World's Largest Solar Project Would Power 1 Million U.S. Homes

[THRESHIN]

I think most of us would love to see more nuclear. The Great Lakes are an ideal location for those plants. I would gladly have it in my back yard, especially if I was well compensated which they could easily do.

Lots of communities are welcoming to nuclear now because of all the jobs and money it brings. It's a very welcome change from 10 years ago.

Granted, we were right on the heels of Fukushima. I like to think the fear has died down and now people are learning. Maybe not, but I'm entitled to my dream lol.

 

[w1retap]

All plants in the US had to implement FLEX as a response to Fukushima for updating specific designs. We spent over $1B doing the mods at our plant, 90% of which were pointless for our geographic region or existing systems.

For some light reading: https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ml1222/ML12221A205.pdf

You should see the FLEX equipment storage buildings we built. They look like above ground doomsday bunkers. You could probably survive a 5MT direct hit from an ICBM lol. I'm pretty sure they each have more rebar and concrete than a mile long strip of highway.

 

[1_rick]

You buy the media propaganda where every year or event is exceptional. There are thousands of cities on earth so every year, at least one will experience records of some kind.

Quite a few "hottest day ever, tying a record set in 1934"s the last few years in the US alone.

 

[w1retap]

From sensors in asphalt and concrete jungles.

 

[LukeTbk]

A bit like for the stock exchange when not adjusted for population size and inflation, every year or so being the hottest ever does not mean much in a world with global warming....

While linked that a bit of a different subject,
https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/historical-atlantic-hurricane-and-tropical-storm-records/
Figure 1: Atlantic tropical storms lasting more than 2 days have not increased in number. Storms lasting less than two days have increased sharply, but this is likely due to better observations.

Warming mean less human death generaly (has cold is still way deadlier than he\at), more X less Y and it can get really complicated, the link between global warming and local extreme event sometime is strong and obvious, but often not that much and per how much (california big fire of 2018, I think the weight in the many variable of global warming was under 20% to explain it versus bigger factors)

 

[mullet]

 

[Twisted Kidney]

Could be my Quebec speaking (or could have been included in solar because it is indirect solar energy) but hydro is nice as well, specially because how efficient-simple as a solar panel battery it can be used by just pumping water back up during peak sun power to reuse it has hydro later on.

I forgot about Hydro, I'm not far from Niagara Falls, not to mention Bruce Power for nuclear. In Canada we're very lucky when it comes to energy and ungodly amounts of water.

 

[Nanan]

I still say we are under-using wave bouys. I don't see why every coastal town can't provide their power this way. It's proven technology.

High initial cost and high maintenance costs make it not very financially viable. The problem is salt water is nasty stuff; you would need sacrificial anodes everywhere on the equipment and figure out long term sealing systems on moving parts.

Clean coal is a myth spun up by the pro-coal industry lobby and think tank groups. No such thing ever has existed, no such thing exists today and no such thing ever will exist. One way or another it contains some of the most vile substances known to man, and whether we are letting them spew out into the air or trying to deal with them in other ways it is still horribly harmful.

Coal can burn very cleanly if powdered and burned at 2+ bar pressure, the majority of the reason coal is "dirty" is that it requires more oxygen than the atmosphere has to get clean combustion at atmospheric pressures.
Coal is cheap, the US could burn it for power for a thousand years without putting a significant dent in the supply.

The issue with nuclear fusion is the temperatures it needs to run to be self-sustaining is significantly higher than the melting point of all matter.
The longest run nuclear fusion system thus far was around 1000 seconds, and it melted several million dollars' worth of tungsten shielding to slag in that time while the active cooling system was pushing thousands of gallons of water per min through them. The inside surface of the heat exchanger got so hot that it flashed the water to steam and created a buffer layer between the surface and the water flow.

I work in the refining and power generation industry and have worked on valves and control systems from everything from oil refineries to nuclear power plants to concentrated solar power plants, basically anything really high temperature or pressure. The CSP sound good on paper but the cost to maintain far exceeds the financial threshold and cannot compete with other power generation systems like conventional PV, hint the issue is thermal cycling fatigue.

 

[mullet]

You would think after 4000 years we would not grow hair on our backs and in our ears anymore. Getting old sucks.

 

[Nanan]

You would think after 4000 years we would not grow hair on our backs and in our ears anymore. Getting old sucks.

Evolution doesn't care about traits that come after child rearing years as they are not passed down. That you even live past 40 is outside of evolutionary design requirements, you are coasting on a system built fairly robustly for the first 35 or so years of life.

