Cough tread-wheels in prisons cough
1 Like
There is also the small matter of that deal being for the development of mini nuclear, not the construction thereof. That 2050 timescale suggests that even a pilot reaction is perhaps 20 years out. I personally think there is a role for nuclear, but am very leery of the actual performance record of nuclear. It has proven to be exorbitantly expensive, its proponents always arguing that it is cheap except for those pesky waste/refit/safety costs. When put it in a properly competitive power market, nuclear has needed absurd subsidies and/or vastly preferential market rules simply to avoid becoming a stranded asset.
So, given how cheap and comparatively benign photovoltaics are, mini nuclear would seem to me to be a side bet. The immediate course has to be massively increasing the level of renewables integration, especially PV. I have slowly come around to the idea that even with that mediocre ~50% round trip efficiency, hydrogen is going to make sense.
3 Likes
Yes, correct on the deal is only for research only, still encouraging I feel. Smaller plants seem to make sense to me for some unjustifiable reason.
Agreed on the upfront cost too. Recent projects are clear evidence of this but I do wonder if thereās room for smaller plants near existing sites that are due / undergoing decommissioning? Some of the infrastructure being already in place may present a saving worth considering. Again I havenāt seen the numbers and Iām not sure we will yet.
Iām also wondering how much further development we actually need given that we have used small reactors in submarines (sorry @Flobs) for some time so the basic technology is there I would have thought. Perhaps the goal is to consider alternative fuels?
On PV I was reading that the CO2 from nuclear is far less than solar. Is that correct?
I have seen that claim, and I am dubious. The vast majority of the lifecycle emissions of photovoltaics come from the energy consumed in the process of producing silicon crystals (either the Czrolaski or Siemens processes). The actual output of PV cells emits no CO2 at all, as a semiconductor process. By comparison, nuclear also has zero direct emissions, but it is difficult for me to believe that the lifecycle footprint of that much concrete in particular is much less - especially because across the nuclear industry, the actual lifetime of reactors has frequently been so far below the planned.
1 Like
I agree. Iām struggling to see how unless its linked to energy produced or something. Iād ideally like to see the study on this.
Short term though Iām not sure of any other option that can meet our current energy needs without a real step change in consumption or energy saving technologies.
There isnāt going to be a single option, it will be a portfolio of alternative generation, improved efficiency, and reduced consumption. Wind and PV are now so cheap that the generation side is genuinely competitive (in fact, lower LCOE than anything else in much of the world), but intermittency forces the inclusion of other sources - hence the rather nasty surges in gas demand in the UK with low wind episodes.
Energy storage has shown real promise with the dramatic reduction in costs over the past decade, but it seems only a matter of time before we come up hard against the fundamental reality of the quite limited amount of lithium in the world.
2 Likes
I find the prospect of solid-state batteries and other types of batteries rather intriguing. I remember reading quite recently about industrial-scale towers of batteries, but instead relying on gravity or water. The idea being that you use the excess energy to lift a weight or pump water up to a height, and then when you need it, you harness the energy of the weights being lowered. Itās not perfectly efficient, but it seems to be a good alternative.
1 Like
I have seen a little on those towers, but I am not quite sure I see the point, given that pumped hydro storage can get up to an 85% round trip efficiency.
I will be quite curious to see how the expected Toyota electric vehicle using solid-state batteries performs - that was supposed to be this year.
I think the pumped hydro systems require more space? Either way though a 85% efficiency is still quite good as storage for essentially free energy, and would help a lot to deal with the idea that solar/wind are only useful some of the time.
A very close family friend spent 20 years decommissioning old reactors. The stories he told were stranger than fiction. I came up with the solution. Dig a very big hole in a very geologically sound area, build the reactor in it. Run it till itās done then back fill with concrete.
Iām sure thereās not a single designer of reactors that has considered that idea and dismissed it for some reason. Access to sufficient cooling water would be one reason that springs to my uneducated mind. The risk to aquifers would be another.
That said I do wonder how much decommissioning was in peoples minds when the early reactors were designed and built.
I get that nuclear waste is toxic/harmful but what if it didnāt have to be? What progress has there been in transforming what makes it harmful? Can radiation itself be harnessed and/or consumed?
Disclaimer. I havenāt watched the Godzilla movies.
Fundamentally, we use radioactive material in a fairly primitive way. We produce an exothermic fission reaction, and harness part of the radiation. The part of the spectrum that has significant thermal energy is what we harness. Our usage of the types of EM involved in the ionizing radiation produced by nuclear reactions is marginal, nowhere near the sort of scales required to take off or use the output of a fission reactor.
1 Like
From my vague memories of chemistry lessons radiation is basically the elements was of decaying into a stable element.
So I think the question is there a way of speeding process up. Not sure that there is.
Reactors have all sorts of radiation but the highest energy one - gamma cannot be captured, itās hard enough to stop it āleakingā out
1 Like
Cannot currently be captured, maybe?
It is sort of remarkable how the blatant falsehood that the fossil fuel industry has 503 delegates is now being repeated by global media as unchallenged fact. It is an incredibly dishonest sleight of hand, claiming that any business association that has a single delegate from an oil and gas company is therefore an oil and gas association. We have someone attending, and as a wind/PV/small hydro developer, it is patently absurd that she is counted among the oil and gas delegates - when in fact, within the discussions of the business association, we are very frequently on the other side of the argument from them.
1 Like
Their wavelength is so short they pass through the atoms of any substance anyone has ever tried to reflect them with. So, ācurrentlyā, but in the sense of no one can really imagine how to do it.
1 Like
But alsoā¦
Iām wrong (again)
I found this reply
Gamma photons do not lend themselves to conversion into heat easily. Typically, we need gamma photons to be convertible ultimately into electricity to make it commercially useful.
Inducing the photoelectric effect can produce an extremely low electron current directly via exposure of a metal surface to gamma photons, or Compton scattering can result in the effective conversion / translation of the gamma photons into infra-red photons, thereby radiating heat, however again, this is an extremely inefficient process
1 Like
Well they had me fooled I admit.
Welcome to how the world works I guess. Everything gets twisted making it a minefield to pick through at the best of times.