New Techonolgy: Solar Thermal. This isn't Your Grandma's Solar Energy!

One ecological problem with nuclear is that DNA is very sensitive to distortion form radiation. And the tweaked DNA in wildlife near Chernobyl is being bred into new generations. And with zero-tolerance for mistakes in nuclear, well, that old antiquated method of boiling water is out the window.

So there's the "it would be too hard on the environment" argument debunked...

Compared to the costs of permitting, erecting, insuring, running, mining uranium or thorium, waste storage, waste disposal, terrorist issues and so forth, nuclear method of boiling water is so very much more expensive than a power grid that your argument just sounds silly.

So there's the "it would be too expensive to send power to the East Coast from the Southwest" argument debunked...

And the latest now is 800+MW [up from 500MW in another recent post..it keeps climbing..lol..] Kimberlina solar thermal plant is a demonstration plant. The first nuclear reactors, now decommissioned were a joke. The improvements will come with solar thermal. Several plants are slated to be built and are estimated to be 80MW with more refined designs. So build ten of those still at a fraction of the cost of one nuclear plant construction. And once built, the solar thermal plants start turning profit. Nuclear plants never really do. In fact, with the subsidies and other financial crutches nukes need to stand on it's been estimated that it would be cheaper to buy power from another source. In fact, the costs with nuclear per KW [the true costs, not the glorified give-me-another-permit costs shown to the public] are so high even without calculating long-term storage of waste that many experts are left scratching their heads as to why we ever implemented these type of water-boilers in the first place?

So there's the big three:

1. "Ecological concerns about solar steam"...[vs nuclear? ..lol...]

2. "Cost concerns of having to send electricity through a grid" [vs just the cost of nuclear permitting..lol..]

3. "Not enough power to make it worth it"...[so build more plants in tandem still at a fraction of the cost of nuclear, only fresnel solar thermal produced a profit where nuclear never does.. The only "profit" made off nuclear is by the government shouldering the true costs while operators pocket "profits"..that aren't really profits because they were never required to figure true overhead].

That's it. We're done with it. From now on we boil water with the sun instead of nuclear.

 

Even on the equator the angle of the sun varies. From 22.5N to 22.5S.

 

Just a nitpick. At 45 degrees that is 70.7% of area exposed to the sun. At 60 degrees it become 50%. Basic trig.

 

You do not understand the concept of my anamorphic converging lens. I can live with that.


It doesn't have to be that efficient frankly. It has to heat a fluid more than 100c.

 

This is some of the coolest stuff I've read in a while and an example of what makes this place worth coming to. Thanks for the post!

 

What evidence do you have to support the claim in bold?

 

This is just plain ridiculous.

Deserts are not "rich" biodiversity-wise - simply by definition. Of course there are many fragile and important desert ecosystems and these deserve to be protected - but your claim that solar thermal collectors would pose some insurmountable hazard is simply nonsense. Especially when considered enormous amount of mining that goes on in Australian deserts

This is Olympic Dam in the South Australian desert:

Are you seriously trying to tell us that placing some mirrors has more impact that the toxic slag heaps and tailings dams?

 

I don't believe that anyone disputes the Chermobyl was a disaster but it was also built by the USSR without many safeguards that were even common with nuclear powerplants designed in the United States at the time. As previously noted the safety of today's nuclear reactors are lightyears from these early designs. Today's designs produce only a small fraction of the low level nuclear waste and cannot melt down like what happened at Chernobyl or even in Japan.

The potential for a nuclear disaster with current designs is viturally zero.

Of note comparing one potential environment problem with another potential environmental problem does not dispute that both would represent a potential environmental problem. It also doesn't address the probability. Nuclear could have a high or low potential and with current designs that potential is virtually nil while the impact on the ecosystem of large solar collection "farms" could be classified as moderate. To assume that solar energy plants present no environment concerns is false.

Yes, permitting costs for nuclear power are excessive today because every nuclear powerplant has to start at step one in the regulatory process. Instead we need to approve a design and then limit regulatory permitting based solely upon changes to that baseline design. As a parallel example we can look at the certification of commercial aircraft. The ceritification of the 747-400 was based upon the prior certification of the 747-300 with only the changes to the design being addressed. The mining of fuel materials is only a small cost of nuclear power generation. We can actually mine uranium from seawater and while it costs 44 times the cost of mining on land it doesn't fundamentally change the cost of the power produced. There is so much stored strong nuclear force energy in uranium that the cost of the fuel is insignificant. Storage of low level nuclear waste, the only nuclear waste that requires storage, is relatively inexpensive and Yucca Mountian has already been built to store this material. Protecting nuclear powerplants against terrorist attacks is not a costly proposition and, in fact, none of the issues presented are costly.