 

[OKC Yeakey Trentadue]

Could be my Quebec speaking (or could have been included in solar because it is indirect solar energy) but hydro is nice as well, specially because how efficient-simple as a solar panel battery it can be used by just pumping water back up during peak sun power to reuse it has hydro later on.

Not a terrible idea but it seems like you have to have an ideal location that has a nice elevated reservoir and a good area for lots of panels. You also now have solar equipment, pumps and hydro generators to maintain.

Conversion losses are not as bad as I expected if sources are accurate- about 70% going from electrical to mechanical to potential/kinetic back to mechanical then electrical.

 

[LukeTbk]

Not a terrible idea but it seems like you have to have an ideal location that has a nice elevated reservoir and a good area for lots of panels. You also now have solar equipment, pumps and hydro generators to maintain.

Hydro tend to have those pumps regardless for low demand period, but yes I can imagine you would need the solar to be close.

It already exist in smaller form than the giant barrage, as pure battery:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taum_Sauk_Hydroelectric_Power_Station
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power_Plant

But a lot of the regular hydroplants can be used like that without anything to add to them (outside solar capacity to drive the pumps), most of them I think, already are used from time to time has battery, with their pumps.

Conversion losses are not as bad as I expected if sources are accurate- about 70% going from electrical to mechanical to potential/kinetic back to mechanical then electrical.

Conversion rate for those are completely counterintuitive, I am not sure how it is possible does it use some of the water pressure to help pushing the water up like a pc water loop or something, in term of longevity, possible volume, efficacity, "simplicity" well for the amount of khw they can store, they are really good "battery"

 

[OKC Yeakey Trentadue]

All plants in the US had to implement FLEX as a response to Fukushima for updating specific designs. We spent over $1B doing the mods at our plant, 90% of which were pointless for our geographic region or existing systems.

For some light reading: https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ml1222/ML12221A205.pdf

You should see the FLEX equipment storage buildings we built. They look like above ground doomsday bunkers. You could probably survive a 5MT direct hit from an ICBM lol. I'm pretty sure they each have more rebar and concrete than a mile long strip of highway.

Regulatory hurdles of Nuclear power are all the proof I need that the powers that be do not actually care about the environment, but only care about ensuring the masses stay in debt and live paycheck to paycheck or dependent on the government.

It the safest for the environment and by far the safest to people both immediately and long term per kwh while being one of the cheapest methods.

 

[OKC Yeakey Trentadue]

Conversion rate for those are completely counterintuitive, I am not sure how it is possible does it use some of the water pressure to help pushing the water up like a pc water loop or something, in term of longevity, possible volume, efficacity, "simplicity" well for the amount of khw they can store, they are really good "battery"

Not sure what you mean, but you wouldn't use the Francis turbine generators during off hour demand to pump more water up at the same time otherwise that defeats the purpose and you would waste energy through friction anyhow.

There is likely a completely seperate pump systems that works to refill the reservoir during low demand times, or in this case, when their is excessive solar being produced.

 

[Sindalis]

Lots of communities are welcoming to nuclear now because of all the jobs and money it brings. It's a very welcome change from 10 years ago.

Granted, we were right on the heels of Fukushima. I like to think the fear has died down and now people are learning. Maybe not, but I'm entitled to my dream lol.

the sad part is we really need the nuclear industry to get onto marketing itself better.

Yes, there is potential disaster, but modern reactors are 10x as efficient and safer compared to the older generations that were built in the 20th century.

The only solution we have in the short term for our need for energy is going to be nuclear. We need to be building as many plants as we can be now, hell go back in time and start building them 5 years ago.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

The issue with nuclear fusion is the temperatures it needs to run to be self-sustaining is significantly higher than the melting point of all matter.
The longest run nuclear fusion system thus far was around 1000 seconds, and it melted several million dollars' worth of tungsten shielding to slag in that time while the active cooling system was pushing thousands of gallons of water per min through them. The inside surface of the heat exchanger got so hot that it flashed the water to steam and created a buffer layer between the surface and the water flow.

I work in the refining and power generation industry and have worked on valves and control systems from everything from oil refineries to nuclear power plants to concentrated solar power plants, basically anything really high temperature or pressure. The CSP sound good on paper but the cost to maintain far exceeds the financial threshold and cannot compete with other power generation systems like conventional PV, hint the issue is thermal cycling fatigue.

I think your data is a little bit out of date there.

Commonwealth Fusion (an MIT spinoff based in Devens Mass (on the old Fort Devens grounds) has been handling containment through some form of super-magnets and have seemly made remarkable breakthroughs in the last few years. They broke ground on their scaled down testing plant (half scale or quarter scale or something, can't remember) in Devens in 2021, and raised $1.8B in Series B funding later that year.

