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

The "capacity factor" determines the amount of energy (product) delivered to the customers. With a capacity factor of only 18% it requires over four times the "rated capacity" of the power generation plant for a solar thermal powerplant to deliver the same MW of energy of either nuclear or coal. That means the cost of a solar thermal plant costs several times more to build than either a nuclear or coal fired powerplant because it requires over four times more rated capacity to produce the same amount of usable energy (product).

Of course the cost of labor related to solar thermal is far greater than either nuclear or coal when we consider that the powerplant needs to be four times larger than the nuclear or coal powerplant. The operating and maitenance costs have already been provided and for the same amount of energy delivered to the customer the O&M costs are properly calculated based upon the capacity factor then the solar thermal cost far more.

Solar thermal costs about three times as much to the consumer. That is an undeniable fact and that is why it is not financially viable today. The consumers can't afford it.

 

That what I think as well. But more economical methods can be developed in the future. That is why I think that future is in solar energy.

Ludwik Kowalski (see Wikipedia)
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Potentially true and we've seen major advances where today PV electrical generation appears to be more cost effective than solar thermal from what I've read. That wasn't even a consideration 30 years ago.

But it's going to be hard to overcome that 18% capacity factor because solar energy collection is limited to a relatively short period of time during the day. While a peak of 100 MW might be obtained for a couple hours around noon a solar plant doesn't produce any energy at midnight. They can save 50 MV of the 100 MW for use at midnight but that diminishes output at noon to 50 MV -actually more but we can see that the capacity is already cut at least in half.

 

The real issue isn't even cost. The real issue is that fossil carbon is killing the planet. We need to turn off the fossil plants, not just turn them down lower: off entirely. And you can't get there with renewables at any price, because their availability is too low and their generation is too intermittent. Which means if we go large scale solar and wind, we still need 80% (or more) spinning reserve to step in if the wind dies or the clouds move in. And that spinning reserve has to be reliable on a 24/7 basis.

Since hydro is tapped out and geothermal is limited, that leaves nuclear as the only viable option.

 

Coal CO2 emissions can be reduced by at least 40% using new "off the shelf" clean coal technology according to CleanCoal.org and particulate emissions can be virtually eliminated completely. While coal is still "dirty" it remains the least expensive form of electrical power generation. Unfortunately not a single large scale coal powerplant uses clean coal technology to my knowledge and our government is not mandating the retrofit of existing facilities as it should.

 

How is it that we're supposed to buy that solar panels, their high overhead and typical unreliable power outputs are supposed to be superior to simple mirror reflectors shining on a tube of fluid, producing superheated steam, the champion workhorse that nuclear and carbon has flaunted in opposition to PV for all these years?

Suddenly the nuke and carbon people are saying their steam is inferior to PV?

You can't have it both ways. Either nuke and carbon and solar thermal steam are inferior to PV or superior to it. Steam is steam. It doesn't care where it comes from as long as it's superheated. All three qualify. How again then are PVs better than coal or nuclear?

 

PV is not superior cost-wise to coal or nuclear but it is superior based upon cost to solar thermal according the the DoE. Coal, while it produces atmospheric pollution even with clean coal technology is the least expensive form of electrical generation. Nuclear, which creates no atmospheric pollution, is the second most cost effective. PV comes in third but is over twice as expensive as coal or nuclear. Solar thermal comes in 4th and is over three times more expensive than coal or nuclear.

 

Nuclear creates no atmospheric pollution?

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8AT_mLzrZY"]I-131 & C-137 Going Global.... Fukushima Radiation Contamination Japan - YouTube[/ame]

There is no 100% meltdown-proof reactor anywhere in the world. And when they pollute, it is some of the deadliest and longstanding pollutants known to the industrialized world.

 

LFTRs are 100% meltdown-proof. Their fuel is already liquid in normal operation.

 

Oh but their waste lives on and on and on and on and on....

I hope civilization lasts as long as the need to babysit that waste does. No guarantees a plague or some political upheaval won't leave our descendants with huge tumors growing out of their heads or lumpy tumorous legs the size of tree trunks. All just to produce the same steam we can with solar thermal.

I'll take the magnifying rays of the sun on a metal tube over that. An accident at a solar thermal steam generation plant just means an employee or two might go to the ER for steam burns. I think we can mitigate that.

 

Let's see, there have only been three nuclear reactors ever "melt down" and all three were based upon sixty year old technology. No recently built reactors have ever suffered any nuclear incidents much less a melt down.

This is the same idiotic assumption that could be made that no airplane can fly safely because the Comet (the first commercial jet airliner) was structurally flawed which lead to catastrophic structural failures.

