr on May 27, 2013 7:24:02 GMT 9.5
Credible scientific estimates for radiation deaths are below 100 total for Chernobyl. Credible scientists admit that linear no threshold should not be used for determining death or cancer rates in large populations receiving small doses. Only non-credible organisations such as Greenpeace use LNT to determine population death rate from tiny exposures.
More than 3000 people die in traffic accidents every day. (1.2 million per year). These are real deaths, rather than imaginary. But if you care to be imaginary, imagine all the extra traffic accidents from needing to install, service, and dismantle wind and solar farms, with their extreme use of materials per lifecycle MWh. Imagine the death rate from mining all the extra iron ore etc. from this high materials need in a wind and solar powered world. Imagine the industrial accidents with acids and such needed to produce the extra batteries to store all that unreliable power. Imagine how much safer we'd all be with nuclear power, avoiding all those traffic kills, transport environmental impact and pollution, etc.
In any case, talking about the death toll of Chernobyl as an argument against nuclear power is like talking about the death toll of the hydrogen filled Hindenburg dirigible as an arguments against the fire safety of dirigibles. It's silly, because all modern zeppelins and dirigibles are helium filled, which can't burn or explode.
Greens produce so much nonsense, it's a fulltime job just to refute 1% of the nonsense.
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Post by cyrilr on May 22, 2013 22:43:21 GMT 9.5
Here's an excellent summary of the Fukushima events: www.world-nuclear.org/info/Safety-and-Security/Safety-of-Plants/Fukushima-Accident-2011/As you can see, there was no detectable trouble when the earthquake hit, even though it was beyond the design basis of some of the Daiichi units. The plants shut down as designed upon seismic exceedence, and the diesel generators all started and ran fine till the tsunami hit. The flooding by the tsunami caused common mode failure of most electrical systems in a way that no earthquake ever could. The plants were clearly robust seismically, they were just vulnerable to the tsunami created by a quake on the sea. If such a reactor sits on top of an active fault, there won't be a tsunami. Most of Japan is in the damage influence area of active faults. Should we perhaps close down the country? If a nuclear plant in a low population area under the influence of an active fault is unacceptable, then why is a city of 13 million people (Tokyo) acceptable?
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Post by cyrilr on Apr 20, 2013 1:26:22 GMT 9.5
The indirect dry cooling system (sold commercially as Heller systems) are one of the most attractive for nuclear powerplants. A direct contact condenser is used (think steam jet blasting into a waterfall in a vacuum chamber). Then the waterfall condenses the steam, the heated up water is drained and pumped to a surface condenser.
This system gets better condenser vacuum (higher plant output) with dry cooling. It also doesn't use the huge fan power of a standard air cooled condenser. Another advantage is less stress on the condenser tubing in the surface condenser because it doesn't operate under vacuum. This makes inleakage of air impossible, which is important for safety reasons in nuclear plants and operability reasons in all powerplants.
There's a Russian nuclear powerplant that has this dry cooling system, plus hundred plus GWe of fossil plants (coal and CCGT), so it's already proven.
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Post by cyrilr on Apr 10, 2013 22:59:42 GMT 9.5
uranium from seawater cost ... $300/pound with current technology On the basis that the production of 1 GW of electricity fissions 1000 kg/a of uranium, the fissioning of that 454 g of uranium would produce 4 GWh. That amounts to 75 micro dollars per kWh, so nuclear electricity is not limited by the price of its resource.. Fissioning 1000 kg of uranium requires a lot more mined or seawater derived uranium than 1000 kg. There are two isotopes of uranium in natural uranium, turns out the one we need with today's light water reactors is only 0.7%, the U235. We'll need about 150-200 tonnes of uranium for 1 ton fissioned inside the reactor. So more like 1.1 - 1.5 cent/kWh.
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Post by cyrilr on Apr 8, 2013 5:56:37 GMT 9.5
Wow, 360 kW out of a total of 500000000 kW. Gee whiz i guess I was wrong. The problem is already solved 0.000072%. First you have solar electricity that is more expensive than fossil electricity, then you convert that with great energy loss and cost to hydrogen, in a pilot plant of infinitesimal small size, then you send the hydrogen into the gas grid, where it used to generate electricity again. Rube Goldberg would be proud. You are clueless about cost and efficiency Sod. Like I said you should stop bringing up ideas that prove you're unqualified to discuss. Read my reference about the nation sized battery to get a rough idea of scale.
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Post by cyrilr on Apr 8, 2013 1:15:37 GMT 9.5
I am not convinced by storing hydrogen for the purposes of generating electricity. I would think it would be better to use generated hydrogen for various industrial processes and then simply run the electrolysers to soak up any excess generation capacity available. I'm not convinced either. It is mostly a renewables enthusiast fantasy. Unfortunately most renewables people aren't too familiar with engineering and the business side of things. Hydrogen equipment is very expensive when you add it all up. I doubt even using electrolysers for intermittent off-peak electricity absorption will make sense economically. The equipment costs a lot to buy, maintain and staff, and the energy losses are big (which can be considered a further operational cost). No one will go to all that trouble with the industrial equipment and then run it 20% of the time. Not happening when you can just get cheap fossil and run the equipment 80-90% of the time. Realistically hydrogen will continue to come from natural gas, and won't be used for energy storage, but for making chemicals. Electrolysers can't compete with that, even with 2 cent per kWh electricity.