With over $2B raised in total from investors, this is no longer just in "research grant" territory. It is marching full speed ahead towards commercial application. I mean, I guess they could be full of shit, but if that is the case, they sure have succeeded in convincing some pretty savvy investors used to doing their due diligence that they aren't.

They just signed a contract to build the first grid connected commercial fusion power plant in Chesterfield County, Va back in mid December. Apparently they are going to fund, build and operate it themselves. It's some sort of collaboration where Dominion Energy provides non-financial grid based technical support.

Apparently, they are building tokamak reactors (like pretty much everyone else) but what sets them apart are their new record breaking electromagnets used for containment. This was apparently possible in the past, but the electromagnets consumed more power than the fusion reaction generated (which is an obvious problem if you want to run a power plant) but their new magnets apparently do something different and consume a fraction of the power the old ones did, allowing the reactors to be energy positive.

Its a slow process, but they plan to have it up and running by the early 2030's.

 

[toast0]

That would be cool, but what happens when it has an accident and instead flings it throughout our upper atmosphere?

Coal has gotten a pass on flinging radioactive particles into the atmosphere forever. Let someone new have a chance to do it too!

The optics are shit, but if you reprocessed the waste to reduce it, and then dump the remaining waste in deep ocean or burn it in the middle of the ocean so it can dilute before it gets to areas of population, the actual effect would be much less than from coal. But because it's intentional instead of a side effect, you can't do it.

Unfortunately, the environmental movements in the 70s and 80s really misunderstood nuclear power and combined with some accidents, the industry was stunted. Lately there have been some weird situations with nuclear plants in California, but if the industry has continued to develop, it would likely have been easily handled by shutting down those plants because they were beyond their expected service lifetime, were obsolete designs, and acting funny. All of that was true, but without a newer replacement plant, it's a big loss of capacity. Decommisioning a plant is still a lot of work cause everything gets contaminated, but it's doable.

 

[funkydmunky]

Yes, problem is its been irradiated by fukushima!

No it is due to the rare Pacific spotted star-fish and lack of habitat due to fukushima!
#hillimwillingtodieon

 

[OKC Yeakey Trentadue]

One of the lesser known nuances of inverter based resources (solar and wind) is a lack of inertia. Even when everything running optimally, precise frequency matching is critical and any errors in the load algorithm or circuitry fault can lead to massive outages.

Constantly running off the heavy turbines of pumped hydro storage (PHS) seems like a solid solution, with the biggest downfall being site availability, environmental impact, and construction cost.


View: https://youtu.be/7G4ipM2qjfw?si=GZ3qTdvEfjZDU9HQ

The inertia problem above and various impracticalities of technologies like PHS have even forced areas of strong inverter based resources to add in massive flywheel to address this issue.

https://undecidedmf.com/how-this-mechanical-battery-is-making-a-comeback/

 

[mullet]

Coal has gotten a pass on flinging radioactive particles into the atmosphere forever. Let someone new have a chance to do it too!

Look way back when we were living in caves and eating one another, there were massive fires, volcano eruptions blocking out the sun, giant lakes of tar/oil everywhere. I didn't see the EPA nerds running around with clip boards putting up chain link fences making them a superfund site to protect the dinosaurs/cavemen.

 

[sfsuphysics]

the sad part is we really need the nuclear industry to get onto marketing itself better.

Yes, there is potential disaster, but modern reactors are 10x as efficient and safer compared to the older generations that were built in the 20th century.

The only solution we have in the short term for our need for energy is going to be nuclear. We need to be building as many plants as we can be now, hell go back in time and start building them 5 years ago.

We need designers to not do absolutely batshit insane stupid design problems. Like we have a costal reactor in areas that are prone to earthquakes, typhoons and floods, in the basement of the reactor building do we put a) the employee break room, b) storage for old documents and mops, or c) the back up generators that literally the only thing that can preventing a meltdown if the main power goes offline.

 

[Tsumi]

You buy the media propaganda where every year or event is exceptional. There are thousands of cities on earth so every year, at least one will experience records of some kind.

The winters of '77 and '78 were so bad that scientist claimed we would go into an Ice Age. By the 1990s we had a few warm summers and of course global warming was upon us. Polar ICE caps should have been long gone by now.

Leading up to Katrena, we had alot of hurricanes. After it's devastation, we were told this is the new normal. The following hurricane seasons were some of the most uneventful.

Prediction of new trends have been consistently wrong. As for a little money now to prevent a crap ton later, WE HAVE ALREADY SPENT A CRAP TON OF MONEY. Even with rock bottom solar panel prices, it's still like 4x the cost of conventional methods. Billions wasted on solar thermal plants, hailed destroyed solar plants, battery storage facilities, subsidies and grants that only go to destroy the dollar and help companies like Sun Edison or Salindra.

