More Nuclear, Coal or Natural gas power?
- Thread starter ZZman
- Start date
Nuke
Hydro/Wind/Solar
And the third choice should be figuring out the storage of off-peak for on-peak usage.
-- Pump water uphill for later reuse through turbines
-- Run fridge and AC compressors off peak, storing the cold to thaw later in the day
-- Have intelligent interruptible charging of cars and whatnot. The solid state batteries coming out that hold a weeks worth will be great for this.
Only after all this, start burning fuels.
Hydro/Wind/Solar
And the third choice should be figuring out the storage of off-peak for on-peak usage.
-- Pump water uphill for later reuse through turbines
-- Run fridge and AC compressors off peak, storing the cold to thaw later in the day
-- Have intelligent interruptible charging of cars and whatnot. The solid state batteries coming out that hold a weeks worth will be great for this.
Only after all this, start burning fuels.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
One needs to be careful not to conflate geothermal heat pump resources with geothermal electricity generation resources, there's a reason Iceland (sitting on a volcano) is the only country to depend on the latter. Yes, there are a few states with Geothermal powergen (mostly California) but 16TWh for the entire contiguous US is not a lot. You need, as the link notes, high steam temperatures to make that viable, and availability of that is limited, it's also complex (and expensive) to implement and requires deep drilling (unless you are on a volcano).
In comparison, you can build a nuke anywhere. Nuke lead times and construction costs are dominated by regulatory issues, not technological. France built >70 reactors in less than 20 years, Ontario built 20 in ~20 years, nukes can be constructed quickly if they aren't red taped to death.
Ultimately, all the nuclear material came from the earth in the first place, putting it back there (a DGR) shouldn't be as controversial a topic as it has become.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Yup, and the footprint of hydro can be considerable. The area for the James Bay Project in Quebec is the size of the state of Florida.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Not if you are a utility. Large plants are the cheapest to operate run wide-open. In Ontario, because of the fixed-cost nature of our generating assets (thanks GEA!) it's actually cheaper (per kWh) to use more power than to leverage conservation.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Hard pass on nuclear energy contamination. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster , And that nuke plant that blew up due to the earthquake and flood in japan, really instills confidence in it's safety. At least when dam water stops flowing, it doesn't contaminate anything. It would be nice to leave your grand-kids a planet,that's not contaminated for the next 10,000 years.,,
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
The problem is that people have a really hard time with energy density. Spinning a turbine with the current sounds amazing until you realize how much equipment you have to install to capture enough to be useful. It's like all these failed tidal generating stations, it simply doesn't work at scale because it isn't energy dense enough. Nuclear is 20,000x more energy dense than fossil fuels, and fossil fuels are the most dense form we'd ever come across before discovering fission. Nothing comes close.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
1. Chernobyl was built by the Soviet Union and lacked any form of secondary containment. You can't compare that to any modern design operating today. Hell, even the first CANDU we built at Douglas Point had secondary containment.
2. Fukushima killed one person (and that's highly debatable, it's arguably zero) and other than creating a huge financial headache for Tepco, was a testament to how, even when things go wrong, the impact isn't much. This was after Tepco intentionally avoided relocating the emergency generators to behind the plant and upgrading the seawall, both of which they had been advised to do, but were able to avoid due to "grandfathering" regulations.
3. The most deadly power-generation related accident in history happened with hydro-electric (and I'm a fan of hydro-electric). The Banqaio dam failure in China produced the 3rd largest flood in history and killed up to 240,000 people. Ironically, this dam was constructed with the help of the Soviets (like Chernobyl).
4. Nuclear has the 2nd lowest rate of fatalities of any power generation source based on TWh produced (and the safest depending on whose fatality figures you use for Chernobyl).
In my opinion, the widespread use of nuclear power is humanity's only future unless one desires food and water starvation, mass migration, and political instability (and who would?).
4WD
$50 site donor 2025
If you want to keep adding building blocks - but oil & gas can build nuclear today.
One thing that wasn't mentioned in the chart was, that that after the dam failure in China, the people were able to return to that area and start life over again. Nobody will be allowed back to the Chernobyl area, pretty much forever. Properly built dams don't fail. And as long as man doesn't over use the resource, it will produce. But if you cut corners to save a buck during construction, anything can fail. And don't forget, even after we die, other people will need to live on the planet.,,
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
This is true, though here in Canada, nuclear lifecycle emissions are insanely low because most of the construction was powered by hydro-electric. Quebec steel and aluminum production is powered by hydro, uranium mining is done with hydro...etc. We already have a couple electric arc furnaces (powered by nuclear and hydro) here in Ontario, so FF usage is pretty low in the big scheme of things (primarily transport).
