Solar, wind, and storage can do the job, too. Storage is tricky, but it can surely be done with enough R&D.
And nuclear isn't a magic wand. We either need to suck it up and use plants that can fully burn the fuel (by reprocessing or otherwise) to eliminate long-term waste or we need to come up with something useful to do with the long-term waste. The USA has failed pretty badly on the latter, and the former needs engineering and, as I understand it, some degree of willingness to accept increased proliferation risks.
We either need to suck it up and use plants that can fully burn the fuel (by reprocessing or otherwise) to eliminate long-term waste or we need to come up with something useful to do with the long-term waste.
This is what I always thought, but... is that really necessary for nuclear power to play a valuable role in minimizing global warming? Ruining a few places on the planet (even the occasional large area such as Chernobyl) seems far preferable to global warming with the attendant disruptions to agriculture and political and economic stability.
There are better choices than nuclear power, but if we can reduce carbon emissions faster by augmenting them with nuclear power for the next century or so (preferring cleaner choices when we can, but preferring nuclear over fossil fuels) then I don't see why it isn't worth the downsides many times over.
I mean sure, if you were King of the world, you could just decide that it's worth the risk...
The problem is not what, the problem is how.
We already have plenty imaginary solutions, if we spend enough money, we can do the nuclear, do the wind, solar, water. We have the resources, and I believe we have the knowledge and r&d capacity to make up for any gaps.
I don't have anything else to add, I don't know what else I can do, I get that the technology is not impossible nor utopic... But the sudden switch required by our civilizations and societies surely does look utopic...
Nuclear is not imaginary. And waste is not the horror it’s made out to be. Radiation intensity drops off quickly. Nuclear is a realistic, short term turn around from oil.
We could quickly replace the worlds largest, dirtiest shipping container ships with nuclear vessels and make a significant cut in emissions.
Is there any hope beyond developing nuclear (fission / fusion) tech for this world to sustain 10 billion humans consuming as much energy as an average Californian?[0]
As the gp said, the objective is maintaining and improving our quality of life. I don't know if solar/wind + storage can do that[1].
[0] Ok, "maybe" this is a high bar, but the point is: unless it gets too cheap to measure, energy will be scarce for large swathes of the world population
[1] I honestly don't know. Any pointers to how much energy per capita would be produced in peak renewable?
California: 199 million BTU per capita per year [0] -- 210 gigajoules. Multiplied by 10 billion, that's 2100 exajoules per year (2.1 * 10^21 joules). That's equivalent to steady yearlong consumption of 67 terawatts.
This was the first open-access article I found about global solar generation potential:
It states "The current global solar potential technically available was estimated at about 613 PWh/y." That's 70 terawatts. So there is technically enough potential from solar alone, but it would be a tight squeeze. There are also some countries that cannot meet even annualized needs this way because they are densely populated and located in areas with relatively poor solar resources. Belgium and the Netherlands, for example.
Note also that the article says nothing about storage. Storage is the biggest question mark hanging over proposals to fully decarbonize without using nuclear technology. Early news from utility-scale storage implementations is encouraging but there is still a very long way to go.
Finally, note that commercial nuclear power too would have to undergo radical transformations to deliver a steady 67 terawatts of electricity. Breeder reactors would be necessary. Currently there is 1 breeder reactor in the world large enough for commercial electricity production [1]. The proposed follow-up design to this reactor is now on indefinite hold [2]. It would take a bit over 76,000 BN-800 reactors to generate 67 terawatts. The world currently has fewer than 500 operating power reactors.
As a general principle, you should treat any proposed miracle-solution that "just needs a few years of engineering work" with extreme skepticism, whether the claimed miracle is a much better battery or a much better reactor. Most of them die between the press release and the factory floor.
[0] Primary energy, not energy available to do work. But to avoid nitpicking I'm just going to do it The Hard Way and assume 1:1 joule replacement with electricity from non-combustion sources.
> It states "The current global solar potential technically available was estimated at about 613 PWh/y." That's 70 terawatts. So there is technically enough potential from solar alone, but it would be a tight squeeze.
The study seems to be using very modest assumptions about how much area can be fitted with solar cells (0% in urban areas??), so I think the conclusion should be that there is enough technical potential from solar alone, and it is not a particularly tight squeeze.
I'd prefer to move to a world where fuel costs (extraction, refining, transportation, pollution, toxins, ...) move asymptotically toward zero. The sun generates the energy, with huge surpluses. Anyone who wishes to can just collect, store and distribute it. Until the sun goes red.
