Morocco Unveils Massive Solar Power Plant In The Sahara

aeliusg said:
Cold War literally killed the USSR. All without having the lines move an inch in Europe. If that's not a total strategic victory, I don't know what is. Would you really rather have had a conventional war topped off with a nuclear showdown in the heart of Western civilization rather than in some mountains and jungles? The world is a messy place, but this universe we're in turned out as well as it could have. I count my blessings instead of lamenting any lost economic efficiencies.
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No it isn't total strategic victory. And evidently you don't know what total strategic victory is.

We went from having one clear geopolitical threat with clear geographic borders. To what we have today, hotspots of violence and terrorists without borders. We went from having a world where you could drive up to an airport and walk on a plane with anything you happened to be carrying, to what we have now...where you have to take off your shoes, have yourself and your luggage X-rayed. A wonderful world where in past days to get your hands on military hardware you had to be military or have a military requisition...to now, where any idiot in Africa or the Middle East can buy an AK47 or an American Humvee, or a Soviet MIG, or Soviet SSN submarine with cash.



The Soviet union and its borders collapsed...in its place, our effort birthed global terrorism armed with the weapons we dumped in foreign countries. Does that sound like "total strategic victory"?
 
Skripka said:
No it isn't total strategic victory. And evidently you don't know what total strategic victory is.

We went from having one clear geopolitical threat with clear geographic borders. To what we have today, hotspots of violence and terrorists without borders. We went from having a world where you could drive up to an airport and walk on a plane with anything you happened to be carrying, to what we have now...where you have to take off your shoes, have yourself and your luggage X-rayed. A wonderful world where in past days to get your hands on military hardware you had to be military or have a military requisition...to now, where any idiot in Africa or the Middle East can buy an AK47 or an American Humvee, or a Soviet MIG, or Soviet SSN submarine with cash.



The Soviet union and its borders collapsed...in its place, our effort birthed global terrorism armed with the weapons we dumped in foreign countries. Does that sound like "total strategic victory"?
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"Global terrorism" is a phantasm. I'm surprised someone with as much suspicion of the military-industrial complex as you have wouldn't recognize that. Or maybe it's just rhetorical posturing. In any case, I think we know where we stand. Good day, sir. ;)
 
Skripka said:
And so on. To say "MAD worked", is to ignore or be ignorant of 60+ years of USA foreign policy. And it is all coming home to roost-why is it that a random ISIL nut in Africa can buy an AK47 for $20USD and shoot up a hotel and be a martyr? Because of MAD and the "proxy wars" it birthed.
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But war is always going to happen. It's more human nature then people like you and me like to believe because of the extremely comfortable life that we live. War is the tried and true way to create an economy and get people working.

You COULD be a pacifist country and never hurt anyone and be altruistic, but you won't be in the position that America is. The people that do believe in war will trounce right over you on their journey to the top.

You especially can't stop the "lonewolf" type people. They will always be there.

Read, or listen, to some of the history of World War 1 as well as 2. WW1 was especially heinous, because non of the ground rules for a modern war had been laid yet. It was men just marching into oblivion because no one knew what else to do. Nuclear bombs were bad, but they were no worse then other carpet bombings and fire bombings that were done during the wars, it was just faster.

If you can find it, Dan Carlin did a fantastic Hardcore History episode specifically about the atomic bomb that is one of the best explanations of the whole thing I have ever heard.

Here's a link that works to a copy of the podcast
https://huffduffer.com/Daveje/211186

That being said what we are doing in the what was once the Ottoman Empire is nothing in comparison to the kind of war that Super Powers can do when they are allowed to go full onslaught against each other. Having proxy wars is unfortunate for those involved, but it is over all much better for humanity because it puts major restrictions on the parent countries involved.

We have lost like 15,000 people in the last 15 years, and we have been in perpetual war that entire time. The last time major powers went to war, a country would loose that many people in an hour, on one battlefield. I hope that we never have to experience that again. But it's inevitable.
 
wait a second....someone finally built one of these in a spot that is worthwhile to build it?

that took long enough. all i can think of is all the windmills we have here in ontario....screw you McGuinty.
 