Current nuclear powerplant designs have eliminated any risk of melt downs. Well at least as long as gravity exists so if we assume that gravity will continue to exist then current nuclear reactors cannot melt down as the safety features that safely shut down the reactor are based upon gravity.

 

When an airplane crashes, it doesn't render tens of thousands of square miles of land uninhabitable forever. If you consider "forever" the half-life of plutonium, which is about what, 24,000 years conservatively?

See the difference? When an airplane crashes it's at most a square mile of debris, a little fuel spill, some dead bodies that can be handled and buried. When even a carbon energy plant explodes, it's a few square miles, some atomospheric fallout of ash and whatnot that quickly becomes neutralized via chemistry in the environment's natural processes...some bodies that can be buried. When a solar thermal plant has a mishap, there will maybe be some steam burns; probably not even a body to bury.

But when a nuclear plant melts down [a situation we can tolerate at 0%] a vast region of the earth is poisoned forever. You can't even deal with the dead bodies of people and livestock for as far as the eye can see. They have to be stored ?? Where is it we can safely store nuclear waste? Oh, that's right: NOWHERE.

See the difference? I know you do. I know you know the difference. Pretending you don't know the difference is beyond irresponsible, it's reckless and endangering.

 

Thousands of square miles contaminated for 24,000 years. A rather large exaggeration of the facts. Even at Chernobyl the actual contamination area today can be contained by a single structure that it being placed over the reactor.

http://health.yahoo.net/news/s/ap/eu_ukraine_chernobyl_tourism

The actual site, excluding this containment structure, is being opened to tourism.

 

OK, forget about plutonium for now. Let's talk about cesium instead, with a much shorter half-life:

Bear in mind this article is from 2009. Fukushima is worse. 320 years for the shorter-lived cesium and all the associated health risks is for all intents and purposes "forever" in that section of Japan's bread basket so vital to its survival as a tiny island nation. And the sea around it, showing up with radioactive food supply also; their first "breadbasket".

 

Why don't we simply address the fact that both Chernobyl and Fukushima were 1960's nuclear powerplant designs and the Chernobyl didn't even meet the minimum safety standards for nuclear reactors at the time.

It is over 40 years later and the technology is nothing like it used to be back then. These are references to "stone age" technologies when compared to today's nuclear powerplant designs.

 

72-hour trickle-down water tanks mounted on the rooftops of power plants in the event that power shuts down and a meltdown is imminent, with the "new improved" designs for nuclear is the same as having a longer fuse on a keg of dynamite when you're locked in the room with it. The longer fuse isn't going to save you.

You don't like to talk about how expensive nuclear is and how heavily subsidized all the various phases of it are from mining to impossible waste storage.

Let's discuss that at length eh?

Or we could talk about how solar thermal steam doesn't need any of the steps from mining to waste issues given that it's fuel is free and good for the planet we live on. You know, the place we call home? You may want to mitigate destroying vast swaths of the earth in the name of greed, monopoly and subsidy gravy-trains for an elite group of soulless racketeers, but most people, including investors, are looking away from nuclear, "new and improved" or not. A lot of folks used to like roaming those caves in New Mexico..

 

You don't need water tanks of any kind with a LFTR. They're not water cooled. If power fails at a LFTR plant, the blower on the freeze plug stops blowing, the salt in the freeze plug melts, and the entire core liquid drains into the drain tank, where it is passively cooled, quickly and safely. You could leave a LFTR completely unattended during a power failure and it would safe itself without human intervention.

Yes let's.

About 80% of the construction cost of a conventional nuclear plant are for systems that either prevent a loss-of-coolant accident, or mitigate the damage if a loss-of-coolant accident occurs. But a LFTR can't have that kind of accident, because the liquids are at ambient pressure. If a pipe breaks, the liquid salt spills into the catchbasin where it is routed to the drain tank and cools normally and safely. That means you don't need a backup cooling system, a secondary backup cooling system, or a tertiary backup cooling system, and you don't need a giant containment building to contain a steam explosion which cannot occur with a LFTR.

So with 80% of those costs avoided, a LFTR will be substantially cheaper to build that current nuclear plants. And current nuclear plants are already 3 to 4 times cheaper than solar on a produced-Watt basis.

Current subsidies for solar power are also much higher than nuclear on a produced-Watt basis. And subsidies for LFTR will be much less than current nuclear, because many of the fuel processing and recycling steps will be avoided, and because you only need 1% of the mined ore of a uranium plant.

 

Nice try but the shutdown of the reactor occurs within just a few hours and also uses gravity. Once the reactor is shut down it doesn't require the cooling water.

