Alternative to nuclear electric power generation

[marko]

It has not escaped my attention that a number of the current climate activists were the same people protesting outside my nuclear generation plant in the 80s and blocking the road while I was trying to get to work. But I don't think there is some hidden agenda. Just poorly informed, illogical and emotionally driven people.

Do I think the earth is warming? Yes, we can measure it. Do I think it is anthropogenic? Most likely it is. Do we need to set our hair on fire over the issue? No. We can't ignore it, but I think we can move forward with a measured, multipronged approach that is sound from a scientific and engineering standpoint, without crashing the world economy.

And I would say to many of the currently young activists - change your major to engineering, get a degree and help work on the solution instead of performatively protesting in the street.

+1000 Nice post.

 

[ERD50]

Originally Posted by JoeWras .... I'll admit I'm probably going to be tone deaf on the GW issue until the GW alarmists at least consider nuclear again. Their complete disregard of nuclear exposes that there is a larger agenda. My opinion.

Most do. Please don’t think that people concerned about global warming all think the same way about every topic.
For me, I find the next gen reactors used in Europe far superior to US reactors. We need to move to better reactors, not fewer.

Some do, clearly (Patrick Moore as one high profile example), But most? That's tough to say, do you have a source for that?

Regardless, the major, high visibility environmental 'mouthpieces' like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club are very vocal in their anti-nuke stance. Among the top 10 environmental groups, are any pro-nuke?

I found this list, and none of these organizations appear in any "top"list I could find:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-nuclear_movement#Organizations_supporting_nuclear_power

edit/add: Here's maybe a btter list, "Nuclear Inclusive" rather than simply pro-nuclear:

Pronuclear and “Nuclear-Inclusive” Non-Profit Organizations

http://climatecoalition.org/pronuclear-groups/

Still not any on this 'top 23' list: https://donorbox.org/nonprofit-blog/20-global-nonprofits-environment


-ERD50

 

[ERD50]

... And I would say to many of the currently young activists - change your major to engineering, get a degree and help work on the solution instead of performatively protesting in the street.

Are you inferring that a young person gluing themselves to a street (using petroleum products), or defacing artwork won't immediately reverse GW? I mean, Somebody has to do SOMETHING!!!!!

It actually matters what that "something" is? Who knew?

Life is very frustrating for those of us with some logic and engineering/scientific training. It's tough to see emotions with no cause/effect and consequences considered, just "do something!" using up all the oxygen in the room.

-ERD50

 

[Ronstar]

It has not escaped my attention that a number of the current climate activists were the same people protesting outside my nuclear generation plant in the 80s and blocking the road while I was trying to get to work. But I don't think there is some hidden agenda. Just poorly informed, illogical and emotionally driven people.

Do I think the earth is warming? Yes, we can measure it. Do I think it is anthropogenic? Most likely it is. Do we need to set our hair on fire over the issue? No. We can't ignore it, but I think we can move forward with a measured, multipronged approach that is sound from a scientific and engineering standpoint, without crashing the world economy.

And I would say to many of the currently young activists - change your major to engineering, get a degree and help work on the solution instead of performatively protesting in the street.

Well said!

 

[Chuckanut]

Years ago we were told the alternative to nuclear power was simple. I believe the saying was Split Wood not Atoms.

How did that work out? Back then nobody thought about carbon foot prints and global warming. IOW, be careful

 

[punkinhead]

Life is very frustrating for those of us with some logic and engineering/scientific training. It's tough to see emotions with no cause/effect and consequences considered, just "do something!" using up all the oxygen in the room.

I worked over 30 years side by side with other engineers and scientists and can confidently say that they can be as illogical and guided by emotion as anyone. Many (most?) people on both sides of the issue form their opinions based on what the talking heads on their "side" tell them to believe. Logic and science have little to do with it.

 

[Zathras]

Some do, clearly (Patrick Moore as one high profile example), But most? That's tough to say, do you have a source for that?