Its weird that these 'preventative measures' only hurt the working class, like it's designed to. The best thing this country can do is reduce the use of plastics (plastic recyling was another big lie), dangerous fertilizers and prescription meds that often end up in the water system. I hold my breath, as any changes there will hurt the ruling class more than anyone else.

Calling it propaganda because you disagree with it doesn't help convince me of your position. I can just as easily dismiss any of your sources as propaganda as well. Also, after that lull, hurricanes have gotten more destructive.

What I will agree with is giving subsidies to large companies and bureaucratic organizations generally does not help. Nuclear, yes, more please, especially fast neutron reactors. Plastic recycling, absolutely a lie. Mixed recycling in general, so much energy is wasted in separating what can be recycled. Pumped storage.... too many issues there to be viable. Flow batteries are what I argue should be used, especially since capacity can be scaled independently of output.

December 1894
February 1899
December 1934
January 1940
February 1951
March 1954
February 1958
December 1962
February 1973
January 1977
January 1981
January 1982
December 1983
January 1985
December 1989
March 1993
January 1997
November 2006
January 2010
December 2010
January 2014
December 2017
January 2018
January 2022

I will admit, you got me there.

Look way back when we were living in caves and eating one another, there were massive fires, volcano eruptions blocking out the sun, giant lakes of tar/oil everywhere. I didn't see the EPA nerds running around with clip boards putting up chain link fences making them a superfund site to protect the dinosaurs/cavemen.

Yesterday's ignorance does not excuse today's inaction. Otherwise, smoking, lead, and CFC regulations would like to have a word with you.

 

[THRESHIN]

the sad part is we really need the nuclear industry to get onto marketing itself better.

Yes, there is potential disaster, but modern reactors are 10x as efficient and safer compared to the older generations that were built in the 20th century.

The only solution we have in the short term for our need for energy is going to be nuclear. We need to be building as many plants as we can be now, hell go back in time and start building them 5 years ago.

yes the public image has been an issue. the industry kept getting beaten down by lobbyists and propaganda. the industry is also it's own worst enemy. i remember one quite a few years ago where a plant had a demineralized water storage tank break a seal and ultimately it found its way to the lake. not great for the fish, but nobody cares about that part. they were worried it may contain radiation...it's purified water in a storage tank used for the turbine side. but yet the operating company couldn't say that there is no radiation in that water - because it occurs naturally! so public perception is that they're downplaying it.

the spot we're in is on the cusp of some really cool designs. far safer, absolutely. we can have that now. the more efficient part is coming and it'll be something. "current" designs (a.k.a. built up to the 90s) are what we call a slow neutron reactor, of various sorts. this includes light water enriched uranium (PWR and BWR), heavy water natural uranium (CANDU), graphite moderated gas cooled (magnox in the UK) and even the graphite moderated water cooled RBMK. all of these traditional designs use uranium and only use 2% of the fuel or less. newer designs that use molten lead, salts, pebble bed are capable of using 10% or more. think of fueling up a reactor and it runs for 60 years. or another possibility is using waste fuel - it's essentially free fuel! and yes this is something currently being looked into although quietly.

as far as disaster sure it's possible. TMI was certainly a huge money pit in lost assets and clean up, but there was no meaningful release of radiation to the environment. Fukishima was certainly worse, so far a single death has been attributed to radiation exposure and that was very political...decided in a courtroom. both of those plants had something Chernobyl didn't - containment. all 3 had elements of humans being stupid. we tend to learn from these things and this is why future designs are simplified and more automated. take human intervention out of the equation as much as possible.

actually since so many plants in the US are so old, they're extremely manually operated right down to moving control rods to control the reactor power. i find it a little scary myself.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

View attachment 706831

Yes, global temperatures fluctuate over time, but this chart is not very accurate. The years for minimums and maximums don't line up at all with recorded timeframes.

Usually these are due to a combination of solar minimums and maximums, as well as the amount of particulate that is in the atmosphere for various reasons (volcanic eruption, theorized nuclear winter, etc.)

It's funny, the old joke about spurious correlations about global temperatures being related to number of pirates in the Caribbean, actually turns out to be true.

The really cold period you have near 1600 there (it's actually off a little bit) is the little ice age, the coldest period of which was the Maunder Minimum, which ranged from 1645 to 1715. Common wisdom is that volcanic activity resulted in particulate in the atmosphere that caused the little ice age, and this was exacerbated by the middle of it coinciding with the Maunder solar minimum (a period where sun spots were exceptionally rare) with the two effects adding up to create an unusually long cold period.