But, even if you use FF for that whole process, lifecycle emissions are still insanely low because of the volume of power nukes produce, which was the point I was making. The ROI is extremely good.
I heat with gas BTW, because it's insanely efficient (95%) and less expensive than electricity. Burning it for electricity (30-40% efficiency) seems silly if you can use the gas to produce a nuke, which can handle that part far more efficiently.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
People are in the Chernobyl area right now. Many people never left. The power plant continued to operate until 2000 when it was forced to retire. The fact is that up to 240,000 people died in the dam failure, which dwarfs the estimated high-end fatalities for Chernobyl. You can tour Chernobyl, I'd love to go, Pripyat would be an incredible experience, as it's very much an analog to what would happen if society were to collapse. Nature has reclaimed the whole exclusion zone.
And a properly constructed nuke doesn't make huge swaths of land uninhabitable either. Fukushima residents have been allowed back (and many areas were allowed to return ages ago) and Japan is restarting their nuclear power plants after ensuring that this sort of stupidity can't happen again. The point is that a dam failure killed far more people than the worst nuclear disaster in history, and both were Soviet screw-ups.
4WD
$50 site donor 2025
The state of the art pipe plant I toured (like aluminum extrusion) does not deal in molten metal - they pierce hot billets as they rotate hot roll forming the tubes in the same path. They chose natural gas for that phase - and electric ovens for a computerized heat treat process … (in the second building - 27 acres under roof) …
XOM’s new petrochemical plant south of me (plastics) is all NG stream … It’s here to stay - IMO, we should use it as a bridge to nuke dominance … Then the other means can toss in a few Megs when the weather is right …
Mass Hysteria for events outside of our country make good news media, short of reality.
When dam water stops flowing in our country, people starve.
For me it would be:
Consistently and Reliably available. As in: Year around and regardless of the weather.
Preferably within my own geographic region (nation).
And controlled by my nation such that a valve (simplistic) isn’t closed because the power source provider (someone else) suddenly got his panties in a knot.
Final answer? Nuclear
Consistently and Reliably available. As in: Year around and regardless of the weather.
Preferably within my own geographic region (nation).
And controlled by my nation such that a valve (simplistic) isn’t closed because the power source provider (someone else) suddenly got his panties in a knot.
Final answer? Nuclear
As a "lifer" in the power industry, the system needs to be engineered to the desired community outcomes.
In the past, reliability and cost were the primary drivers of the construction of consolidated grids. Way back in the '50s, this was the way of grid design, predicted increases in demand, replace ageing fleet with larger, more efficient kit, and let the older stuff cycle harder, until reliability had it fall off a cliff.
It was quite a rational, conservative approach, based on the premise that the power had to be available when it was needed for community and industry to go about their normal business...so normal that nobody noticed or knew about what was going on in the big world of spinning things behind the light switch (because when you flick that switch, the grid responds).
The "mission statement" for the energy system needs to be re-defined. Cost ? There when you want it ? Manufactured out of what ? Storage and losses through conversion mechanisms (batteries, pumped storage, H2), space and utility for people to do the rest of the things that people want to do.
There's room for all technologies...but first we need to define what good looks like, and plan for it...not planning...well we know where that takes us.
In the past, reliability and cost were the primary drivers of the construction of consolidated grids. Way back in the '50s, this was the way of grid design, predicted increases in demand, replace ageing fleet with larger, more efficient kit, and let the older stuff cycle harder, until reliability had it fall off a cliff.
It was quite a rational, conservative approach, based on the premise that the power had to be available when it was needed for community and industry to go about their normal business...so normal that nobody noticed or knew about what was going on in the big world of spinning things behind the light switch (because when you flick that switch, the grid responds).
The "mission statement" for the energy system needs to be re-defined. Cost ? There when you want it ? Manufactured out of what ? Storage and losses through conversion mechanisms (batteries, pumped storage, H2), space and utility for people to do the rest of the things that people want to do.
There's room for all technologies...but first we need to define what good looks like, and plan for it...not planning...well we know where that takes us.