Any addition of solar is great in my opinion. I'm hoping it happens a lot more throughout the world. I'd like to see solar panels on every single-family home in the USA along with something like the Tesla powerwall to further augment a large distributed grid. Sure, it wouldn't likely 100% of the needed power per home, but it's a great way to augment our grid, not considering the magnitude of the initial cost/task to make something like that happen.

The desert seems like a great location for solar in general. Elon Musk mentioned in the past that covering a relatively small area of Utah or Nevada could power the USA and I'd tend to agree with him given his past success and general knowledge. There are methods being worked on to transport energy more efficiently long distances, which would help.

As for birds, from past experience I think it's regular windows rather than the building itself. Skyscrapers don't have see-through windows usually, so I don't see them as much of a problem in that case. I've seen birds smash into sliding doors and windows quite a few times. Though they don't always die from the impact. I don't know the benefits of those heated tower based solar designs, but there a various others that don't have the bird death risk attached.
 
Scottw said:
Any addition of solar is great in my opinion. I'm hoping it happens a lot more throughout the world. I'd like to see solar panels on every single-family home in the USA along with something like the Tesla powerwall to further augment a large distributed grid. Sure, it wouldn't likely 100% of the needed power per home, but it's a great way to augment our grid, not considering the magnitude of the initial cost/task to make something like that happen.
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Are you going to pay for it?

I live in Sunny Southern California, and the majority of my roof faces south which is ideal for solar panels. Yet even with the high cost of electricity and all the tax rebates, they still don't make economic sense for me. They have a 15 to 20 year break even point, and I'll likely be retired and moved away before then.

What does make sense is energy efficiency. I've added insulation, ceiling fans, switched out lighting (currently moving to LED lights), etc. Much quicker payback, especially when I find cheap LED lights with instant rebates from the electric company.
 
Ducman69 said:
Large solar plants in the desert makes sense, since the land isn't otherwise really usable for anything, and those regions tend not to have a developed energy grid.

The biggest problem with solar, even in the desert though, is that its an unreliable power source so you need to be able to store that energy so that you can always use it on demand.

Doing some research, it looks like molten salt is their half-ass solution to this problem as its only good for 3-hours of power storage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouarzazate_solar_power_station
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Well, if you live in a hot industrialized country, solar power DOES make sense, even without storage. It just so happens that when the sun is shining the strongest, is also when you are going to use the most power (for air conditioning, and office/factory work hours)

Now, Morocco may not be the shining example of an industrialized economy where people use lots of air conditioning (I don't know, I've never been) but still...

I'm still a believer that solar power based on large parabolic mirrors, boiling tanks at the focal point and steam turbines are by far the most effective way to turn the power of the sun into electric power, not solar panels.
 
Skripka said:
Funny....I work in a tall building and know the maintenance folks by name. They're never cleaning up bird carcasses.

You too can say what you want.
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Funny, I have never gone without food for more than a day once in my life, therefore hunger doesn't exist on this planet!

Seriously, the statistics are out there, buildings kill birds, just because you haven't witnessed the carnage yourself doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
 
nutzo said:
Are you going to pay for it?

I live in Sunny Southern California, and the majority of my roof faces south which is ideal for solar panels. Yet even with the high cost of electricity and all the tax rebates, they still don't make economic sense for me. They have a 15 to 20 year break even point, and I'll likely be retired and moved away before then.

What does make sense is energy efficiency. I've added insulation, ceiling fans, switched out lighting (currently moving to LED lights), etc. Much quicker payback, especially when I find cheap LED lights with instant rebates from the electric company.
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Of course those other options have a quicker payback, it's something you (and anyone else) can EASILY do yourself. If you had the know how to install solar panels yourself you would see much quicker break even periods, but you never had to get a building or electrical permit to swap out a light bulb. Especially if your electric rates were like they were up here where during summer months if you're cranking that AC unit (not here in San Francisco fortunately) you're easily paying upwards of $0.35/kWh.

But it all boils down to cost of installation, just like auto maintenance, if you know how to work on a car, an automobile is not that expensive to own, if you have to pay a mechanic to do everything for you, you're going to end up paying a shit ton more.
 
Zarathustra[H];1042127845 said:
Well, if you live in a hot industrialized country, solar power DOES make sense, even without storage. It just so happens that when the sun is shining the strongest, is also when you are going to use the most power (for air conditioning, and office/factory work hours)
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In the vast majority of cases, peak electricity usage is in the late afternoon to mid-evening.

