Nuclear energy is more expensive than renewables, CSIRO report finds

I love people who………..

Aus has a LOT of sunshine and we are innovating like crazy to bring NEW solutions to the table. We are also investing in things like “green iron” , green hydrogen and green ammonia. Watch this space

 

Hmmmm hang tight as we may see Thorium reactors yet. Lots of promise in relation to affordability, reliability, safety and less radioactive waste

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thori...ins,less environmentally damaging fuel source.

 

But but but “my backyard”…….. sometimes I despair of seeing people on this forum moving to a global outlook.

China is building solar farms over 250 acres in area


https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180822-why-china-is-transforming-the-worlds-solar-energy

 

The problem with falsely labeled renewables is first the false name they aren't renewable, and the lack of energy.

 

This just does not follow the science. Home rooftop solar panels have to be subsidized with coal/natural gas generation 16 hours a day or have a very expensive battery system that takes a big portion of the daylight solar energy to recharge, or do without a lot of the time. Nuclear energy was priced out of the market by government fiat and regulation, not inherent costs. France still relies on nuclear for the predominance of their power. You can rely a little more on wind generation but there is no such thing as a roof top wind farm

 

Wind farms and recycling hydro-power systems etc also help reduce the need to burn fossil fuels.

But is France and other countries building new nuclear power systems, which can't be built overnight anyway?

 

It has been estimated that for solar to provide all of today's electric power in the US it would require about 22,000 square mile of solid solar panel surface, about equivalent to to area of Lake Michigan. Solar panels do not reflect much back into space because of the way they are made, But their efficiency in converting solar to electric is around 20 % which means 80% or so of the solar energy hitting that solar farm is converted into heat. If the solar energy hitting that 22,000 square mile solar farm is 1000 watts per square meter that's 46 billion watts converted to heat over a roughly 10 hour period of solar rays. I have not done the math on how much that heats up the atmosphere but as Ted Turner said. "It's damn hot hot there!" Of course that has no effect for 14 hours a day when solar panels are generating no electric power. We are simply drawing it out of the 160 GWhr batteries.

 

Not to mention the requirements to manufacture them. These are not grown like plants, they require extracting a lot of raw materials from the earth, power to refine them, then power to produce the final product and transportation to the destination.

In reality, they really don't do much, as the majority of the "savings" were already expended to make them in the first place.

TANSTAAFL

 

Some areas are more suited to solar panels and some areas are more suited to wind turbines. No one has said that one system should only be used. The claim was that transmitting solar panel generated electricity down transmission lines adds to heat loss which ignores the fact that this loss occurs with all electricity transmission.

Coal is not 100% efficient and produces many toxic by-products including heat which would not have been released if not burnt. Coal burning also produces gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. Coal pits are also black which again leads to "it's damn hot hot there". In England the area know as the black country was aptly named.

 

You apparently have not kept up with your reading.

 

Nope! Just read more widely than astroturf websites

 

Who has estimated that? Plus you have plenty of sources of freaking geothermal!!

 

Wait….. The new vanadium batteries and iron redox flow batteries are going to replace coal

 

Read and learn.


Nuclear power generation is likely to break records in 2025 as more countries invest in reactors to fuel the shift to a low-carbon global economy, while renewable energy is likely to overtake coal as a power source early next year, data has shown.Jan 24, 2024

Nuclear power output expected to break global records in 2025

The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com › environment › jan › nu...

They say new projects at the lab could make nuclear energy significantly more obtainable, increasing its availability for regular civilian use. For the first time in half a century, the laboratory is working on a new reactor, dubbed MARVEL by its creators.Mar 29, 2024

Can nuclear power make a comeback?

Courthouse News Service
https://www.courthousenews.com › can-nuclear-power-...

Over the past decade, reactor safety has been enhanced substantially and more versatile reactor technology has become available. This has helped catapult nuclear back to being a strong contender for generating dispatchable, affordable and CO₂-free energy.Aug 24, 2023

The nuclear energy comeback: these countries lead the way

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd.
https://spectra.mhi.com › the-nuclear-energy-comeback...

Vogtle 4 To Enter Commercial Operation

Vogtle Unit 4 is expected to enter commercial operation in 2024. For the second year in a row, the United States will be adding a new AP1000 reactor to its fleet. Plant Vogtle is expected to bring Unit 4 online in Waynesboro, Georgia in the first quarter of year.Jan 16, 2024

4 Nuclear Energy Storylines to Watch in 2024

energy.gov
https://www.energy.gov › articles › 4-nuclear-energy-sto...

 

What do I keep telling you about not mixing up good science with poor journalism??

https://world-nuclear.org/informati...neration is projected to,2020 to 7.2% in 2050.

 

And if we had a battery to store the excess electricity from our roof solar system then we could go off-grid.

 

You've oversimplified the claim, and I don't think you're fully grasping the problem I'm attempting to communicate. I have not ignored entropy. I am not ignoring the fact that traditional grid infrastructure loses energy from source to load.

What I'm claiming is that generating solar energy in one time zone and transmitting it to time zones where it is needed loses far more energy than energy generated locally. This disparity is so great that it is counter productive to the intended environmental goals.