-ERD50

My opinion may be too affected by my personal experience.

Fresh Energy is a local non-profit that I have the most history with.
https://fresh-energy.org/about-us/framework
They are not necessarily Pro Nuclear, but definitely Nuclear inclusive. The have worked for decades to retire Coal, and now Nat Gas.

The Minnesota EV owners club has many members that are also environmentalists.

I have also had many discussions with friends, neighbors, car show visitors, etc.

So while all but the first a purely anecdotal, I can count on one hand the number of anti-nuke people I have spoken with.

Perhaps it is Midwest/Norwegian pragmatism?

That, and myself of course. I am about as focused on what type of world we leave the next gen as you can get. I am also very much pro-nuclear as I feel it is an important tool in the fight.

As for Sierra Club, I turned down there membership. They seem to be more interested in their ideology than solutions.
Never considered Green-Peace.

 

[JoeWras]

Since I moved to central NC, I can confidently say that most, if not all, of my electric consumption has been nuclear sourced. However, NC is growing massively and the power company is adding other sources. It is too bad because the plant (Shearon Harris) was supposed to add reactors to handle this anticipated growth. It is no longer in the plan. The latest additions proposed in the early aughts were canceled in 2013.

Last night Duke texted everyone saying "please conserve" to avoid overloading the grid on a cold morning. I guess this will just become more common in the future. 25 isn't very cold. When we get down to 0, which will happen again, we could be hosed.

 

[Onda]

Geothermal power generation using drilling procedures used in oil and gas industry. Take a look at Fervo Energy and if you have time listen to the conference video posted on https://fervoenergy.com/technology/. Among their sponsors are Stanford, Princeton, Rice universities, USGS, Sandia, DEVON and Google.

Power generation without nuclear waste. It will be a couple years before these plants can be constructed at scale.

This is practical in places like Iceland. Geothermal power is plentiful and there are few people, but imagine powering state of Texas during a summer heat wave.

 

[marko]

Sixty years ago when I was in 5th grade, I remember my teacher saying that we were still exiting the Little Ice Age and that in the future we wouldn't be getting the amount of snow we were used to getting. Having just come off a snow day, we were all sad about it...that's how I still remember.

She went on to say that our weather in Boston would someday end up like North Carolina where we might only get a little snow every once in a while, because that's how it was before.

Also that Cape Cod was formed by the glaciers and in 500 years might all be washed away.

 

[O2Bfree]

What's billed as the world's first fusion power plant is being built not far from where I live. The company, Helion, seems to be making fusion energy more attainable than in the past. Their website has a nice animation that shows how their fusion process works, and there's a video about their 6th generation reactor, Trenta:

https://www.helionenergy.com/technology/

https://www.helionenergy.com/trenta/

I'm pretty excited about this and hope they'll offer tours of their plant once they're in full swing.

 

[folivier]

I must have been sleeping. Didn't think that fusion was possible yet. Especially on a commercial base.
Great news!

 

[O2Bfree]

I must have been sleeping. Didn't think that fusion was possible yet. Especially on a commercial base.
Great news!

Same here. I've driven by the place often since they started construction, and just thought to look up "Helion" late last year. Finding out what they're up to was a pleasant surprise.

 

[CardsFan]

What's billed as the world's first fusion power plant is being built not far from where I live. The company, Helion, seems to be making fusion energy more attainable than in the past. Their website has a nice animation that shows how their fusion process works, and there's a video about their 6th generation reactor, Trenta:

https://www.helionenergy.com/technology/

https://www.helionenergy.com/trenta/

I'm pretty excited about this and hope they'll offer tours of their plant once they're in full swing.

I must have been sleeping. Didn't think that fusion was possible yet. Especially on a commercial base.
Great news!

I will hold my applause until it is actually operational, with a net ourput of power that is cost competitive.

We have been down this road before.

"Show me the money."

 

[CaptTom]

What's billed as the world's first fusion power plant is being built not far from where I live. The company, Helion, seems to be making fusion energy more attainable than in the past...