For example, looking at the Texas grid operator's archives here:

http://www.ercot.com/gridinfo/load/load_hist/index.html

A typical summer day's electrical usage peaks at 5PM and it isn't until 11PM that electrical usage drops below the value at noon.
 
SLee said:
In the vast majority of cases, peak electricity usage is in the late afternoon to mid-evening.

For example, looking at the Texas grid operator's archives here:

http://www.ercot.com/gridinfo/load/load_hist/index.html

A typical summer day's electrical usage peaks at 5PM and it isn't until 11PM that electrical usage drops below the value at noon.
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Hmm. Yeah, it isn't going to replace a good baseline power source, but the more you can justify dialing down the natural gas or (ugh) coal during high sun hours the better.

IMHO, I'd put a full ban on any extraction or burning of coal, if it were up to me. Nasty shit full of heavy metals, causing birth defects, cancer, respiratory illness and death.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Of course those other options have a quicker payback, it's something you (and anyone else) can EASILY do yourself. If you had the know how to install solar panels yourself you would see much quicker break even periods, but you never had to get a building or electrical permit to swap out a light bulb. Especially if your electric rates were like they were up here where during summer months if you're cranking that AC unit (not here in San Francisco fortunately) you're easily paying upwards of $0.35/kWh.

But it all boils down to cost of installation, just like auto maintenance, if you know how to work on a car, an automobile is not that expensive to own, if you have to pay a mechanic to do everything for you, you're going to end up paying a shit ton more.
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Depends on a ton of things:

-Cost of power
-How much power you use
-kWhr of system installed
-How far north you live (AKA inefficiency)
-How bad the weather gets (here, a solar system would be sealed in snow/ice the last 2 straight weeks)

Also since most people probably cannot afford the out of pocket cost subsidies or not...you have to factor in loan payment and APR as well.
 
Good for Morocco.
-Currently stage 1 of 3 is completed, generating 160MW of power, able to store power for 3 hours
-After all 3 phases completed, will generate 500MW of power, able to store power for 13 hours
-All 3 stages will cover 6178 acres, cost $9 billion, and require 2.5 to 3 million cubic meters of water per year to clean
 
This is not a good idea.

Solar works best when it's the individual homeowners that do it. Every household doing their part with solar panels, energy efficient appliances and reduced waste.

Germany is doing it and it is a great success. They should take the money they're going to waste on this, and give it to broke Moroccans to buy double pane windows and high efficiency A/Cs.
 
mastaBlasta said:
This is not a good idea.

Solar works best when it's the individual homeowners that do it. Every household doing their part with solar panels, energy efficient appliances and reduced waste.

Germany is doing it and it is a great success. They should take the money they're going to waste on this, and give it to broke Moroccans to buy double pane windows and high efficiency A/Cs.
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It's actually the absolute opposite.

Home solar is only cost effective because of subsidies, and it is skewing the market.

The best way to get solar done is through major plants. It drives costs down through efficiencies to have it centralized, but even then, solar is the worst renewable energy today. 15 years from now that will probably no longer be the case, but today Wind, Hydropower, nuclear, even - surprisingly - cogenerantion, or coal/gas with carbon capture technologies have a lower total carbon-dioxide output, and a lower total cost.

Home solar right now gets an effective ~96 cent per KWH subsidy. Other renewables get ~1c per KWH subsidies, so we are really just paying for it with our taxes.

The numbers look much better in a large infrastructure setting of a mega solar plant (either reflector/boiler/gas turbine variety, or large panel farms) but even then, solar has a ways to go.

Solar power is likely the future, but we simply are not there yet.
 
Yeah you drop the subsidies on solar for homes and no one will be selling the stuff by the end of the week.

Solar is not a serious renewable for many many countries.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Always find it funny when someone gets up in arms about the relative few birds that are killed by windmills in comparison to the billions that are killed because we build big fucking buildings with windows for them to run into and the cat is one of the most popular pets for people to have. But oh no... lets keep trashing wind energy, rabble rabble rabble, liberals!
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Skripka said:
Try thinking for just one second about it. Buildings are something stationery that birds can go around. For the most part. Further most birds are not moving fast enough and are not massive enough for them to do more harm to themselves running into a window than surprising the hell out of them. There's a reason you never see piles of dead birds around tall buildings.