Where will all of that saved money go? These chaps see it going into the same old pockets, and so naturally they're racing to get their fingers in the pie. I'd prefer to see all that saved money invested in all life on our planet.
The problem is education. Most people are afraid of the word "nuclear," reacting with knee-jerk fear and dismissal. Most people don't understand how radiation works or the difference between different kinds of waste.
Even people who have a reputation for "knowing better" spread misinformation, like John Oliver, who did a video on nuclear power with a bit essentially saying, "Look at all this nuclear waste we have! It covers a whole football field to three stories!" Without any context of other waste from solar panel manufacturing, or even easy ones like the X billion tons of particulate matter we breathe out of the coal plants.
The other problem is humans are famously bad at estimating risk, combined with the "everything is a profit-investment" mindset we all have. When people say "nuclear is so expensive" what they really mean is "it's hard to turn a profit before twenty years, I want my money back sooner than that, lets build some more gas wells."
We need some kind of national organization, with lots of capital, to take on the initial financial risk and spread it around so no one person is left on the hook in a life-destroying way. Imagine if that organization had a department with decades nuclear operations experience.
(I'm talking about the government, and the Navy, btw)
I was hoping to dig up some stats that showed nuclear is more popular than you might think, but...yeah, no. Based on this poll, it looks as though the Fukushima incident knocked ~10% off of public support for nuclear energy.
I wonder what the best way to shift the conversation on nuclear would be. In particular, I wish that environmentalists (and I consider myself one) would adopt a proper risk-based view of nuclear power.
I took a course on Rhetoric and Public Policy at CMU. The topic that year was Nuclear Energy, and we had a fantastic mix of engineers, nuclear scientist PhD candidates, and humanities students. This was during the actual Fukushima crisis, I believe that Fall Semester.
It was very sobering going through and comparing the Fukushima writing to writing from the 70s. It's been a long time since the course, but I'm not surprised by the results whatsoever.
We should rebrand it- people forget that the original name for an MRI scanner was an NMR scanner- nuclear magnetic resonance. Of course nuclear scared people so in response to patient concerns nuclear was dropped from the name and now people line up to stick their appendages in them. Instead of nuclear we should be saying 'Molten Salt Reactors' and similar accurate (but less scary) names for what we want to have built.
Comparing nuclear waste with other waste like those from manufacturing solar panels does not help. You don't need to build the facilities like the Yucca Moutain Project to contain the waste from making silicon chips. (Yes, comparing the waste from making silicon chips to solar panels makes more sense)
I agree. Outside of energy, we'll still need oil for asphalt, plastics and other synthetic materials. It doesn't seem like those needs are going away anytime soon.
Side-note: a barrel of oil gives a fixed amount of gasoline and diesel fuel, and that's hard to change [1]. A given refinery could slightly change the amounts, but not much, and that's billions in investments. Even if you replaced diesel vehicles by electric ones, the diesel fuel will be burned somewhere else.
You get a fixed ratio of distillates, but you can use cracking to convert heavier distillates into lighter distillates. The majority of the world's gasoline is cracked rather than distilled. Refineries in the US produce a substantially different mix of products than refineries in Europe and Asia because of different market demands (including significantly lower demand for diesel).
Changing that production mix is capital-intensive, but everything in the petrochemical business is capital-intensive. US refineries are having to substantially change their operations because of the increasing production of unconventional oil, which yields a very different mix of distillates compared to conventional crude.
The article doesn't make it clear - but "elsewhere" seems like it would clearly be better than urban busses. They assert that even in areas where grid electricity to charge the busses comes entirely from fossil fuels, there is less pollution produced - presumably because it is somewhat easier to make a fossil fuel plant cleaner at scale than 100s of busses. Fossil fuel plants could be any of natural gas (very clean), coal or.. oil, which in this case is something resembling diesel, or the diesel constituents of crude.
The title is (of course) fairly misleading - while we've got electric boats and semis it is unlikely that long haul transport for either will be electric any time soon. But - at least they are away from urban areas, for the most part.
