Could Nuclear Power Be Used For Carbon Capture? (forbes.com) 197
Forbes reports:
Nuclear advocates see a vast market for reactors in carbon capture and carbon-based products, not only for the next generation of reactors in development, but also for the aging dinosaurs they evolved from...
The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in San Luis Obispo, California, for example, is slated to shut down in 2024 and 2025. "If the waste heat from that plant was being combined with electricity production you could be removing 20 million tons per year of carbon from the atmosphere," said Kirsty Gogan, co-founder of Energy for Humanity, at an EarthX panel on Wednesday. "Right now what's happening is these big gigawatt-scale depreciating assets — they're making baseload, clean, emissions-free power, but we're just throwing away the heat, right? Those nuclear plants could be more useful, making a big contribution toward that responsibility we all have to go negative.
"We all try to be neutral, but it ain't good enough. We have to take responsibility for the carbon that's already in the atmosphere and go negative."
That's just one possibility. For example, the article also suggests nuclear energy could be used to generate sustainable aviation fuel (currently made mostly from biomass) from smokestack carbon.
Slashdot reader ogcricket notes the article is based on an hour-long EarthX panel that's now available on YouTube.
The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in San Luis Obispo, California, for example, is slated to shut down in 2024 and 2025. "If the waste heat from that plant was being combined with electricity production you could be removing 20 million tons per year of carbon from the atmosphere," said Kirsty Gogan, co-founder of Energy for Humanity, at an EarthX panel on Wednesday. "Right now what's happening is these big gigawatt-scale depreciating assets — they're making baseload, clean, emissions-free power, but we're just throwing away the heat, right? Those nuclear plants could be more useful, making a big contribution toward that responsibility we all have to go negative.
"We all try to be neutral, but it ain't good enough. We have to take responsibility for the carbon that's already in the atmosphere and go negative."
That's just one possibility. For example, the article also suggests nuclear energy could be used to generate sustainable aviation fuel (currently made mostly from biomass) from smokestack carbon.
Slashdot reader ogcricket notes the article is based on an hour-long EarthX panel that's now available on YouTube.
"we're just throwing away the heat, right?" (Score:3, Informative)
Re: "we're just throwing away the heat, right?" (Score:3)
It's as if they never even looked at how a nuclear powr plant works. Not even a glance.
It's amazing, the level of ignorance some people.can write lengthy articles with. /or what/?"
Like sitting *at* McDonalds, eating a burger, and then really actually not knowing what Coca-Cola is. "They aren't selling drinks, right? I think they should sell drinks. Am I genius,
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They are "pro nuclear environmental activists" according to their webpage. You could expect someone who takes a clear "pro nuclear" stance to at least know how a nuclear power plant works. It feels like someone just gave them a bag och money to make confusing pro nuclear talking points. Nukes are already as efficient as possible. If more useful energy could be extracted, we would be doing it.
The claims about carbon capture and synthetic fuels are also confusing the issue. Sure, electricity can be used for
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Why do you not read the summary?
They sell the electricity, it is not used to capture CO2.
The waste heat used for that.
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Because you have to actually read the articles for that info, which isn't allowed!
After reading the articles, yep, they intend to use waste heat with this
https://globalthermostat.com/ [globalthermostat.com]
and they are working with ExxonMobil! (My spider conspiracy senses are tingling...)
So, here's a description of the process:
https://globalthermostat.com/a... [globalthermostat.com]
The captured CO2 is then stripped off and collected using low-temperature steam (85-100 C), ideally sourced from residual/process heat at little or no-cost.
Do nukes produce 85-100C waste steam? How much power does it take to run enough fans to push air through the filters? They mention wind powered fans but then the nuke locat
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Do nukes produce 85-100C waste steam?
No. Nukes generally run at low steam temperatures (600K-700K), which is one of the major problems with them. To get half-decent efficiency, they need the cold reservoir to be really cool. Preferably below 300K, but certainly far below 400K.
You can obviously say "sod it, we will sacrifice a third of our electricity output to get 100C steam". But then it is not really waste heat, is it?