Here is the problem though. Solar cycles are very well observable and understood by astronomers, who have documented them and given them sequential numbers since 1755 when among others German astronomer Samuel Heinrich Schwabe is credited discovered the phenomenon.

We are currently in Solar Cycle 25, an 11 year solar cycle that started in December 2019.

Solar Cycles start at a minimum, hit a maximum roughly in the center (in this case in late 2025) and then start receding again with a solar minimum expected in ~2030.

The previous solar cycle, Solar Cycle 24, started in 2008, hit its maximum in 2014, and ended in 2019.

The part that contradicts the many who are dismissive of climate change, and instead blame it on natural variation fails to take into account the solar cycles.

From 2014-2019, based on solar activity, every year should have been cooler than the one preceding it, based on less and less solar activity. That's your natural variation right there. But instead we recorded the opposite. Global average temperature every year from 2014 - 2019 was higher than the year before it. And then once we started the next cycle, cycle 25, global average temperatures started increasing even higher.

I think - based on natural variability - one could explain the acceleration since 2019, but not the overall upward trend.

While the last two solar cycles have each been 11 years long, solar cycles are not uniform in length. The one before that (Solar Cycle 23) was 12.6 years long. Solar Cycle 22 was 9.9 years long. Solar Cycle 21 was 10.5 years long.

Based on solar cycles you'd expect to see solar activity (and thus the heat it provides) to follow this trend:

As can be seen, it does indeed vary over time. The chart above both gives us a smoothed average of solar activity over 400 years (the black line) as well as representations of each solar cycle since 1755 after the Maunder Minimum ended.

All else being equal, solar heat output reaching earth will have been precisely correlated with the chart above. The Modern Maximum that started with solar cycle 14 in 1914 and ended with solar cycle 23 in 2000 should have meant that this period was a peak in global average temperatures. The issue is that actual global temperature averages are not following solar activity. Since 2000 when the modern maximum ended, and - based on solar activity - we should have been in for a period of cooler temperatures based on "natural variation" but instead, the temperatures have continued to rise year over year.

The thing is, climate scientists account for natural causes. They are the teal part of this chart:

But the temperatures have been increasing in ways that cannot be explained by "natural causes".

In past periods of very high or very low global temperatures one can point to causal conditions like massive volcanic eruptions with higher than typical particulate emissions in combination with the solar activity, and it tracks. Such was the case with the famous Maunder minimum and resultant "little ice age". If we go back further in geological time, plate tectonic changes, shifts to the planets axis, and possibly large meteor strikes (like the one that ended the Dinosaurs) can explain some of the shifts in temperature, but since the late 1920's or thereabouts there has been a slow and steady increase in temperature averages, that are difficult to see for all the noise that cannot be explained by the variables responsible for previous hot and cold periods.

The overwhelming majority of the scientific community has concluded that these are direct and human caused through carbon emissions.

Yes, there are a few who disagree, but they are a tiny minority. The overwhelming evidence as analyzed by the foremost minds on these topics is quite conclusive. Scientists disagree on almost everything. There are few topics in the history of mankind where researchers are so united as they are in the proof that climate change is human caused.

While the numbers have grown since 2012, the ratio is still pretty much the same:

This is what overwhelming scientific consensus looks like.

Reasonable minds can differ on:

• whether or not the man made rise in global temperatures is as big a deal as people make it out to be (though they should be humbled by the massive increases in extreme weather events like floods, hurricanes and wildfires that we have been seeing lately. How many "500 year floods" in a ten year period are enough to show that something important has changed?)

• what the best course of action (if any) is as a result. (I tend to be a huge fan of geo-engineering, but the environmentalists hate that)

• if industrialized nations responsible for the majority of historical carbon emissions owe non-industrialized nations compensation

...and many other things.

But the the fact that the climate is warming and that it is absolutely human caused is about as firm as any science ever gets. Taking a stance that it is not real at this point, given all the evidence and the conclusions based on that evidence by all of the people who have dedicated their lives to studying the sun, the atmosphere and other natural phenomenon is a pretty irrational thing to do.

It's grasping at the straws of the contradictory 0.17% of research, while ignoring the 99.83% consensus.

It's the very definition of "being in denial", and is completely irrational.