You can essentialy use the batteries of electric vehicles as energy storage. Most passenger vehicles don't need to run at noon when everybody is at work and surplus solar is available. They don't need to run at night when people sleep, electricity demand is low and wind whirls. Buses can also be scheduled for loading during these periods as they can run 200 km on a charge and transport capacity is adjusted according to demand - only a fraction of the fleet operates during low demand periods mentioned above, the rest can sit and charge. Long haul transport can run on plug in hybrids using HCCI internal combustion engines and/or gas turbines powered by diesel/gasoline or ideally DME/LPG. This can be all tuned using economics. Coal needs miners for extraction and is dirty to burn. Gen III+ and IV nuclear and geothermal are much cleaner and safer alternatives for base load.
That's incorrect. Refineries have crackers (catalytic cracking units) that can be used to tune the yield. It varies seasonably at the same refinery.
From your own citation:
"Separation processes, such as distillation, dewaxing, and deasphalting make use of the differences in the physical properties of crude oil components to separate groups of hydrocarbon compounds or inorganic impurities, whereas conversion processes cause chemical changes in the hydrocarbon composition of crude oils. For example, Fluid Catalytic Cracking process breaks chemical bonds in long-chain alkanes to produce shorter chain alkanes to produce gasoline from higher boiling gas oil fractions"
Soooo we should just keep using diesel and stop longterm electrification trends because "someone's going to burn it"?
This is fud.
The point of electrification is to get a path towards sustainability. If it means demand for barrels of oil decreases, or in the most extreme, all that extra diesel becomes a stranded asset, all the better (unless you're a refinery owner).
Burning it elsewhere might not help when it comes to CO2 emissions (though if it ends up being burned in a much more efficient engine/powerplan, at least you get more useful work out of it), but it can help a lot when it comes to health[1]. Diesel is particularly dirty, and burning it in densely populated areas should definitely be phased out. Long-haul trucking might make sense, but buses and garbage trucks should at the very least run on hybrid natural gas, until they are electric.
>Diesel is particularly dirty, and burning it in densely populated areas should definitely be phased out.
The latest EU diesel standards for passenger cars are actually on par with the gasoline standards. Don't know what the standards are for heavy trucks though.
> The latest EU diesel standards for passenger cars are actually on par with the gasoline standards. Don't know what the standards are for heavy trucks though.
Can we trust any of the big automotive manufacturers to actually meet those standards without cheating?
> The automotive industry says it has cleaned up its act. But this week the European Union’s executive branch, the European Commission, revealed it has discovered a whole new form of cheating – this time on CO2 emission tests.
The 2016 scandal concerned air pollution tests on diesel vehicles, where automakers were using so-called ‘defeat devices’ during tests to make the cars seem like they were emitting less pollution. Now, the carmakers are accused of doing the opposite – artificially inflating the level of carbon emissions produced by new cars coming onto the market now.
Why would automakers want their cars to look more emissions-intensive than they are? Because a new EU law will require automakers to reduce their fleet average CO2 emissions by 15% by 2025 and 30% by 2030 – based on 2021 levels.
They've gamed the tests quite a bit over the years. Yet so far, even after all the scrutiny, VW is the only one that was actually caught cheating. VW is probably enjoying the muddy message everywhere that "everyone does it" but so far only VW has actually been found to be cheating.
Heavy duty are supposedly cleaner (per unit of fuel) both on paper (standards) and in reality, because manufacturers don't shy away from exposing business customers to the maintenance burden of exhaust treatment systems. But trucking is a border-crossing low-margin business, corners will be cut at every opportunity.
I wonder if there's data on the difference between engines with factory settings, and vehicles that have been modified to roll coal. My hometown had a number of people change their trucks to roll coal and it would get noticeably hazy in busy intersections
I used to work at a 4 wheel drive shop in a previous life- there are likely more modified diesel trucks out there than you think. The idiots that purposely modify trucks to 'roll coal' are a minority compared to owners who have bypassed pollution controls for increased reliability and fuel economy. A truck with the EGR bypassed or DPF removed spews more particulate than stock, but this isn't visually apparent. Most of the smoke from rolling coal is unburned fuel in the exhaust gas, this phenomenon seemed to be mainly restricted to younger people, especially oil field workers.
I know this is anecdata, but at least in CO, UT, WY area there are more modified trucks than what is immediately apparent, since often a truck w/ bypassed emissions equipment isn't heavily cosmetically modified.
I live in a small Texas town outside of Austin. I think my diesel pickup is the only unmodified one here. It's really that common. The exhaust after-treatment and DPF systems are fairly complex and most owners just take 'em out. There's emissions inspections in this county, but diesel vehicles are conveniently exempt.