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Nukes generally run at low steam temperatures (600K-700K), which is one of the major problems with them. To get half-decent efficiency, they need the cold reservoir to be really cool. Preferably below 300K, but certainly far below 400K.
This is why reactor designs that use molten salt instead of water for heat transfer are so attractive. Even the plain old NaCl that is already used this way in a variety of industrial processes has melting and boiling points so much higher than water that a reactor could be run at ambient atmospheric pressure, meaning much less fancy plumbing, and still be far more Carnot efficient.
Re: "we're just throwing away the heat, right?" (Score:3)
Yes nukes produce low temp stream. It is what happens after it exists the turbine. You cannot have it condensing in your pipes otherwise water hammer and water impingement will tear the shit out of your turbine blades. So the system runs at a vacuum after the work is performed as it heads toward the condenser. This is one method of getting more work out of your steam.
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All thermal power plants fully use the heat they generate in the Carnot cycle, but any output heat above ambient temperature is usable for other purposes. In Iceland, one thing that really impressed me was seeing that after a geothermal plant exploited volcanic heat at 300C and produced waste heat as 85C water (in a clean secondary loop, as with nuclear), it could be piped all the way to Reykjavik, 50 km away, with only a 2C loss in transmission, to be used as district heat in the city.
Re: "we're just throwing away the heat, right?" (Score:5, Informative)
So *using* the heat and wasting none *is literally their mode of operation*. :)
Sorry, but that is not how nukes work. The reactor produces heat. The heat creates steam. The steam runs through a turbine which generates electricity.
Steam turbines are about 40% efficient.
So about 60% of the energy from a nuclear reactor is waste heat.
Can that low-grade waste heat be used to capture carbon? Not by any mechanism that I know of.
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At the risk of being pedantic, the turbine is over 90% efficient, the steam cycle itself is about 40%. Condensing the steam ( losing the latent heat of vaporization) is what kills the efficiency.
Boiling the CO2 out of monoethanol amine does not require that high a temperature. I think the 15 psi steam you get from a non-condensing turbine would be enough, and would only cost a bit of efficiency, of course, you can't just run a turbine designed to exhaust at 20 inches of vacuum at 15 psig, so you are looking
Re: "we're just throwing away the heat, right?" (Score:3)
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Actually it sounds about right. Search comes up with figures like 30-50%. Wikipedia for example has
Practical thermal efficiency of a steam turbine varies with turbine size, load condition, gap losses and friction losses. They reach top values up to about 50% in a 1,200 MW (1,600,000 hp) turbine; smaller ones have a lower efficiency.[citation needed]
Re: "we're just throwing away the heat, right?" (Score:3)
Re: "we're just throwing away the heat, right?" (Score:5, Informative)
heat engines are easy and efficient, no way they would generate twice as much heat as needed
There is a great chasm of ignorance in your education.
You can begin to remedy that by reading this: 2nd law of thermodynamics [wikipedia.org]
Then read this: Carnot cycle [wikipedia.org]
Finally, read this: Steam turbine [wikipedia.org]
When you are done with all of that, you should sue your high school physics teacher for negligence.
Re: "we're just throwing away the heat, right?" (Score:5, Funny)
Be a patriot, refuse to obey the second law of thermodynamics. Defy anyone enforcing it. The second amendment was provided as a means for the citizens to oppose the imposition of tyrannical laws. Use it, or lose it.
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^^^ Brilliant and Onion-worthy. Mod parent up!
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so pretty sure this is urban legend.
We spend billions on waste heat recovery and combined cycle systems because of this urban legend. You better tell all those engineers they are doing it wrong.
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"(Info for those who don't know: McDonalds is making more profit on the soft drinks than on the actual burgers. "
Small wonder, they have to pay some dude to flip the burgers, the soft-drinks are prepared by the customers themselves.