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Post by cyrilr on Apr 8, 2013 0:16:36 GMT 9.5
Even cryogenic hydrogen has a specific gravity of about 0.08. Storage is a nightmare. I think the idea with central station energy storage is to store hydrogen in underground salt domes and the like, under pressure. This should be cheap, though it has never been demonstrated to work - H2 is a Houdini molecule that diffuses through even very dense materials quite easily. Underground reservoirs always have some porosity, and many minerals can be hydrided, so losses to the ground could be large. But if it works then at least for central station application where suitable geology is present, the storage problem appears reasonable.
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Post by cyrilr on Apr 7, 2013 19:49:58 GMT 9.5
The pinguin guy's statements are not absurd. Storage is a massive problem in both cost and scaleability. physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/nation-sized-battery/The fact that Sod calls such statements absurd shows he or she is utterly clueless about the numbers behind storage. Both in materials and dollars, it is absurd beyond reckoning, even with zero cost PV. The notion of zero cost PV is also absurd because PV is non-productive. It produces power 10-15% of the time. In my country we get an average of 9%. This will always be more expensive than coal or gas conventional powerplants. Sod is not qualified to talk about these subjects, and embarrases him or herself with posted studies which prove the point that hydrogen storage (all costs considered) is very expensive. I don't think I should waste any more time trying to convert religious folks like Sod to science and facts. If you believe above all else that nuclear is evil and dangerous and solar is divine and all that's good in the world, we cannot have a good discussion.
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Post by cyrilr on Apr 7, 2013 17:11:26 GMT 9.5
Graham Palmer --- Earlier, so one some other, older thread I worked out the economics of a grid mostly powered by NPPs but with enough solar for 30% of daytime demand (just around noon, you know what I mean). The storage component was thermal stores hung on the NPPs; this is much less expensive than batteries. But 30% was the maximum solar PV penetration before overall costs began to climb again. If you have thermal store on the nukes, use that with an extra turbine on the nuke site for peaking. Skip the expensive and undependable PV, just add a cheap turbine. I looked at this for a molten salt fuelled or cooled reactor; simply enlarge the third nitrate salt loop and store in a big insulated tank. This is very cost effective for half a day of storage (which is all you'll need in a nuclear grid).
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Post by cyrilr on Apr 7, 2013 1:02:53 GMT 9.5
Sod seems to think that electrolysis equipment and hydrogen storage and handling equipment, not to mention the many safety equipments, are all free.
That just shows how clueless Sod is about the engineering and business side of this. The operations and capital cost of the electrolysis equipment, storage, pipelines, safety cost etc. is higher than the cost of generating electricity with conventional sources.
In other words, even if PV would be free - another absurd notion since PV is the least productive and one of the most costly of all energy sources - we would still not generate a majority of our power with PV+hydrogen energy storage.
That doesn't stop people like Sod from making shotgun statements about a flurry of subjects that Sod is not the least qualified in.
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Post by cyrilr on Apr 4, 2013 20:49:33 GMT 9.5
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Post by cyrilr on Apr 4, 2013 20:43:44 GMT 9.5
All nonsense showing Sod has not understood or even read my comments.
Iceland is almost all hydro and geothermal, useful where they are available. Availability on a global scale is poor, these sources will never be able to provide majority of power (not to mention primary energy which is much bigger than just power). There's virtually no wind and solar in Iceland.
Denmark is among the biggest proportions of fossil fuels in the electric mix, plus among the most expensive in power of all European nations. Like the pinguin said, not a winner combination.
Denmark is well interconnected to countries with lots of hydro and fossil fuels. They can use these grids as fossil fuel batteries. Not applicable to a holistic approach where all of Europe, and indeed the world, must decarbonize.
Nicaragua, Uruguay: tiny countries not relevant to global energy picture, and again almost all that 90+% renewable is hydro not wind and solar. That is to say, not "new" renewables. There's almost no wind and solar in Nicaragua and Uruguay.
Good old hydro. Where would renewables people be without it?
Then there's biomass, which is very damaging (encroaching, obliterating ecosystems) to environments and very polluting compared to nuclear. Bad bad bad.
10% is not a lot. If I solve a problem 10% I haven't solved the problem well at all. If I fix my clients problems 10%, they will fire me for not solving their problems 90%. A 90% solution is often acceptable to my clients, because they realise getting the last 10% is often not cost effective.
If my glass of beer is 10% full, it's time for me to order another round or go home, not cheer at how full my glass is.
Sod proves my point, but he or she does not understand it yet. Wind and solar are marginal energy sources that are at best useful niche players in our energy transition, and at worst near complete distractions, which is very dangerous at our current predicament. We cannot delay further with false solutions.
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