A bit late to the reply, but mostly it's perception: when the urea-injection exhaust-aftertreament systems first came out in 2013 or so there were a few reliability issues that dealers didn't do a good job of fixing. It's much improved now and my truck hasn't had any issues at all.
And, I'm sad to say, some folks just like the whole "rolling coal" thing and the ability to put out huge plumes of black smoke.
That's not even something I would argue. I guess my real question would be "what is the difference between a car that passes emissions tests and a car that is modified about 30 minutes after an emissions test"
There are a fair amount of people who will actively pollute because you asked/told them not to, and I wonder if they have a significant effect on the environment
The big win is that diesel is nasty and nobody enjoys breathing in diesel exhaust. Most Americans don't realize how awful diesel exhaust is because almost nobody drives them, so you aren't exposed to it as a pedestrian or person living near a well-used road.
It doesn't combat overall pollution, but it does improve the quality of life for people living in urban areas.
I don't see diesel being phased out for agriculture or construction equipment anytime soon, usually too remote from the grid and they can't afford charging downtime. However, I welcome replacing what we can with electric. It's a slightly specious argument that simply because we can't replace all use of diesel there isn't a point to replace some usage. City buses are a major use, and are located in a much worse spot for pollution, at least as it affects people's health. How is less fossil fuels being used a bad thing, there is no possible way we can replace all uses in one fell stroke.
Indeed, but—since you mentioned it—there are a lot of missed opportunities in electrifying short range passenger ferries. Many ferries might only sail for 20 minutes and remain docked for a while where they could be recharged. Even on a busy ferry routes, a natural gas powered boats might actually make a lot more sense then a diesel powered one. The only real use for a diesel engine now might be for long distance cargo vessels, cross ocean passenger ferries, and very very huge fishing trawlers (although I would very much like to see the big trawlers vanish into history).
I figure the mid-term goal should be to end up only refining oil for jet fuel and petrochemicals. So either the products have to be converted (as others have explained) or burned in a power plant. We will need more energy for all those electric vehicles after all, so more oil burning power plant may be needed in the transition.
Long term goal is of course to not extract oil at all, but some products will be hard to replace without radical new technologies.
Gasoline powered vehicles are also replaced and Big Oil can invest in electric vehicle companies and renewables as they diminish the output to account for the lower demand.
Also, diesel engines can be converted to DME which is cleaner and offers a path for CO2 recycling. DME/electric plug-in hybrids is a solution mainly for trucks and shipping because they can automatically switch to electric near populated areas and use the ICE for extensive range.
"the skin of the aircraft (probably made of titanium) gets as hot as 12,000 degrees F during flight because of air friction."
First, there's no material on earth that could sustain that kind of heat. Titanium has a melting point at 3,000 degrees F. Tungsten about 6,000 degrees F. Other composites, maybe a bit more. But nothing at 12,000 degrees F.
Second, the only plane that somehow had regular service at that kind of speeds was the SR-71. It was indeed made of titanium. The front of the plane had to sustain a temperature of over 600 degrees F, and it was only for short periods of time. Nothing close to 12,000 degrees F and was already a feat.
Third, titanium is extremely hard to work with. Ask the SR-71 guys. Tools had to be made especially to build that plane, for hundreds times more than regular tools. They break down often and you need to replace them. Nothing to sustain a production line.
In case you're interested, this[1] document is of great interest if you wish to understand how these offshore turbines perform empirically. I'll give you a hint: not very good. Any piece of machinery exposed to sea salt doesn't last long. Also maintenance will be a big problem: just think one second the kind of undertaking needed to send a team of technicians to repair only one of these turbines. Let's not talk about replacing any large piece.
Statoil has done offshore drilling since the 70s, the people who work there probably know more than anyone else in the world about designing and operating very large machinery at sea. You can read more on their web pages or search the web for statoil to find examples of what i mean.
yep, but a wind turbine is churning way less money than an oil rig, you get the chopper only for extreme cases (and it's a pain because of the rotor, sometime they just use the emergency lift to get into the water with a life raft).
So now we are talking high sea docking to a moving structure in the North Sea, not going to happen in the winter. So any incident and you lose your entire season, and now you're in a downward spiral. I'm not saying this won't work, I'm saying it's a very complicated situation.