 

[mullet]

All joking aside dewd, I have been following the solar cycles for years, I never mention it because I always get eye rolls. We are in a cooling phase and the solar cycles are getting lower and lower every 11 year cycle. I hope we are NOT heading for another minimum. I modified this chart below of the correlation between the hurricanes and solar cycles. 3,4,5 is the category of hurricanes.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

yes the public image has been an issue. the industry kept getting beaten down by lobbyists and propaganda. the industry is also it's own worst enemy. i remember one quite a few years ago where a plant had a demineralized water storage tank break a seal and ultimately it found its way to the lake. not great for the fish, but nobody cares about that part. they were worried it may contain radiation...it's purified water in a storage tank used for the turbine side. but yet the operating company couldn't say that there is no radiation in that water - because it occurs naturally! so public perception is that they're downplaying it.

the spot we're in is on the cusp of some really cool designs. far safer, absolutely. we can have that now. the more efficient part is coming and it'll be something. "current" designs (a.k.a. built up to the 90s) are what we call a slow neutron reactor, of various sorts. this includes light water enriched uranium (PWR and BWR), heavy water natural uranium (CANDU), graphite moderated gas cooled (magnox in the UK) and even the graphite moderated water cooled RBMK. all of these traditional designs use uranium and only use 2% of the fuel or less. newer designs that use molten lead, salts, pebble bed are capable of using 10% or more. think of fueling up a reactor and it runs for 60 years. or another possibility is using waste fuel - it's essentially free fuel! and yes this is something currently being looked into although quietly.

as far as disaster sure it's possible. TMI was certainly a huge money pit in lost assets and clean up, but there was no meaningful release of radiation to the environment. Fukishima was certainly worse, so far a single death has been attributed to radiation exposure and that was very political...decided in a courtroom. both of those plants had something Chernobyl didn't - containment. all 3 had elements of humans being stupid. we tend to learn from these things and this is why future designs are simplified and more automated. take human intervention out of the equation as much as possible.

actually since so many plants in the US are so old, they're extremely manually operated right down to moving control rods to control the reactor power. i find it a little scary myself.

But why bother when in the time it takes to actually get a traditional Nuclear Fission plant funded and built, Nuclear Fusion will be here, and have none of the problems (real or perceived) that Fission does?

Commonwealth Fusion Systems are literally talking about building the worlds first grid connected Fusion Power Plant, a technology that will revolutionize energy completely, and having it done in the early 2030's, and everyone is still arguing about Fission? Why?

If you started building a Nuclear Fission plant today, it wouldn't be done by the time Commonwealth Fusion Systems first grid scale reactor will be online.

I think its time to move on from Fission. Nuclear Fission is a 20th century solution to a 21st century problem, and the 21st century solution is almost here.

It's literally going to be a matter of electrolyzing the hydrogen out of 3 gallons of sea water, and using it to power a grid scale power plant (400 megawatts) for a year, and getting little more than helium out of it as waste. When we can do that, why would we even want to bother with mining uranium, and dealing with highly radioactive isotopes?

 

[LukeTbk]

I mean are they not still in the phase of trying to demonstrate Q > 1....this could still be decades away to beat fission (if it work) and then a long time to build the first majors one.

If we look at China fission reactor activity, it is booming right now, I would tend to trust them on this.

 

[OKC Yeakey Trentadue]

Also, after that lull, hurricanes have gotten more destructive.

Based on dollar amount damage or number of deaths? As more people build, larger and more expensive houses near the ocean, both if these are naturally going to increase and loon extreme compared to what we saw 100 years ago but there isnot much we can do about this.

 

[LukeTbk]

Based on dollar amount damage or number of deaths? As more people build, larger and more expensive houses near the ocean, both if these are naturally going to increase and loon extreme compared to what we saw 100 years ago but there isnot much we can do about this.

I really doubt deaths would ever get close to what it was, regardless of any climate change:
https://www.researchgate.net/figure...alling-hurricanes-from-1900-to_fig1_227282076
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/decadal-average-death-rates-from-natural-disasters

Meteorologist ability to predict and warn, quality of construction, capacity to evacuate, capacity to communicate warning, they all advanced way more than hurricanes did.

worldwide look a bit like this for overall natural disasters:

 

[OKC Yeakey Trentadue]

I really doubt deaths would ever get close to what it was, regardless of any climate change:
https://www.researchgate.net/figure...alling-hurricanes-from-1900-to_fig1_227282076
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/decadal-average-death-rates-from-natural-disasters

Meteorologist ability to predict and warn, quality of construction, capacity to evacuate, capacity to communicate warning, they all advanced way more than hurricanes did.

Which means he likely based this increase in destruction claim on dollar amount alone, which is even more useless of a metric in claiming that storms are getting more destructive.

 

[OKC Yeakey Trentadue]

But why bother when in the time it takes to actually get a traditional Nuclear Fission plant funded and built, Nuclear Fusion will be here, and have none of the problems (real or perceived) that Fission does?

I don't know dude, maybe because it is not nearly as close to fruition as Science Journal #3048 claims it ro be?