Versus something like solar that gives no warning you are flying into a mirror-based deathray beam until you are in it...or windmills that especially bats have issues with.


Our problem is that high-capacity power plants like anything nuclear have basically been made uneconomical for any corporate entity to ever want to go to the effort of building. Our problem also is that the USA is becoming uninhabitable in the summer without air-conditioning, or that we as a society are a bunch of weenies that can no longer tolerate heat.
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sfsuphysics said:
Say what you want, buildings easily kill a billion birds every year, simply due to the fact that they don't look like objects that are stationary to them. Yes there are many reasons you never see piles of dead birds around tall buildings, where people congregate you tend have some form of cleaning, especially when it comes to dead animals so that they don't pile up, around a wind mill where you might get someone checking up on it every few months, you tend to let nature do the removal.
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I'm sorry, but if I have to make the choice between killing some birds (or even ALL the birds) and dealing with the catastrophic outcomes of climate change, I'm sorry tweety, but I'm going with fighting climate change 100 times out of 100.

I like birds and all, but we have bigger fish to fry.

Actually, let me take that back. I actually have a rather poor relationship with birds. Especially that little fucker that insists on attacking himself in my cars rear-view mirror all the time, scratching it and getting poop all over the place.

Either way, I guess the point I'm trying to make is I'm all for protecting endangered species, but if its up against climate disaster, I'll choose the windmills over the birds and bats, the solar plants in the desert over some tortoise, and hydropower over mating fish in streams every single time.

These problems are not on the same level at all. Sorry animals.
 
daglesj said:
Yeah you drop the subsidies on solar for homes and no one will be selling the stuff by the end of the week.

Solar is not a serious renewable for many many countries.
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The qualifier there is, it isn't today.

It probably will be in 10-15 years though.

The subsidies are creating an artificial market for home solar before its time.
 
Zarathustra[H];1042129411 said:
I'm sorry, but if I have to make the choice between killing some birds (or even ALL the birds) and dealing with the catastrophic outcomes of climate change, I'm sorry tweety, but I'm going with fighting climate change 100 times out of 100.

I like birds and all, but we have bigger fish to fry.

Actually, let me take that back. I actually have a rather poor relationship with birds. Especially that little fucker that insists on attacking himself in my cars rear-view mirror all the time, scratching it and getting poop all over the place.

Either way, I guess the point I'm trying to make is I'm all for protecting endangered species, but if its up against climate disaster, I'll choose the windmills over the birds and bats, the solar plants in the desert over some tortoise, and hydropower over mating fish in streams every single time.

These problems are not on the same level at all. Sorry animals.
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so why not just go nuclear then?

Molten Salt reactors are passively safe based on first order physics
 
Elios said:
so why not just go nuclear then?

Molten Salt reactors are passively safe based on first order physics
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I'm not read up on the technology.

Is this some theory of physics, or are there actually functioning large scale reactors out there to demonstrate that they actually work on a production scale?

Part of the problem with Nuclear is the carbon footprint of the uranium mining.

Then there's also final storage concerns and all the nimby's. Does a molten salt reactor somehow deal with the final storage problem?
 
Zarathustra[H];1042129393 said:
It's actually the absolute opposite.

Home solar is only cost effective because of subsidies, and it is skewing the market.

The best way to get solar done is through major plants. It drives costs down through efficiencies to have it centralized, but even then, solar is the worst renewable energy today. 15 years from now that will probably no longer be the case, but today Wind, Hydropower, nuclear, even - surprisingly - cogenerantion, or coal/gas with carbon capture technologies have a lower total carbon-dioxide output, and a lower total cost.

Home solar right now gets an effective ~96 cent per KWH subsidy. Other renewables get ~1c per KWH subsidies, so we are really just paying for it with our taxes.

The numbers look much better in a large infrastructure setting of a mega solar plant (either reflector/boiler/gas turbine variety, or large panel farms) but even then, solar has a ways to go.

Solar power is likely the future, but we simply are not there yet.
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Sure you're absolutely right in terms of raw efficiency. But in terms of economics, and budgeting, and politics, and practicality it is far far more feasible to do the subsidies.

This current US congress would NEVER....EVER approve $9B for a giant solar power plant. Even as the republican candidates do photo-ops next to windmills in Iowa.