I think they have thought about it, it doesn't mean they got it right. Those people deliver brand new wind turbines whose rotor are not balanced. They deliver onshore turbine bolted to deficient foundations. They never reach their goals. (Yes I have worked a bit in the industry)
>They deliver onshore turbine bolted to deficient foundations. They never reach their goals. (Yes I have worked a bit in the industry)
As someone who presumably works a bit more than you in the offshore construction industry, I'd love to see you quantify these statements. Especially since you imply them to be industry-wide, commonplace blights.
Instead of picking a fight (I already know no source or figure would satisfy you), would be constructive and explain how the yaw works on floating systems?
>(I already know no source or figure would satisfy you)
Woah there. I'm not picking a fight with you. You make some pretty bold claims like "they deliver insufficient foundations." Tolerances for verticality, foundation position, etc. are contractually obliged and delivered overwhelmingly with success.
>would be constructive and explain how the yaw works on floating systems?
"Floating systems" is too broadly undefined to give you an answer. Could be that the mooring design resists yaw motion within certain tolerances. Could be that yaw motion of the base is compensated by a rotating nacelle.
> I think they have thought about it, it doesn't mean they got it right.
I think you're being evasive.
Do you think they have not thought about these problems as much or as effectively as you have?
How much have you thought about it, what expertise are you comparing to this company's proposals, and how do your proof of concept deployments compare to theirs in terms of size, scale, and longevity?
Exactly that. The difference to other offshore is not that it's further away from the coast, just that it can be used for less shallow areas. They should still be reachable within a day by boat and I guess maintenance shouldn't differ much from other offshore wind farms.
Yes, the marine environment is harsh. Corrosion is an issue. Maintenance is challenging. But these are not new problems: these are solvable (and solved) engineering challenges. The O&G industry has considerable overlap with offshore wind; foundation design, transportation and installation, etc., all well-understood and in practice for literally decades.
I haven't read the report you cited, but it is already 5 years old (much has changed in the past decade). The wind farm performance degredation they speak of in Denmark and the UK might have a lot to do with outdated technology of these older turbines. The first offshore farm in Denmark was built in 1991. Technologies since even 2010 have greatly improved.
But it does mean that the infrastructure side of it is well understood by the company as it has vast experience of building large installations in the North Sea, both fixed and floating.
So the question is rather is it economically viable?
Offshore wind farms require bidding for concession areas from government. It requires complex design, survey and consenting work. And it needs a prestigious amount of money. A large scheme will spend more than a billion to get constructed. Of course speculators and startups could try. But oil companion have all the right expertise and access to capital. The big opportunity for startups is providing services to the developers.
Not so much, as you might expect for a demo like this. 40 million euro should get you from concepts as by the startup list to competing for tenders on wind farms. That is in comparison to monopile or jackets off-shore.
Fairly sure hywind is a 'demonstrator' project used to assess feasibility of large scale deployments +1GW, not just something to keep eco warriors at bay.
Subsidy free traditional offshore wind is happening, but this requires good site conditions for installation, cracking subsidy free floating wind would open up much larger spaces of ocean to development and thus more power and profit! Win win!
I don't dispute that. I think the consensus has accepted Hawking radiation as real ... but we haven't seen evidence yet (and we may never, your link notwithstanding, given how tiny the effect is).
Even if you had the computing power AND if you were simulating your fusion reactor's plasma in realtime, while it's running AND you know/can predict the plasma instabilities in realtime (under a few ms), you still need a way to "counter" those instabilites in the said plasma. And you need to counter fast, before the instability "poisons" the entire plasma, something that should happen within a few ms. If you don't, your entire experiment stops, and it takes a while to get it back (minutes). Currently: 1. nobody really understands the instabilities, why and when they happen; 2. there's no way to 'counter' them. So it's not only about the computing power.
There has been a lot of talk about lower precision and approximate computing over the past couple of years, which I hope will be recognized as a fad with John's (and to a lesser extent mine/REX Computing's) work... Why sacrifice precision/accuracy if you don't have to? Posit's are a great solution for this for a vast number of problems, and the Stanford lecture is great.
The thing about Posits in particular is, depending on the environment (e.g. es=3 for 32 bit Posits as referenced in the Beating Floating Point paper), you can actually have greater accuracy/precision and dynamic range than 64 bit IEEE floats while using fewer bits. The OP article here about CERN is doing something significantly worse, which is just using lower precision and taking the accuracy loss. While this may be acceptable in some applications, I would not want to losing any accuracy in the original data from expensive scientific experiments and using potentially inaccurate results for future calculations and assumptions.