While the technology sounds exciting, similar claims have been said about Fusion many decades ago.

While Fission is not perfect, it's tried and true so long as you don't build it in front of a likely tsunami area or disregard all safety protocols like the Soviets.

The amount of hazardous waste, while more dangerous, is relatively tiny compared to other sources of power and our ecosystem can certainly handle a few million tons buried deep with the crust.

 

[Tsumi]

But why bother when in the time it takes to actually get a traditional Nuclear Fission plant funded and built, Nuclear Fusion will be here, and have none of the problems (real or perceived) that Fission does?

Commonwealth Fusion Systems are literally talking about building the worlds first grid connected Fusion Power Plant, a technology that will revolutionize energy completely, and having it done in the early 2030's, and everyone is still arguing about Fission? Why?

If you started building a Nuclear Fission plant today, it wouldn't be done by the time Commonwealth Fusion Systems first grid scale reactor will be online.

I think its time to move on from Fission. Nuclear Fission is a 20th century solution to a 21st century problem, and the 21st century solution is almost here.

It's literally going to be a matter of electrolyzing the hydrogen out of 3 gallons of sea water, and using it to power a grid scale power plant (400 megawatts) for a year, and getting little more than helium out of it as waste. When we can do that, why would we even want to bother with mining uranium, and dealing with highly radioactive isotopes?

Just like Musk's timelines, fusion keeps getting pushed back. Why not have fission as a backup plan while we work on fusion? Additionally, as I've posted numerous times, fast neutron reactors can and do reduce the amount of hazardous long-lived nuclear waste we have to deal with. Provides reliable power and reduces nuclear waste, sounds like a win-win to me, other than cost. But looking at the long term, reducing nuclear waste now lowers storage costs later, so it might actually be a wash.

 

[1_rick]

If I remember correctly, a lot of the delay in getting fission plants built was nimbyism and paranoia. I'm simplifying a bit.

 

[LukeTbk]

There always a possible technological gap, but that where looking at China can be interesting, they do not tend to be stopped by nimbyism, paranoia or even price tag (if it work well per $ at end) if the technology is good, they all really energy hungry, from new coal plant to make 6-12 new nuclear reactor a year in the upcoming years (around 20-30 in construction at the moment).

If Fusion work well, I would imagine them doing it, I do not remember a proven prototype of fusion giving more energy that it used for more than some nanosecond flash, while encouraging, that does not sound like a serious project could have been proposed and blocked yet.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

If I remember correctly, a lot of the delay in getting fission plants built was nimbyism and paranoia. I'm simplifying a bit.

A lot of it is also cost.

Nuclear Fusion tends to not make very much sense financially unless there are a boatload of government subsidies.

It turns out that the totality of the capital investment in the plant, the ongoing costs of the toxic fuel and the safety precautions around it's use, the maintenance of the facility and the spent fuel - even if they don't concern you from a safety perspective - wind up being expensive when compared to other energy sources.

 

[LukeTbk]

I guess we always need to take China numbers on this with a lot of grain of salts, but we are talkin $0.037-0.048 per kwh the estimated average lifetime cost at a high 7% discount rate (according to internation agency), in the 2020s that really cheap, specially for energy that can be used as your always working base load and not just cheap in the marginal extra watts if you already everything else for it and just as an extra like solar can do cheaply.

 

[OKC Yeakey Trentadue]

We are sort of on topic, but strayed a ways away from Solar thermal. It would be nice to see a future for the technology still. It mostly solves the off peak problem with a cheaper method of storing the power and the inertia problem by having the large steam turbine as the power driver.

Solar panels will never be as efficient as a well designed mirror, but the giant death ray isn't feasible in this form.

Perhaps they need to reverse the design. Several 100 foot or so towers with lenses instead of mirrors that blast down to a molten salt boiler. While cleaning the top of the lenses would be even tougher, being higher might mean it only needs to be done on rare occasion. The overall footprint would be much smaller meaning mechanism to keep wildlife away could be implemented more economically.

 

[Tsumi]

We are sort of on topic, but strayed a ways away from Solar thermal. It would be nice to see a future for the technology still. It mostly solves the off peak problem with a cheaper method of storing the power and the inertia problem by having the large steam turbine as the power driver.

Solar panels will never be as efficient as a well designed mirror, but the giant death ray isn't feasible in this form.

Perhaps they need to reverse the design. Several 100 foot or so towers with lenses instead of mirrors that blast down to a molten salt boiler. While cleaning the top of the lenses would be even tougher, being higher might mean it only needs to be done on rare occasion. The overall footprint would be much smaller meaning mechanism to keep wildlife away could be implemented more economically.