Of note I didn't state that it was cost prohibitive to transmit electrical energy and both nuclear and solar cost the same amount to tranmit over powerlines. My statement was that when energy is both produced and consumed at the same location, such as using solar to heat a home and water for the home, there are virtually no costs or energy loss at all. Solar energy is most effective when it is both produced and used at the same location. If we have 1 million homes that can reduce energy used from the powergrid by a MW then that is one MW that does not need to be produced by any form of powerplant.

Yes, the Kimberlina solar thermal plant is a demonstration plant and it adds production of electrical energy by expanding the square footage of collector area. The sun only produces so much energy per square foot and technology cannot change that. We can gain some minor increases through technology but as we've seen with photovoltiac solar energy collection efficiency can be increased but it is generally not cost effective. The criteria has to be dollars per unit of energy produced. For example, we could enclose the Kimberlina powerplant in a vacuum which would greatly increase it's efficiency but it would be cost prohibitive to do so.

Once again this would be evaluated as a factor of probabability to potential for harm to the environment. Certainly nuclear has a higher potential but it has an extremely low probability bordering on almost nothing with new designs. Solar has a high probability but a very low potential when we address converting literally hundreds of square miles of desert to solar energy farms.

The cost of sending electricity through the power grid is identical for both solar and nuclear. The cost of producing the powerplants is virtually identical. The difference is related to operational costs and the cost of operation for solar powerplants is dramatically higher than for nuclear energy.

Once again just keeping the collectors clean for solar is a huge cost. We haven't even addressed the cost of replacement of all the Fresnel lens after one good desert sand storm that could destroy them all. I've seen cars stripped bare to the metal by sand storms in the Mojave Desert near Palmdale CA. They don't happen often but they only need to happen once to destroy all of the lens on the solar panels.

The construction costs are roughly the same but the solar powerplant is far more labor and cost intensive after construction. I haven't seen any facts related to hidden government costs but those would certainly apply to both solar and nuclear powerplants. One cost for solar, for example, that is generally omitted is the cost of the land because there often built on government land. The land still has value even if it's desert and that would be a hidden cost. I would be interested in knowing the hidden government costs for both but so far this information has not been provided.

If solar energy is so cost effective then why hasn't private enterprise jumped all over it? As noted all of the techology has been around for decades and hasn't changed. If there was a potential for profit we would have see thousands of solar energy farms being built around the Southwest by energy corporations. By way of analogy collecting solar energy using solar thermal steam generation is similiar to collecting solar energy using wind turbines. Without government subsidizes there would be no wind farms in the United States. They aren't cost effective.

As I've repeatedly stated there are some very cost effective uses of solar thermal power but large scale electrical generation simply isn't one of them.

 

If water is being used there isn't really any stored energy at 100C. At sea level it would represent zero pounds of pressure. The boiling point of water is based upon pressure and that boiling point increases as the pressure increases.

For example to generate 50 psig pressure water must be heated to 138C/181F because that is the boiling point of water at that pressure. I'm unaware of any turbines that work efficiently at such a low pressure as the efficiency of a turbine is related to the pressure used to turn it. We could probably compare a 50 psig turbine generator to a 19th century steam engine as far as the power it produces. Higher pressure steam turbines are far more efficient in converting heat to mechanical energy which in turn is converted into electrical energy. At a 1000 psig water would need to be heated to 285C/545F.

In all of this we're starting with 420 btu's of sun energy per square foot in outer space minus the loss of energy as the light goes through the atmosphere, minus the loss of energy in converting the light to heat, minus the loss of energy in converting the heat to mechanical energy, minus the loss of energy in turning the menchanical energy into electricity.

When all of this is calculated then the number of square feet of collector area can be calculated. If we consider our actual electrical energy needs it would require thousands of square miles of collector area and I would state that my rough estimate of cost of $200/sq ft is probably relatively accurate. With almost 28,000,000 square feet in a square mile the cost for thousands of square miles of collectors is staggering.

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/boiling-point-water-d_926.html

 

No. With current designs that potential is NOT virtually nil. That is pure nonsense.

The environmental impact of mining, processing and enriching uranium fuel is not "nil". And even if the risk of impact during operation could approach nil - there is an awful lot of impact in achieving that goal from concrete production alone.

And we have not even started discussing decommissioning and disposal.

 

It's called gravity.

http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/gravity

BTW I never mentioned whether it was probable, which it is not, but it is possible. A person can drown with a pint of water but it isn't very probable that it will happen.