A better analogy would be a longer fuse on a keg of blackpowder where water is being poured into the keg. If the fuse is long enough to get all of the powder wet so it won't burn then the fuse was long enough. In the case of nuclear reactors the keg of powder would have been full of water for about 2 1/2 days before the fuse reached the keg.

 

Yeah that shut down worked really well at Fukushima. The element of surprise cannot be overstated. Earthquakes operate like that. No time to plan, they're just suddenly upon you. And then you lose tens of thousands of square miles of land forever, poison the aquifers, sea, soils, agriculture and on and on FOREVER.

I'll take solar thermal steam over nuclear steam. Thanks. The turbines don't know the difference but the folks at Chernobyl and Fukushima sure do..

Plus, it's too (*)(*)(*)(*) expensive. Terrible investment. The subsidies we can no longer afford to pad the pocket of nuclear plant owners. The gig is up. Nuclear is done. The waste issue and lack of 100% infallibility has killed the industry.

 

Fukushima did not have these automatic cooling and shutdown systems that are gravity operated. It was basically 1960's nuclear powerplant technologies that are obsolete. What part of that isn't being understood?

And yes, steam is steam but it can be produced with low cost coal, with a nuclear reactor, or by burning $100 bills but burning $100 bills is a very expensive way to produce steam. Solar thermal is somewhere between coal and nuclear energy producing steam and burning $100 bills. It is a wonderful technology that is simply too expensive for the consumers today. People cannot afford to have their electrical bills double or triple. People are not going to give up buying groceries so they can have clean solar electrical production. They simply won't do it and for millions of people the increase in the cost of electrical power from solar thermal would literally take food off the table.

 

Fukushima was a stupid place to put a nuclear plant. It's on a very tectonically active island, and was close to the coastline and in danger of tsunamis. To use it as an example of a typical reactor is like using a Pinto as an example of a fuel efficient car's safety. It's just not a valid comparison.

 

The entire nation of Japan "was a stupid place to put a reactor". So why were they convinced to do so? Especially when geothermal steam was readily availible?

You DO realize nuclear reactors merely produce steam to run turbines right?

So if we have solar thermal steam with no mining, transportation or waste costs [extremely lowered overhead], why would ANYONE who isn't on prescribed thorazine in a padded room invest a single dime in nuclear? Is it to stay on the Taxpayer welfare check? After all, taxpayers bear the costs of radioactive mining, processing, threats to security, waste storage and disasters. If solar thermal came with a fraction of these liabilities you would never hear the end of it and why they would disqualify solar thermal steam from consideration.

And yet we're supposed to "feel sorry" for BigDirty because they've "been around a long time" and "are too big to fail".

Waaaaaa waaaa waaaaaaaaaaaaa...

Cry me a river. The same people who ruthlessly chant that the auto industry should've been left to fail are the same people who want Uncle Sam to pick up the lion's share of the cost of production with nuclear steam turbines.

I'm just about sick of the hypocrites and investors are getting wise to the horizon..

 

Geothermal steam must not be as usable as you think.

Of course.

Then invest in a company and do it. If it's as good as you say, you should be able to make a killing.

Good. If solar thermal is what you claim it is, it should be easy to start implementing.

 

Why is this false statement repeated? Based upon the capacity factor (percentage of power that is delivered to the customer based upon the total capacity rating) of only 18% for solar thermal the operation and maitenance costs of solar thermal is roughly three times the cost of either coal or nuclear power production. Even the capital investment costs are three times greater because of the extremely low capacity factor of solar thermal of only 18% when coal and nuclear both have a capacity factor of 90% or more.

It is the extremely low capacity factor of solar themal that results in the electrical costs to the customer tripling. It is the high cost which prevents solar thermal from being practical today. Most people simply can't afford it no matter how environmentally friendly it is.

 

There is no "extremely low" capacity. Talk about false statements. Steam superheated by focused sun rays to 300C is ample to run turbines. Steam is steam at that temperature. Where it comes from makes no difference whatsoever. So why not make it from a source that doesn't destroy entire countries with one accident? And one whose fuel is free? Only the criminally insane would promote Chernobyl/Fukushima-type steam over another completely benign one to keep a taxpayer welfare check coming in the form of collosal subsidies we have now and have always paid for nuclear steam.

Nuclear is done. This was announced very quickly after Fukushima by economists and then suddenly you stopped hearing about it. Testimony to the power of GE and its influence over media these days I suppose..

And on the subject of subsidies..

Good. Then you'll understand why in this strapped economy where energy is also a crisis, we must circumvent the normal market process, take the gravy train away from dangerous, expensive nuclear steam and give it instead to alternative ways of generating steam to run turbines.