I'm pretty sure you'll run into different problems. Close down to the focal point, it's going to be really intense and hot, burning any birds that happen to be traveling through. And in this case, they might drop on top of the collection point instead of around it. You'll need a lot of towers, more than mirrors because lenses are very heavy and expensive when made large. There's also the challenge of minimizing the effect of the towers blocking other towers because the sun is constantly moving.

However, the biggest challenge (and probably the thing that makes this implausible) is the physics of bending light using lenses. Different wavelengths have different focal points through the same lens. A lens optimized for visible light will be out of focus for UV and infrared light. Just under half of sunlight energy is in the visible wavelength with the rest in the UV and infrared spectrum. You would have to almost double the land area used to gather the same amount of heat energy that mirrors are able to collect.

IMO, based on the setbacks this project faced, centralized solar shouldn't be a thing. PV should be distributed and built on developed land. Placed on buildings, parking lots, above highways and railways, etc. Maybe the art of concentrating solar energy to heat things can be used on the small scale at metal refineries and things like that, but not on a large scale for power generation.

 

[OKC Yeakey Trentadue]

I'm pretty sure you'll run into different problems. Close down to the focal point, it's going to be really intense and hot, burning any birds that happen to be traveling through. And in this case, they might drop on top of the collection point instead of around it. You'll need a lot of towers, more than mirrors because lenses are very heavy and expensive when made large. There's also the challenge of minimizing the effect of the towers blocking other towers because the sun is constantly moving.

However, the biggest challenge (and probably the thing that makes this implausible) is the physics of bending light using lenses. Different wavelengths have different focal points through the same lens. A lens optimized for visible light will be out of focus for UV and infrared light. Just under half of sunlight energy is in the visible wavelength with the rest in the UV and infrared spectrum. You would have to almost double the land area used to gather the same amount of heat energy that mirrors are able to collect.

IMO, based on the setbacks this project faced, centralized solar shouldn't be a thing. PV should be distributed and built on developed land. Placed on buildings, parking lots, above highways and railways, etc. Maybe the art of concentrating solar energy to heat things can be used on the small scale at metal refineries and things like that, but not on a large scale for power generation.

Yeah, you arr probably right. I was just thinking out loud. It really is too bad that it's at a dead end of sorts. Another plant, the Crescent Moon, was down for an entire year for a molten salt leak.

Where the design fixes some major shortcomings, it seems to introduce so many more new ones.

 

[THRESHIN]

But why bother when in the time it takes to actually get a traditional Nuclear Fission plant funded and built, Nuclear Fusion will be here, and have none of the problems (real or perceived) that Fission does?

Commonwealth Fusion Systems are literally talking about building the worlds first grid connected Fusion Power Plant, a technology that will revolutionize energy completely, and having it done in the early 2030's, and everyone is still arguing about Fission? Why?

If you started building a Nuclear Fission plant today, it wouldn't be done by the time Commonwealth Fusion Systems first grid scale reactor will be online.

I think its time to move on from Fission. Nuclear Fission is a 20th century solution to a 21st century problem, and the 21st century solution is almost here.

It's literally going to be a matter of electrolyzing the hydrogen out of 3 gallons of sea water, and using it to power a grid scale power plant (400 megawatts) for a year, and getting little more than helium out of it as waste. When we can do that, why would we even want to bother with mining uranium, and dealing with highly radioactive isotopes?

First, do know that I am very much for researching and investing in fusion. I do believe it will be the future. We are making huge strides in fusion.

That being said, the media is once again being sensationalist. A commercial fusion plant is a LONG way off. Even with how well this is going we will be lucky to see this within our lifetimes.

We have proven fission designs that work right now. Time to construction can be less than 2 years for a modern SMR. The concept of molten salt fast neutron reactors is nothing new either. The biggest barrier has been material science to support such a design.

Your fusion fuel isn't quite that easy either. It's true that fusion uses hydrogen, but it uses isotopes of hydrogen. Deuterium and tritium or possibly just tritium depending on how they want to do it. Tritium is so rare naturally you can forget extraction from water. Deuterium is possible, but first we must extract the heavy water and then separate the isotopes. Heavy water is also extremely rare but far less so than tritium.

So in short no you are not going to fuel a fusion reactor with just electrolysis of water. Sorry, would be nice if it was that easy.

Information I find mentions "isotopes of hydrogen and lithium from seawater". So they're extracting deuterium. Lithium is unexpected, we shall see where they're going with that one. not a lot of technical information as of yet. To be expected.

I'm highly skeptical on their timeframe. We have done well but yet we are still far from a sustained controlled fusion reaction.

All this being said, I want them to prove me wrong. I'll believe the hype when there is something to show for it.