On the other hand subsidies are easy. Homeowner does the installing and maintenance, and govt just writes a small check. Over the long run the small checks probably add up to more than $9B, but it's an easier political sell.

Same concept with single stream recycling. It's terrible recycling to throw everything in one bin, rather than individually separating all the different materials. But in a big picture setting it's easier and more practical for everyone involved.
 
Zarathustra[H];1042129469 said:
I'm not read up on the technology.

Is this some theory of physics, or are there actually functioning large scale reactors out there to demonstrate that they actually work on a production scale?

Part of the problem with Nuclear is the carbon footprint of the uranium mining.

Then there's also final storage concerns and all the nimby's. Does a molten salt reactor somehow deal with the final storage problem?
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If you want to be depressed...

http://fortune.com/2015/02/02/doe-china-molten-salt-nuclear-reactor/
 
Zarathustra[H];1042129469 said:
I'm not read up on the technology.

Is this some theory of physics, or are there actually functioning large scale reactors out there to demonstrate that they actually work on a production scale?

Part of the problem with Nuclear is the carbon footprint of the uranium mining.

Then there's also final storage concerns and all the nimby's. Does a molten salt reactor somehow deal with the final storage problem?
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Certainly uranium is a problem and theres not that much to begin with... Thorium is another beast and some times is basically waste of other mining operations.
 
SLee said:
160 megawatts of power is relatively speaking, a small power plant.
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For solar power, that's probably not quite so small. Unfortunately, alternatives to nuclear power are all relatively inefficient in terms of output.
 
Uvaman2 said:
If you want to be depressed...

http://fortune.com/2015/02/02/doe-china-molten-salt-nuclear-reactor/
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All the accolades of magical "clean nuclear" (sound familiar? maybe something that rhymes with bowl?) you never see it? Why? Oh because of all the green hippies, that's right it's their fault, or some of the green conservatives that always end up caring about the huge bird populations whenever someone mentions windmills. Or as this article points out, it's all Nixon's fault! However

Fortune has learned that DOE plans to sign a 10-year collaboration agreement with China to help that country build at least one molten-salt machine within the next decade.
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If this was some magically great technology that's super easy and not complex at all, and here we are nearly 4 decades later, why the fuck would it take a decade to build?
 
Uvaman2 said:
If you want to be depressed...

http://fortune.com/2015/02/02/doe-china-molten-salt-nuclear-reactor/
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That is semi depressing from a National perspective, but from a global one, it si good news. Work on this technology is progressing.

The truth is, from a global perspective, it doesn't matter where in the world you reduce carbon emissions, so if we do it in China with U.S. tech, it still benefits us.

It actually seems like a pretty good deal for us. We get China to foot the bill for the engineering work required to transform experimental Oak Ridge designs into production ones, while they serve as the test bed to make our populace comfortable with the idea, and are contractually obliged to share everything they know with us, so when we are ready we can build new ones too.
 
sfsuphysics said:
If this was some magically great technology that's super easy and not complex at all, and here we are nearly 4 decades later, why the fuck would it take a decade to build?
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cow_poster.gif
 
sfsuphysics said:
All the accolades of magical "clean nuclear" (sound familiar? maybe something that rhymes with bowl?) you never see it? Why? Oh because of all the green hippies, that's right it's their fault, or some of the green conservatives that always end up caring about the huge bird populations whenever someone mentions windmills. Or as this article points out, it's all Nixon's fault! However


If this was some magically great technology that's super easy and not complex at all, and here we are nearly 4 decades later, why the fuck would it take a decade to build?
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Well I mean if are going to play with nuclear poison might as well pick the desings that should have been picked.... Not the spectacularly stupid pressure cooker design..... A decade is nothing, i expect it to be delayed much longer.... All that being said, I'm for renewables, and the fusion that will never happen apparently, more than anything else really.
 
Uvaman2 said:
Well I mean if are going to play with nuclear poison might as well pick the desings that should have been picked.... Not the spectacularly stupid pressure cooker design..... A decade is nothing, i expect it to be delayed much longer...
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Yes a decade is nothing, but one thing I've noticed nuclear apologists tend to talk about how molten salt is already a proven technology so it shouldn't take time to "develop" it. I mean ok Nixon shut that down, why hasn't any university in the decades since then done anything with it?