Yes, but...

I believe that is a demonstration plant. If it's the one I'm thinking of, it's not even going to generate electricity, just demonstrate the technology. There are a few of them out there like that, pushing the frontier on fusion. To my knowledge, nobody is anywhere near a production power plant.

Still, it's great that we're making progress. It'll get here eventually. Talk about a game-changer!

 

[O2Bfree]

Yes, but...

I believe that is a demonstration plant. If it's the one I'm thinking of, it's not even going to generate electricity, just demonstrate the technology. There are a few of them out there like that, pushing the frontier on fusion. To my knowledge, nobody is anywhere near a production power plant.

Their home page says, "We're building the world's first fusion power plant." They do have a plan to provide power commercially. From their website:

Helion is expected to start producing electricity by 2028 from its first commercial power plant which will provide electricity to Microsoft. The plant will produce at least 50 MWe after an initial ramp-up period.

We'll see!

 

[Chuckanut]

What's billed as the world's first fusion power plant is being built not far from where I live. The company, Helion, seems to be making fusion energy more attainable than in the past. Their website has a nice animation that shows how their fusion process works, and there's a video about their 6th generation reactor, Trenta:

https://www.helionenergy.com/technology/

https://www.helionenergy.com/trenta/

I'm pretty excited about this and hope they'll offer tours of their plant once they're in full swing.

We have a huge fusion power plant about 93 million miles away that has been proven to deliver huge amounts of energy to our planet. Perhaps we need more efficient ways of harnessing that energy, some real out of the box thinking.

 

[O2Bfree]

We have a huge fusion power plant about 93 million miles away that has been proven to deliver huge amounts of energy to our planet. Perhaps we need more efficient ways of harnessing that energy, some real out of the box thinking.

But that power plant will die eventually. What will we do then??!!

 

[Chuckanut]

But that power plant will die eventually. What will we do then??!!

If we use geothermal and suck all the heat out of Earth’s core the magnetic field will fail and we will die from an overdose of Cosmic Rays.

 

[O2Bfree]

If we use geothermal and suck all the heat out of Earth’s core the magnetic field will fail and we will die from an overdose of Cosmic Rays.

Gaahh!!

Maybe we really need to figure out how to harness Zero-Point Energy. Although I'm still a fan of the fusion reactor. It gives off hot pink light—how cool is that?

 

[marko]

Side note: Back in the early 80s my company was very involved in the National Ignition (fusion) Facility project. Spent a lot of months crawling around the enormous laser machine at the time.

Whenever you'd go there you had to step into a tiny box, smaller than a phone booth and answer some questions to a disembodied voice and then the other side of the booth would open and let you in.

Accidentally got myself involved in a National security violation at one point which wasn't much fun....a story for another day.

 

[scrinch]

Having made a career in the geothermal power industry around the world for almost 40 years, I can say that geothermal power can be relatively cheap, clean, and semi-renewable. It can be developed as a closed loop process, but typically it is not, because it is much easier and cheaper to reject heat from the fluid in the condenser part of the turbine-generator through evaporation than by blowing air through a heat exchanger. So some of the steam and geothermal gas (mostly CO2, with a small amount of H2S) is released to the atmosphere, and in Lake County where the SMUD plant was located the sulfur gases are scrubbed from the released gas and chemically fixed as elemental sulfur. That is a bit messy, but much more environmentally friendly than burning any sort of hydrocarbon.