 

Ummm... the sun falling on the pipe in the desert in a black box would be over 100c. I was not making estimates... I was just saying that it doesn't have to be that efficient... and knew that it would have to be over the boiling point of water.

A 100 diopter lens will boil your water. I am not really trying to argue my concept. I will make it, then we can argue.

If you have any reasons you can think of that it would not work, fully understanding the concept, I am happy to field them. I had not, for instance, considered the change of path over the year... but don't think it will matter much.

 

While the government is still reviewing nuclear power production safety there is a lot of good information on the following website.

http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/regulatory/research/reactor-rsch.html#state

Having worked with another engineer that had been involved with nuclear energy we discussed the state of the art in nuclear powerplant design. Remember that a new nuclear powerplant has not been built in the US in decades. Every conceivable flaw in nuclear powerplant design has been addressed and with addition of more recent advanced technology since the last powerplants in the US the safety features have been improved dramatically. The designs are earthquake proof, tsunami proof, volcano proof, terrorist proof and mechanical failure proof. About the only real risk would be if one was hit by a meteorite large enough to destroy the containment vessel and even preventative measures are in place to even address that. Of course the odds against that happening are literally astronomical.

Yes, there are always risk and environmental factors related to the materials for the construction of anything. Concrete was mentioned and of course there are issues related to it just as there are issues related to producing glass for Fresnal lens or the steel piping for the miles of plumbing and the insulation required for a solar powerplant. People often tout electric cars but forget the copper mining related to it or the production of electricity by coal that is used to charge the batteries.

Decommision costs are already a part of the cost equation for nuclear energy and are estimated at being between 15%-17% of th total cost. It is included in the billing costs to the custormers. What are the replacement costs for solar collectors and how often will they need to be replaced? How often does the thousand of miles of plumbing need to be replaced?

I can compare solar to geothermal as both are "clean" energy but what we've learned from geothermal is that new geothermal wells have to be drilled every 5-10 years typically. They cool off the rock where they are drawing heat from and the "holes" lose their energy producing heat. Solar panels, while we don't have to worry about the sun running out of energy, still have a serviceable lifespan that must be addressed becaused they will have to be replaced.

Once agian I'm an advocae for the use of solar thermal power but I find it ineffective from a cost/energy unit at this time. The attached table reflects that the cost of energy for solar thermal is actually more than photovoltaic electrical production and is well over twice as much as advanced nuclear power and over three times as much as coal produced electricity. It is the most expensive from of electricity production on the table.

 

You have to be well versed in Palin gibberish partisan hack speak in order to understand ridiculous statements like that.

Listen to Rush Limbaugh or watch Fox Noise and you'll begin to understand the language of the intellectually dishonest. In our ever diverse country it's good to at least understand another language... even if it's the language of troglodytes.

 

My jaw has hit the table several times while reading this thread. I am shocked... SHOCKED that I am actually learning something from someone's posts and not just being subjected to partisan gibberish.

 

some basic steam turbine theory, 8 pages of pdf written at a high school level which should help clear up some misunderstandings here.


http://http://www.iffco.nic.in/applications/brihaspat.nsf/0/fddd5567e90ccfbde52569160021d1c8/$FILE/turbine.pdf


at a 40 degree latitude ( Columbus Ohio) during a 8 hour day you have a average 600 Watts per sq. meter of energy ( 2048 BTUs) . That is it. Basic thermodynamics tells you that at atmospheric pressure it takes 1 BTU to raise 1 pound to water 1 degree F until you get to 212 F then to get the change of state from water to vapor you have to add another 970 BTUs, to get the vapor any hotter than 212 degrees you have to raise the pressure

here is a link which has the basic steam tables

http://www.boilerroomservices.com/Facts/SteamTables.pdf

there is only so much energy there guys and gals and there is no system efficient that will convert 100% of the energy in the sunlight to electrical energy

 

It is funny though because sometimes even engineers can be fooled into believing there is more energy that actually exists.

Before I took over as project engineer/manager for a solar energy company that was developing collectors for heating swimming pools the prior engineers had been able to document a collection of 470 btu's/sq ft of energy using an unglazed collector. This was heating water from 70F to 80F but they missed a consideration. The day they did this the ambient air temperature was in the mid=-90's so they weren't just capturing solar energy from the light of the sun but also the energy from the surrounding air as well.

So it is true that when you start out with a certian amount of energy there is no more energy than that and during each conversion of energy from one type of energy to another type of energy there is a loss of energy. The fewer the conversions the less the loss of energy. That is why converting solar energy to heat a swimming pool is so efficient. It only converts light energy into heat energy which results in only a singular loss of energy. As also noted because swimming pool water is often below the ambient air temperature some heat from the air is also transferred to the water through the solar collector through conduction.