Re: "we're just throwing away the heat, right?" (Score:5, Informative)
Well yes and no. Youre describing a Carnot heat engine which is a theoretical lossless heat cycle. When you get to the condenser stage we are removing the last bit of latent heat in order to change its phase. Typically that heat is never put to any actual use. In the navy that goes into the ocean since seawater is the source of our heat sink. Land based reactors use cooling towers. Now there is always going to be entropy in any real thermodynamic system, but any time you can put more energy to actual use increases efficiency. As they always say, you can never get all the peanut butter out of a jar, this is entropy. When the butter knife stops being effective, grab a small spatula and see what you can teclaim. It will never be perfect, but you will find some peanut butter you couldnt quite reclaim before. On JO5 powered vessels they ran the feed water through the exhaust stacks to preheat it before sending it to the boiler in attempts to become more efficient.
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Sigh, for a few days you actually showed you could think, but now you're back to ignorance.
Using heat and wasting none is their *ideal* mode of operation. It's not one with a basis in reality. You know those giant cooling towers you see at nuclear plants? Ever wonder why they needed those if they are using the heat and "wasting none"? I mean there's energy to be extracted in literally anything that isn't the same temperature as its surrounding.
Another ignorant post brought to you by BAReFO0t (he's back on a
Re: "we're just throwing away the heat, right?" (Score:2)
On that metric, even including all the deaths due to accidents in research back in the 50s and 60s, nuclear is one of the safest power generating technologies around.
I seem to remember wind is one of the most dangerous, curiously. Due to the small output and the high danger during installation.
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I seem to remember wind is one of the most dangerous, curiously. Due to the small output and the high danger during installation.
You remember wrong.
Also, small output, really? This is 2020, not 1990.
Re: "we're just throwing away the heat, right?" (Score:2)
But think of all the birds harmed by wind turbines! :-)
Re: "we're just throwing away the heat, right?" (Score:2)
Which pales in comparison to the holocaust level devastation wrought on birds by housecats every year.
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Yes. You can use nuclear energy to recycle all the waste for a city and as back up energy for renewables which are very environmentally sensitive. Else you will be condemning millions to die with harsh environmental conditions disrupt renewable energy supply ie major hail storm over a city who produces and substantive portion of their energy via solar panels, thousands of square kilometres which now need to be repaired/replaced over quite a few months, for a city an extended blackout means many will die.
Ju
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Else you will be condemning millions to die with harsh environmental conditions disrupt renewable energy supply ie major hail storm over a city who produces and substantive portion of their energy via solar panels, thousands of square kilometres which now need to be repaired/replaced over quite a few months, for a city an extended blackout means many will die.
Everything about this is absurd. You propose a 100GW+ average (1TW+ peak) solar array, and a hail storm takes out every single panel. Meanwhile the 100GW+ nuclear reactors never have problems causing shutdown of multiple units.
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Else you will be condemning millions to die with harsh environmental conditions disrupt renewable energy supply ie major hail storm over a city who produces and substantive portion of their energy via solar panels, thousands of square kilometres which now need to be repaired/replaced over quite a few months, for a city an extended blackout means many will die.
Everything about this is absurd. You propose a 100GW+ average (1TW+ peak) solar array, and a hail storm takes out every single panel. Meanwhile the 100GW+ nuclear reactors never have problems causing shutdown of multiple units.
Any solar panel system without hailstorm protection is poor engineering. Dunno where poster got his eddymucation. Our local solar systems are doing just fine despite a number of hailstorms over the years.
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Reactors are a lot safer, and thorium reactors are hitting the stage which don't have the ecological disaster of earlier designs.
"As of 2020, there are no operational thorium reactors in the world." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:"we're just throwing away the heat, right?" (Score:4, Funny)
"As of 2020, there are no operational thorium reactors in the world.
That's why they are so safe.
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Ignoring your Thorium, Dreams, the reason Nukes are perpetually too expensive o build is because they have a much more complex cooling system than other big power plants (and when you take into account issues like paying the massive extra cost for "no active cooling" versus "you need backup generators for your active cooling system stored somewhere safe" you can get some idea of why the fuck it's impossible to mass-produce the majority of a nuclear plant..
https://arstechnica.com/scienc... [arstechnica.com]
Thorium requires
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Nuclear fission trows away heat too. Except when it doesn't' and uses that to desalinate seawater. Or when it is used to provide municipal heat.