There are a very limited number of sites in the world where geothermal power can now be produced at current market prices...maybe a few hundred. As the price of power increases, the number of sites will increase, but not by a lot. And most of the sites are small, producing only a few to a few tens of MW of generally baseload power (ramping load up and down results in thermal cycling in the wells, which causes sloughing of the rocks in the wells, damaging the wellbores). So using current technology the upside of geothermal in the world power market is not very much higher than where it is today...single digit percentages. With new drilling and fracking technology, there is potential to increase this percentage, but don't look to the oil industry for the technology. I worked for one of the large US oil companies and for many years we were also the largest producer of geothermal power in the world. But despite the apparent potential for symbiosis in the company, the geothermal and O&G groups were working on solving different problems, and the solutions did not overlap much. Hydrocarbon wells produce relatively (compared to geothermal) low volumes of high-energy fluid from rock. The fluid flows in a one-way trip from the deepest recesses of mappable sedimentary rock layers into wellbores and up to the surface. New technology geothermal wells will require much larger fractures to conduct much larger volumes of fluid (usually water) through huge volumes of igneous, metamorphic, and to a lesser extent sedimentary rock. And the fracture systems will need to enable both the flow of fluid into the rock and out of the rock in order to mine the heat contained in the rock. So the geothermal fracking problem is a much larger problem compared to fracking for gas. Unfortunately it looks like it will require a lot more energy ($) to create an effective geothermal fracture network, and in the end a fluid with much lower energy content will be produced, compared to oil and gas.

Compounding the fracking problem, the relatively low energy content (low-T) of the geothermal fluids means that for a given power output, more surface equipment is required compared to current high-T geothermal systems. So next generation geothermal power is going to be, necessarily, more expensive than current geothermal power. How much more is the question.

 

[GaryInCO]

What's billed as the world's first fusion power plant is being built not far from where I live. The company, Helion, seems to be making fusion energy more attainable than in the past.

I love the look of Helion's tech. I think it makes a lot more sense than gigantic tokamaks. Most/all nuclear generators (fission AND fusion) are just updated versions of a steam engine -- make fire, boil water, spin generator. They just have higher-tech fires. Helion is the first design I've seen that directly harvests electricity from the fusion reactor's magnetic fields.
Demo platform: https://www.helionenergy.com/trenta/
Getting closer to commercial: https://www.helionenergy.com/polaris/

There are a very limited number of sites in the world where geothermal power can now be produced at current market prices...maybe a few hundred.

We need a different approach to geothermal, instead of only using it in places where Nature has conveniently brought the heat to the surface for us. If you dig deep enough, you'll find all the heat you need, almost anywhere you drill.

The trick is how. Traditional drilling methods are impractical for the depths needed. The promising tech is millimeter-wave drills -- basically radio lasers. They turn the rock into mush -- the radio frequencies go right through rock, so they aren't bothered by melt or dust, and the melted rock even acts as drilling mud.

The tech looks promising, but it seemed like it had kind of faded out in the last 5 years. But I found a recent video.

https://geoengineering.global/geothermal-energy/

7-yr-old video with Paul Woskov:

A new video with Woskov:

 

[CardsFan]

Having made a career in the geothermal power industry around the world for almost 40 years, I can say that geothermal power can be relatively cheap, clean, and semi-renewable.........

Thank you for a technical explanation. Which, of course, will be lost on those that just want to believe there is free energy.

There are no "simple" solutions to providing energy to all that need it. There are lots of sources that work well for a small area.

Since coal and gas are "out" because they are not green enough, I still see nuclear as the best option going forward, but we will see.

And, for the record. I think we are [-]stupid[/-] short sighted to not use the coal and gas we have while we figure out what the future brings.

 

[RobLJ]

Interesting, I would have thought the circulating water/steam was closed loop, no escaping sulfur fumes? Or were the fumes from some other part of the process?

-ERD50

It is closed loop, which is the point. Whether they can scale this reliably is the question. The test site is in Nevada (a ways from me), but the bigger site I think is in Utah. Basically they are fracking to get down to a high temp area and sending water through in a closed loop.

They in essence are repurposing fracking/drilling tech for geo. It's different from the dirty (probably vertical) site that was described. There is a large geo plant right outside us in Reno, but it is an old vertical site. completely different.

We'll see whether this can be scaled. I suspect so. (Edit: I hadn't read scrinch's post, but I think he sums up the issues.)