 

Oh, you're talking about older technology again and comparing it to using solar concentrators. That's pretty shadey. Keep it honest OK?

That's like saying ,"oh, I remember working on the Edsel, man those cars really were terrible. So naturally, cars are terrible".

Solar steam works. It works well. And it is easy to install and there are gazillions of acres to produce it on in the US. Use molten salt batteries for night generation or merely augment that low-use time with a little carbon. The carbon footprint is a thumbnail of previous and the sun is free. Once your installation is set up, there's no mining, no shipping, no security worries, no DNA distortion, no 24,000 year babysitting project for the no waste produced..nada...nothing.

And that scares people with stock in nuclear and BigOil. They should be changing over. They should've been changing over to solar-steam stock already. Consider this thread your market "head's up".

Actually our thirst for oil and coal will never end..unfortunately...there are so many uses for them besides producing energy. But with 120 degree heat on the East Coast, serial-tornados and hurricanes and sub-freezing streches that are abnormal for Winter, we need to accept that there is climate change accelerated by carbon use. There just is. And so to be responsible we keep using oil but we phase it out. We keep using coal but we phase it out.

As for nuclear...NO WAY JOSE'. Chernobyl and Fukushima showed us there is 0% mitigation in a nuclear accident. And since humans and their inventions are never 100% foolproof, using nuclear to boil water and run turbines cannot be.

 

But... you are doing the same thing when it comes to nuclear power? You're criticizing designs from the 1960s when there are new passively safe options on the table today. You're literally saying "the old nuclear reactors have a risk of meltdown, so all nuclear reactors must be a danger."

What is new about what you're talking about? Fresnel lenses are very old, as is concentrated solar power. What recent innovations make this more practical today than in the previous 30 years?

It kind of works, but as others have pointed out to you, it's expensive and not terribly efficient.

Land that is not free, and installation is hardly 'easy'.

No, you just have to keep replacing concentrators, working fluids, plumbing, motors, solar trackers, etc. You have to keep cleaning them and aligning them, and continually expanding them. And yes, you would still need to provide security, even if the site is not a nuclear proliferation risk (and there are plenty of reactor designs that aren't).

You keep talking about 'DNA distortion' as if it's some major long-term problem. It can cause cancer, yes, in individuals, because individual cells got messed up. That doesn't get passed on through generations.

Not really a 24,000 year babysitting project either. Fill the site, seal it up. The low-level waste that remains radioactive for ages upon ages is not very energetic and not very dangerous. You really worry about the isotopes with very short half-lives, not the isotopes with very long ones.

The technology for concentrators hasn't really changed in 30 years. It's not a threat because it's not a practical alternative.

What Fukushima showed is that we need to move to modern passively safe reactors, not rely on 50 year old designs. Reactors that even absent any human intervention or outside support could not melt down.

Risk is about magnitude and about probability. Something certain to cause low level problems can be as risky as something that causes extreme problems very infrequently.

 

have they invented a new improved sun which delivers more energy per square meter in the last 50 years? you really need to get a grasp on basic thermodynamics and physics, there is no magic energy source, there is no magic energy storage, and the quest for a cheap energy source to replace carbon based energy is the holy grail, as soon as someone finds it they will be richer than BP, Shell, and Exxon combined.

 

So in other words, at the very mention of something which could replace Nuke Power, which the RWers who feed you all your opinions have told you must be protected at all cost, you start babbling off bullsh1t that you don't even try to support, in an attempt to discredit "the enemy" (i.e. new technology).

Okay got it.

 

Steam is steam. People can call it "the enemy" if they want.

Making steam with radiation is the enemy. Ask the children of Chernobyl which method they'd rather use to boil water. Of course, many of them have had throat or thyoid cancers so they may or may not be able to answer you..

 

(*)(*)(*)(*), there's been tons of grain silo explosions in Russia, we'd better not eat wheat, because it causes dangerous explosions.

 

Are you really trying to make an equivalency between nuclear disaster and grain silo explosions?

Well, congratulations you win this months most outrageous grasping for false equivalence award.

 

Yeah, that was a terrible grain silo explosion over there at Chernobyl. All those poor kids getting cancer for decades from all that grain around on the ground.

And that silo in Fukushima. Wow! They're still trying to put that one out. 50-100 mile exclusion zones are pretty extreme though...it was just a grain silo for crying out loud.. I wonder if a grain-silo explosion has ever gotten into an aquifer that people get their ag and drinking water from and polluted it for thousands of years?