I'm all for research into other energy alternatives, and doing "clean" stuff in China would go a long way to helping the global pollution issue, but my biggest fear of nuclear is that it's run by for profit institutions who really don't care terribly much about what happens after the 30 year life of the plant expires. Yeah they (consumers) put money into a fund to deal with this, but how is that dealing with it? "Oh hey here's some money to take care of it, now out of my way I have more profit to make elsewhere"
 
Scottw said:
Any addition of solar is great in my opinion. I'm hoping it happens a lot more throughout the world. I'd like to see solar panels on every single-family home in the USA
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Which would be one of the most expensive and senseless things ever done.

The majority of the homes in the US quite simply wouldn't produce enough power during the panels' lifespan to justify their installation costs, let along the cost of the panels.

Panels produce a tiny fraction of their power on overcast days.
If they're stationary panels, their primary production schedule is tiny and falls off quickly.
Tracking panels and their motors will eat up a decent chunk of the additional power they would produce over stationary arrays.
Snow effectively renders a panel useless. And most homes are built in such a way that asking homeowners to "go brush them off" is insanity.

PV solar only makes sense in certain parts of the world.
 
Zarathustra[H];1042127997 said:
Hmm. Yeah, it isn't going to replace a good baseline power source, but the more you can justify dialing down the natural gas or (ugh) coal during high sun hours the better.
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You can do that already with Nuclear. No carbon emissions. Simple!
 
Chas said:
You can do that already with Nuclear. No carbon emissions. Simple!
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Uranium mining is anything but carbon free, and the final disposal problem is anything but simple, especially when politics and nimby's get involved.
 
Zarathustra[H];1042129393 said:
It's actually the absolute opposite.

Home solar is only cost effective because of subsidies, and it is skewing the market.

The best way to get solar done is through major plants. It drives costs down through efficiencies to have it centralized, but even then, solar is the worst renewable energy today. 15 years from now that will probably no longer be the case, but today Wind, Hydropower, nuclear, even - surprisingly - cogenerantion, or coal/gas with carbon capture technologies have a lower total carbon-dioxide output, and a lower total cost.

Home solar right now gets an effective ~96 cent per KWH subsidy. Other renewables get ~1c per KWH subsidies, so we are really just paying for it with our taxes.

The numbers look much better in a large infrastructure setting of a mega solar plant (either reflector/boiler/gas turbine variety, or large panel farms) but even then, solar has a ways to go.

Solar power is likely the future, but we simply are not there yet.
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Solar is one of those technologies that's PERPETUALLY "15 to 20 years away.."

Since the 70's, solar panel efficiency IN THE LAB has doubled. With the best lab specimens displaying 40+% efficiency. Most of the best non-research panels are 26% or less, with the mean being around 20%.

And most of those efficiency increases plateaued around 1995, with most of the gains since then being measured in fractions of a percent.

Unless somebody manages to bring the research panels down in price and up in durability, it's going to take some sort of revolutionary new tech to make solar panels viable for more than a fraction of the world's power provisioning.
 
Zarathustra[H];1042129411 said:
These problems are not on the same level at all. Sorry animals.
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Yes, save your environement! Destroy your biome!

Here's a razor and a mirror, I want your nose off in short order here...
 
Zarathustra[H];1042129469 said:
I'm not read up on the technology.

Is this some theory of physics, or are there actually functioning large scale reactors out there to demonstrate that they actually work on a production scale?

Part of the problem with Nuclear is the carbon footprint of the uranium mining.

Then there's also final storage concerns and all the nimby's. Does a molten salt reactor somehow deal with the final storage problem?
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There have been several MSRs built and operated. The choice between MSR and solid fuel reactors was a purely political one.

MSRs are inherently safe, because their default state is "off".

If the reactor gets too hot, the safety plug melts, the reactor drains, and the reaction stops.

If the reactor loses power to systems, safety plug melts, the reactor drains and the reaction stops.

It's basically impossible to overheat the reactor to the point of a pressure explosion in the way solid fuel BWRs do when they fail.

Final storage is less of an issue. Because portions of the byproducts can be used in solid fuel reactors, some byproducts are medically or scientifically useful (like P238, which is used in nuclear batteries).

And most of the rest that isn't in some way reprocessable or useful is highly radioactive with a relatively short half life.