Then the fission products are used for medical, industrial, and food production. From the spent fuel come more fuel. Fuel used to explore space. From pent fuel we get isotopes used to protect us from viruses, bacterium, toxic chemicals. From this we get isottopes to treat and disagnose cancer. From these isotopes we get catalytic converters that make tthe air
Re:"we're just throwing away the heat, right?" (Score:4, Informative)
Solar power (not counting batteries) is below 3 cent/kWh in sunny locations now. Cheaper than nuclear. The main thing holding solar back is the lack of cheap, long lived batteries.
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That, and that we are getting less than 9 hours of daylight at 47 degrees north, and it's been overcast for three days straight.
There is a limit to what you can do with batteries.
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That, and that we are getting less than 9 hours of daylight at 47 degrees north, and it's been overcast for three days straight.
There is a limit to what you can do with batteries.
And yet: https://aksolarpower.com/ [aksolarpower.com]
Many Alaskan villages use Diesel power to generate power and heating during the winter. Losing power and heat during the long Alaskan winter is more than an inconvenience, it is likely death. So if supplies of diesel fuel don't make it due to weather, it's bad news. So places are turning to solar in the times the sun is up to reserve their diesel fuel. And when it's up in that neighborhood, it's up a long time.
One of the things we need to do is get away from the con
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Solar power (not counting batteries) is below 3 cent/kWh in sunny locations now. Cheaper than nuclear. The main thing holding solar back is the lack of cheap, long lived batteries.
I've really pushed for nickel/iron batteries. Tough as nails and long lived. Their shortcomings (weight, specific energy, energy retention) aren't a big problem in systems that don't need portability and are almost constantly charging. Build a concrete pad, place the batteries and conditioning hardware, and you have a system.
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The main thing holding solar back is the lack of cheap, long lived batteries.
And that's barely true anymore.
And in some ways, it's never been true.
A friend of mine ran off the grid for years with a shed full of marine deep cycle batteries. Their major issue was their longevity. On price and capacity, they blew away something like Tesla's Powerwall. He had a regular testing and replacement cycle, which definitely is more than a lot of people would be willing to do. But it was doable.
Just two days ago we got an article on how battery prices haven fallen 88% in a decade [slashdot.org]. Giant banks ar
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From pent fuel we get isotopes used to protect us from viruses, bacterium, toxic chemicals.
You are just silly. How should that work? Hu?
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There's this dinky journal called Nature which summarizes the medical isotope shortage problem thusly:
https://www.nature.com/news/re... [nature.com]
If we built recycling facilities for spent reactor fuel we would not only get rid of all the long-term waste, but would have all the medical isotopes we need.
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From pent fuel we get isotopes used to protect us from viruses, bacterium, toxic chemicals. You are just silly. How should that work? Hu?
He got caught in a time vortex in 1948 and transported to 2020.
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Nuclear fission trows away heat too. Except when it doesn't' and uses that to desalinate seawater. Or when it is used to provide municipal heat.
Then the fission products are used for medical, industrial, and food production. From the spent fuel come more fuel. Fuel used to explore space. From pent fuel we get isotopes used to protect us from viruses, bacterium, toxic chemicals. From this we get isottopes to treat and disagnose cancer. From these isotopes we get catalytic converters that make tthe air cleaner.
Solar power is expensive. Batteries will not save it becase battterries work on nuclear power too. Batteries will kill solar power.
Ecstasy is a hellva drug, amirite?
Not happening in democracies, this is why: (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear power is scary and the the booboisie are and will remain too stupid to accept nukes though the actual volume of nuclear waste is trivial.
Technical solutions which go against irreversible public attitudes will not be implemented in democracies.
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Nuclear power is scary
Only if it is fission and only when you realize that the same population of people you just called stupid is the same population the people who operate nuclear powerplants come from. Also, the problem with the waste is not the volume but the length of time you have to securely store it for which is centuries. That would be like still maintaining a Tudor waste site in the UK today or one of the original British colony waste sites in the US.