The problem, as I outlined in my post about California is that solar production peaks at a time when the load on the grid is greatly reduced. This window of peak is typically about 4 hours per day. It's called peak solar. During this time most people are at work, so the per person energy usage actually decreases. People are all sharing the same energy at work. When they go home the per person energy energy usage increases because individual homes share power with fewer people. The demand on the grid is highest when people wake up, take showers, make breakfast, start their day, return home, make dinner, watch TV, play fortnight, and crank the AC so they can sleep.

Since we're talking about a 4 hour window, we'd have to shift the power 4 time zones ahead and 4 time zones backwards to meet these demands because the peak is only happening within 4 of them from 10AM - 2pm and we use the power at 7AM and 8PM. Just look at California's demand trend from yesterday.

https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx#section-demand-trend.

The demand starts to increase at about 5AM, peaks at 7AM and drastically drops just as the solar in the state begins to come online. To supply that 5AM energy from solar, it would have to come from somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic ocean some 4000 miles away. That same location should also be sending power back the other way to cover the evening demand that's occurring in India, Russia and China. Every 4 hours around the globe we would require an amount of solar generation large enough to push energy forward in time and backward in time around the globe. And that's just one aspect of the challenge associated with the idea that we can ship solar energy to where it's needed.

The biggest issue is that need for local power regulation of the grid. Loads on the grid are not evenly distributed. You can't just push the needed energy in California through the infrastructure that supplies Tennessee, for example. Such a surge would cook every refrigerator and AC unit in the state. This means the station out in the middle of the Atlantic would need dedicated transmission to California. The one in California would need dedicated transmission to Japan, or where-ever it's supplying. This type of system would call for a massive increase in the use of resources and put a heavy strain on the environment that the transmission passes through.

Then, once the energy gets to California from the Atlantic it still needs to be regulated to meet the instantaneous demand on the grid. This demand is not constant and it fluctuates every time someone flicks on a switch and generates a load or flicks off a switch and sheds load. In our current local generation model, the energy can be instantaneously ramped both up and down to constantly match the demand curve. Solar can't do that from 4000 miles away. By the time it senses a problem, the problem has already caused damage. This means when demand drops locally you have to just dump it into an unnecessary local load, the ground for example or the excess voltage will pop your grid. When the demand increases you have to fire up a natural gas generator or the entire local grid fries from the excess current. So more energy isn't just lost in transmission. More is lost in regulation as well.

Third problem: reactive power. Solar panels cannot provide it. In all AC circuits there are three important components. Resistance, capacitance, and inductance. Capacitance and inductance in a circuit have a property called reactance. This property causes a phase shift between the period of time when voltage is at its peak and current is at its peak in an AC circuit. This shift can cause times when voltage and current are 180 degrees out of phase with each other. Power is voltage times current. We measure it in Watts. When everything is in phase voltage is positive while current is positive and when voltage is negative current is negative. Multiplying the two will always produce a positive number for power. If there is a time when the voltage is positive while the current is negative, the grid feels this as energy being delivered to the grid by the load. It's essentially a negative power. Power companies account for this shift in phase locally. Much of it happens automatically in their generators because the generators DO supply reactive power. They are constantly maintaining the frequency of the electricity, and the phase of voltage and current to prevent this from happening. This is extremely difficult using a non reactive source that is 4k miles away. This process consumes (wastes) lots of energy.

 

There is a good reason geothermal is a hard sell to a lot of people. It can be very expensive and very destructive.

 

I've been searching around for a bit for data regarding California's grid frequency stability. I haven't looked too hard, but it would shed some light on the difficulty in maintaining grid stability with a whole bunch of asynchronous solar supply during the day. My guess is that there are a whole bunch of unused generators spinning in the background just to store the inertia needed to regulate frequency.

 

This is the best I can find

https://www.caiso.com/informed/Page...StakeholderInitiatives/FrequencyResponse.aspx

There's a lot of talk about increasing tariffs on consumers with bad power factors...

 

Agreed the start up for geothermal is expensive but the USA is already one of the biggest users of geo in the world. There are plans to increase it as well by using “hot rocks” rather than natural hot springs.

 

Vanadium and iron redox flow batteries = scalable to grid size and a very long life or you can use recycled lithiumm ion batteries in banks.

 

Vanadium redox battery
Specific energy 10–20 Wh/kg (36–72 J/g)

LiOn Battery
Specific energy 200-300 Wh/kg.

Grid level storage? I don't think so. Your daily household usage is about 26 to 33 kWh. Let's use the high end figure for Vanadium density, and the low end figure for usage. That battery for just your home would weigh 1300 kg. About as much as your car. How many homes are in your town? Figure a parking lot with a car parked in it for every home in your town.

 

The hot rock method is “enhanced geothermal”. These operations often cause earthquakes. Some have to be shut down permanently after nearby areas have buildings destroyed and people injured.

Until we get better at predicting how existing known faults and unidentified faults will be affected, it’s very risky business. And very expensive to develop a site that must be abandoned because it’s causing too much seismic activity.

 

That is true but ignores the logistics. It is possible to put a gas fired generator in the middle of a big city adjacent to where the users are and lose very little in the transmission. However the solar farm might have to be hundreds if not thousands of miles away and lose a ton in the transmission.

All very true, but don't forget that natural gas also emits CO2 just not as much per KWHr as coal -- someone tell Pelosi.