The big stink with current solid fuel reactors is that you have a lot of byproduct that's mildly radioactive (to the point where you can hold the stuff in your hands and your exposure is less than what you'd get taking a high altitude flight). But it's going to be radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.

Our engineering is good, but I have VERY little confidence that it's THAT good. Seeing as some of the oldest structures on the planet are no more than a few thousand years old and are NOT being used to store waste products in a safe manner.

Most of the stuff you're going to need to store that comes out of a MSR is stuff with half lives measured in months and years, with only a couple things being longer lived. And even then, only a few centuries.

Now something like THAT, we can engineer a storage structure for.
 
Uvaman2 said:
Certainly uranium is a problem and theres not that much to begin with... Thorium is another beast and some times is basically waste of other mining operations.
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I can't really call it an "upside". But a non-downside to Thorium mining.

Essentially the rare earths mining in the US is moribund. Because for all the rare earths they bring up, they also bring up tons of thorium. Which is considered hazardous waste.

So China has a lock on the rare earths mining right now because they basically don't give a shit about the environmental consequences. This is why a lot of the things that require rare earths are only being produced in China. And if they choose to cut us off, we're fucked!

No solar panels. No turbines for windmills, nada! All of these require components made from rare earths.

Now, if we begin using Thorium as a fuel source, all that "waste" becomes an asset. AND our domestic rare earths mining jump starts again. Keeping money over here in the States, and possibly drawing development and production concerns as well.

Essentially, the annual Thorium tailings from a moderately sized rare earth mine would yield enough refined Thorium salt to power the country for roughly a year.

ONE MINE.

While yes, there are going to be some CO2 emissions in the works due to the mining and transport, it's being divvied up because the mine is being worked for MULTIPLE purposes. Not just fuel extraction.

Also, there's the possibility, down the road, to convert such mining concerns to all or mostly electric.

In the long run, the amount of carbon being put into the atmosphere via the mining process is miniscule compared to today, and the carbon-free power output will further dwarf the concern.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Yes a decade is nothing, but one thing I've noticed nuclear apologists tend to talk about how molten salt is already a proven technology so it shouldn't take time to "develop" it. I mean ok Nixon shut that down, why hasn't any university in the decades since then done anything with it?
Click to expand...

they had most of the research destroyed... and locked away in Oak Ridge

the high level scientists that promoted feel out of political favor thats why

then Carter killed nuclear for the next 20 years
 
Chas said:
I can't really call it an "upside". But a non-downside to Thorium mining.

Essentially the rare earths mining in the US is moribund. Because for all the rare earths they bring up, they also bring up tons of thorium. Which is considered hazardous waste.

So China has a lock on the rare earths mining right now because they basically don't give a shit about the environmental consequences. This is why a lot of the things that require rare earths are only being produced in China. And if they choose to cut us off, we're fucked!

No solar panels. No turbines for windmills, nada! All of these require components made from rare earths.

Now, if we begin using Thorium as a fuel source, all that "waste" becomes an asset. AND our domestic rare earths mining jump starts again. Keeping money over here in the States, and possibly drawing development and production concerns as well.

Essentially, the annual Thorium tailings from a moderately sized rare earth mine would yield enough refined Thorium salt to power the country for roughly a year.

ONE MINE.

While yes, there are going to be some CO2 emissions in the works due to the mining and transport, it's being divvied up because the mine is being worked for MULTIPLE purposes. Not just fuel extraction.

Also, there's the possibility, down the road, to convert such mining concerns to all or mostly electric.

In the long run, the amount of carbon being put into the atmosphere via the mining process is miniscule compared to today, and the carbon-free power output will further dwarf the concern.
Click to expand...

the high thermal out put of a MSR also opens up high heat chemical processes like making synthetic carbon neutral fuels
 
Better idea, why not build a more cost-effective nuclear power plant in the desert?

A single nuclear power plant (Vogtle) is expected to generate 4536 megawatts of energy, once its newest two reactors go online. This solar power plant, that consumes "thousands of acres of desert", has a nameplate capacity of a measly 160 megawatts. The actual output of it will be less than 32 megawatts, when you factor in that no commercial solar power plant has better than 20% efficiency - most are around 10%.

Nothing compares to a modern nuclear power plant for cost and clean energy. They are our best option.
 
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