The only real way to solve these issues is with fusion. When you
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"Let's wait for fusion" is not an option. Not only will this take an unknown amount of development time, but the flat-earth lobby already has a set of fake arguments lined up against it, ready to bury it in lawsuit after lawsuit if it ever gets here. The only way forward is to treat climate as a Covid-level emergency so that the opposition can be denied jurisdiction in the court system.
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So when had France became a totalitarian country?
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So when had France became a totalitarian country?
France is slowly moving away from nuclear, because of the reason the gpp mentions
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France is slowly moving away from nuclear, because of the reason the gpp mentions
Slowly as in how EU was slowly moving to carbon neutral? Or how the US is sending people back to the moon?
One election later and you could see a complete reverse of policy. With the majority of France's electricity already coming from nuclear, good luck finding any alternative that (1) didn't emit tons of CO2, (2) didn't cost a whole lot and (3) that can make a dent in the next 20 years.
Not to mention that GP said "Not happening" but it has already happened in France over 20 years ago. You can find any s
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https://armscontrolcenter.org/... [armscontrolcenter.org]
Idiot.
There are over 60 dry cask storage sites across 34 states. Those facilities store the majority of the more than 90,000 metric tons of nuclear waste in the United States, including nearly 80,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel.
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You mean the perfectly good fuel we buried after using literally only 2% of its energy content?
If you bury fuel and call it waste because you can't use it in a completely stupid, obsolete design (instead of a modern reactor design), I have zero sympathy for your FUD.
If it wasn't energetic, we wouldn't be having this issue. It, in point of fact, retains 98% of its energy when we presently bury it. Because we're basically fucking stupid, and it's more fun to shoot ourselves in the foot over what presently amo
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You mean the perfectly good fuel we buried after using literally only 2% of its energy content?
You burned 50% not 2%. It is 4% - 6% enriched, from that part you burn half, the ret is unuseable uranium. Unless you build new CANDU reactors.
No idea why you nuclear morons spread this "just 2% burned!! la la la!! We could burn the rest!!!" - No, you can't.
Because we're basically fucking stupid
No, _YOU_ are fucking stupid. Or do you really think the nuclear industry throws away 98% of the fuel? WHY THe FUNK WOUL
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That 80,000 tons is actually 4,000 tons of nuclear waste and 75,000 tons of useful nuclear fuel. We could run modern reactors on the existing 'waste' for a lifetime. After doing so, it becomes actual waste that will decay to background a hell of a lot sooner than it will in it's current state.
As for safety, it seems that it's a lot easier to get people to protect and keep track of valuable fuel than it is for expensive waste. Make that waste valuable and the bean counters will suddenly find all sorts of res
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And yet, it's true [wikipedia.org]. There is a complex and expensive process to re-process it into enriched uranium and plutonium that presents a proliferation risk. There is also a much cheaper re-processing method that leaves the plutonium, uranium, and actinides mixed while separating out the actual waste. There are reactor designs (including CANDU) that can run just fine on the mixture. It presents little proliferation risk since separating the resulting mixed fuel to make weapons grade material is harder and more expe
Re: Not happening in democracies, this is why: (Score:2)
The reason people don't like nuclear is that it is 2 to 4 times as expensive as anything else
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In actual reality, nuclear power is just exceptionally expensive these days. And it is so ion all three phases: Building it, operating it and decommissioning it. Ohm and you get a rather serious waste problem and a high risk-cost from potential accidents. (Not so potential, after all: Windscale, TMI, Tchernobyl and Fuckupshima).
Nuclear power is _stupid_ these days. It always was, but that was not always clear. Today it is.
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Nuclear power is scary and the the booboisie are and will remain too stupid to accept nukes though the actual volume of nuclear waste is trivial.
Technical solutions which go against irreversible public attitudes will not be implemented in democracies.
Nuclear power stations cost more to build and to run than either Solar or Wind.
Even worse, the costs of decommissioning Nuclear power stations cost more than either Solar or Wind.
The above, of course, considers all the costs involved. Subsidies, provided by governments, will reduce the costs of the operators of nuclear power stations -- but this merely passes on the costs to others, it does not reduce the real costs.
Technical solutions which are grossly uneconomic should be avoided, regardless of your poli
Sounds Good (Score:2)
Til the money guys get a hold of it.
Yes, but other power sources would be better. (Score:5, Insightful)
For carbon capture, there are two types: Atmospheric and At Source.
At Source is the cheapest. Go to any coal plant or natural gas plant and directly convert the exhaust, a far more efficient method than straining the atmosphere for the carbon. But this won't work for small or mobile sources.
From the Atmosphere is harder, but nuclear makes little sense. The problems with solar and wind is that they time and location variable. Some times and places you get more power than others. But that does not matter when you are sucking air.
So go to a very sunny location or very windy location and convert whatever power you get into carbon extraction.
Foolish to waste a nuclear power plant to do the same.
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If this is something that can make use of waste heat, all the better. California needs to find a way to make Diablo Canyon economica
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Potential energy sinks that have been thrown around are desalination, carbon capture, district heating/cooling,
... EV battery charging.
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EVs have smart chargers. They can monitor the internet and respond to price signals within seconds.
My EV charges by the clock, starting at 2 am because that is when my power is cheapest. But direct response to demand would only require a software upgrade.
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So go to a very sunny location or very windy location and convert whatever power you get into carbon extraction.
Foolish to waste a nuclear power plant to do the same.
Not foolish at all. In a nuclear plant you try to use the waste heat.
If you have surplus electricity it is plain stupid to convert that into heat: the lowest form of energy.
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There are huge opportunities for developing nations here, particularly in north Africa. They could generate and export vast amounts of clean energy, as well as getting paid for CO2 capture with a decent trading scheme in place.
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Well, there's a third option: not burning the fossil fuel at all. You can do this by increasing energy efficiency and by replacing higher carbon emitting sources with lower emitting source (e.g. switching from coal to natural gas).
The reason I bring this blindingly obvious point up is to bring a less obvious point -- any particular savings route is subject to both economies of scale and diminishing returns, which vary at any point in time. The economically most efficient mix of efforts is going to be like
Could headlines not be in this predictable format? (Score:2)
And TFA make bone-headed assumptions nobody else shares?
(Answer: No [It's the rules :])
So can solar (Score:2)
But more cheaply and more cleanly.
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Also, solar and wind does not generate a lot of heat. It is, in fact, pretty heat-neutral.
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Or you build your capture infrastructure so it can use solar and wind with very little storage involved. These devices do not need to run 24/7.
That's just a retrofit for expensive energy (Score:2)
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If we followed your logic years ago nobody would have invested in wind and solar, keeping instead to cheap coal and natural gas.
We have cheap wind and solar because people invested in expensive wind and solar years ago. If we don't invest in expensive nuclear power now then we will begin to find out that wind and solar is cheap because it is backed up by cheap natural gas. When natural gas prices go up with diminishing supplies then wind and solar prices so up too.
Batteries help to lower energy costs by a
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If fossil power is no longer an option, it comes down to needing nuclear, rather than wanting it.
Nuclear costs more than solar or wind plus battery, and it doesn't follow load as well, so just on a pure cost consideration alone, why would you choose nuclear? It just doesn't make any sense.
Bitcoin (Score:2)
We live in a culture that values wasting energy on Bitcoin mining far more than environmental concerns, I don't hold out much hope for CO2 reduction by any means now. It's just human nature to value short term gain over long term impact I'm afraid.
Monitor closely please (Score:2)
Any amelioration effects are welcome, but be careful. Global warming is an irritant stretched over a century or three, and god only knows the tech that will be available then (but certainly greater than the difference between now and 1900.)
But overshoot on carbon reduction? You can induce an ice age in as little as a few years. You just need one summer where the snow doesn't melt, and the abledo is so great, Earth goes into a deep freeze the next winter, and that's it. Billions have starved.
Crazy is the world. (Score:2)
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Unfortunately, many people are and far too many others go along with the crazies.
This is the economy, stupid (Score:2)
How much times needs to be repeated? Nuclear is about 3 times the cost of solar or wind. Costs of nuclear increases with years, the contrary for solar or wind. With such economy ratios the discussion should be closed, but apparently the nuclear lobby has still some hopes.
Nuclear power advocates are becoming desperate (Score:2)
Proposing nuclear power for atmospheric carbon capture reeks of a solution looking for a problem. Renewable power + batteries are a combination that overwhelms all the pro-nuke power arguments. It's a death knell for a technology that never delivered "power too cheap to meter".
Unfortunately, some geeks are so blinded by the shear high tech coolness of nuclear energy they've lost the ability to evaluate
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Indeed. These people are deranged. Also add that carbon capture can nicely be designed to not need 24/7 power and be directly driven by wind and solar with minimal or no storage in the loop. And, of course, it is massively cheaper, has a far more benign waste problem and no really horrible accident risk.
Fusion may never be economical either (Score:2)
Kind of to pile on with what you're saying: I've read claims that the steam conversion process from heat to electricity, all by itself, is so expensive that any plant based on it will lose out economically to wind/solar/gas.
So a thermal fusion plant, which heats up water to make steam to make electricity, is an economic non-starter. (Coal is disappearing because of this too.)
Only direct conversion fusion (not the easiest D-T reaction) could compete by this argument.
--PM
That would be about the most stupid thing possible (Score:2)
Carbon capture does not need 24/7 power. Solar and wind could be used directly to power it. That would not only be massively cheaper than nuclear, but also comes with a far less nasty waste problem and does not have the horrible accident risk of nuclear either.
Seriously, the nuclear fanatics will try anything and everything to keep their fetish going.
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Simple: Nukes are exceptionally expensive to build, produce exceptionally expensive electricity, are exceptionally expensive to tear down and can cause exceptionally expensive accidents. Oh, and they produce waste that is exceptionally expensive and risky to deal with. Also, they produce a lot of heat which makes the problem worse.
Seriously.
Re: I'm not sure why this isn't happening already (Score:2)
Thanks. I thought "I hope he'snt cat'n help from the wrong kinds of kitties.".
Re:I'm not sure why this isn't happening already (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, nuclear power is cheap...
No, it isn't.
The last nuke built in America is the Vogtle plant in Georgia.
Vogtle produces power for a wholesale price of 13 cents per kwh.
Gas is at 4 cents. Wind is 3 cents.
Nuclear is NOT cheap. It is prohibitively expensive.
When nuclear advocates claim it is cheap, they are basing their claim on the "Bullshit Number" that is used to get projects approved. After the decade of delays and cost overruns, the actual cost is three times that.
Re: I'm not sure why this isn't happening already (Score:3)
Nuclear is not cheap in the US. But that has nothing to do with nuclear, it has everything to do with the US.
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Hinkley Point in the UK has cost overruns as bad as Vogtle.
So it isn't just an American problem.
Re: I'm not sure why this isn't happening already (Score:5, Informative)
And Finland. 3-4x the projected cost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
and an article about cost overruns (in the US):
https://news.mit.edu/2020/reas... [mit.edu]
SMRs are supposed to solve some of the issues about standardization mentioned in the article but we don't know yet if they actually can
https://www.sciencemag.org/new... [sciencemag.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Hinkley Point C is way worse. £96/MWh guaranteed (increasing with inflation) when wind is already less than half that without subsidies and with battery smoothing.
Hinkley Point C is the most expensive object on Earth. Only the ISS cost more, and it's not on the Earth. It's so expensive it exceeded the market cap of EDF, the French company building it, and the French taxpayer had to bail them out. And that's with some of the money coming from the Chinese. The UK doesn't even own this thing.
It was
Re: (Score:3)
Wind is 3 cents.
No, it's not. Wind is technically at infinity cents, since it can't provide guaranteed generation. Ditto for solar.
Re: (Score:3)
As the cost difference between "guaranteed" generation and sporadic generation increases, multi tier pricing plans on the retail level will emerge.
People will schedule the dish washers, electric vehicle chargers, laundry etc to run on cheap non guaranteed circuits. Such differential pricing will result in demand for home electricity storage in batteries. But also home thermal storage too, you
Re:I'm not sure why this isn't happening already (Score:4, Informative)
Till now almost all the power came from "guaranteed" generation and there was never distinction in retail prices.
Incorrect. There is no distinction for residential customers. There MOST DEFINITELY is a distinction for industrial customers. And committed capacity will cost you a lot.
People will schedule the dish washers, electric vehicle chargers, laundry etc to run on cheap non guaranteed circuits.
Some utilities do that already. You get "smart plugs" that are controlled by the utility in exchange for a small discount. These programs are pretty unpopular.
Re: (Score:2)
Residential customers theoretically negotiate using public utility commissions, protecting their interest and getting all the power of collective bargaining.
In reality the public utility commission is hand in glove with the utility and do not make it worthwhile for the customers to invest in smart plugs etc. In most jurisdictions they do not have peak/off peak rates. Ostensibly to simplify billing and avoid confusing the customers. So
Re: (Score:2)
Incorrect. There is no distinction for residential customers.
I have a smart meter at my house and I pay different rates depending on the time-of-day.
12 cents base. 25 cents from 2 to 7 pm. 7 cents from 2 am to 4 am.
You get "smart plugs" that are controlled by the utility in exchange for a small discount.
I don't have smart plugs. Just a meter than records time that power is used.
These programs are pretty unpopular.
They are popular if you have a need for a lot of nighttime power.
Usually because you are charging your EV.
Re: (Score:2)
Because the laws of physics and economics are so much different in France.
The way to make nuclear cheap is to agree on a standard plant design, and there are now several advanced ones to choose from, and build a hundred or more identical copies. If we recycle the spent fuel instead of letting it sit there for 100,000 years going to waste, we get a lot more uranium we don't have to mine and end up with 300-year waste that we can safely dump down any unused shaft in the desert.
Re: (Score:2)
The way to make nuclear cheap is to agree on a standard plant design, and there are now several advanced ones to choose from
Both Vogtle and Hinkley are standardized designs.
So far, standardized designs have NOT reduced cost overruns.
If we recycle the spent fuel
Recycling fuel is much more expensive than mining new fuel. It may reduce waste, but recycling is not a way to reduce costs.
Re: (Score:3)
When nuclear advocates claim it is cheap, they are basing their claim on the "Bullshit Number" that is used to get projects approved. After the decade of delays and cost overruns, the actual cost is three times that.
No. When nuclear advocates claim it is cheap they are basing their claim on project cost, without regulatory overhead which is literally a multiplier added to the project.
Me I like it. there's nothing more lucrative for a contractor than supporting a nuclear project since contractors bill effectively by the sheet of paper. That said I think a low point in my career was upgrading a safety system at a nuclear power plant. By the time we finished the installation we netted another project to rip that exact sam
Re: (Score:3)
Coal plants are throwing into the air as much radio-active materials every day as did Chernobyl or Fukushima accidents.
Bullcrap.
But asking coal plants to scrub their exhaust of radio-active materials is not even on the table.
Coal plant exhaust is not radioactive.
The radiation is in the fly ash. Mostly thorium, but also potassium. Thorium is not absorbed by biological systems and is not significantly dangerous. Potassium from coal is no more radioactive than the potassium already in the environment.
There are plenty of good reasons to oppose coal. "Radiation" isn't one of them.
Re: (Score:2)
Peltier junction efficiency is fuck-all. All that stuff is heavy. If you're going to launch something to deliver power back here it only really makes sense for it to be a solar power satellite. The receiver for an array of such is just a field of antennas. (Well, rectennas, technically.) They're what we should be saving GEO for.
Re: UseCase 1 (Score:2)
That may be tricky. The part behind the Peltier isn't cold like "touching liquid nitrogen" cold. Space is a vaccum and heat can only be lost by radiation. Too much radioactivity may make the Peltier meltier.
Re: (Score:3)
And you really think the actual experts have not thought of that? Here is news for you: They have.
This is completely infeasible for nuclear waste because of efficiency, instability of the waste and very bad chemical properties of the waste. Each one is already a killer. Also, sending this stuff into space completely negates any positive effects. What you send into space is not waste but the real deal: Plutonium 238. Anything else, you are just wasting space and weight allowance.