Richard Caldwell at 446:
In a decarbonized grid it takes much more primary energy to make liquid fuels than to provide electricity. There is a limited amount of biomaterials to make liquid fuels from and making electrofuels is extremely energy intensive. Battery powered cars are about 90% efficient in use of energy for propulsion. Even if your engine design is twice as efficient as current engines (20-25% efficient) you will still require at least twice as much primary energy to make your car go. Counting the energy to make and distribute the liquid fuel you will need at least triple the energy.
It is difficult to provide enough liquid fuels for other uses like marine transport and airplanes in a renewable energy system. Adding auto transportation would be extremely difficult. Just because you can make liquid fuels in a renewable energy world does not mean that it is practical for every use.
I doubt that any improvement on internal combustion engines could hope to compete with battery electric.
“There’s a pretty simple reason why the recent stabilization in global emissions hasn’t caused CO2 levels to stabilize. The ocean and land sinks for CO2 currently offset only about 50 percent of the emissions. So the equivalent of 50 percent of the emissions is still accumulating in the atmosphere, even with stable emissions. To stabilize CO2 levels would require roughly an immediate roughly 50 percent cut in emissions, at which point the remaining emissions would be fully offset by the sinks, at least for a while.
Eventually, additional emissions cuts would be required because the sinks will slowly lose their efficiency as the land and ocean start to saturate. A permanent stabilization at current levels therefore requires both an immediate 50-percent cut as well as a slow tapering thereafter, eventually approaching zero emissions. The recent stabilization in emissions might be viewed as a very small first step toward the required cuts.”
from May 2016 when CO2 levels at MLO were 407.70 as the monthly average. March 2021 monthly average was 417.64
Cheers
Mike
Mikesays
interesting article about the dogs of Chernobyl and the guards who care for them at the Beeb:
It is true and should be mentioned that the Chernobyl nuke facilities are an old design that is probably more dangerous than anything being designed and produced today, but it is also worth mentioning that when these were designed, the design was thought to be pretty safe. Sadly, that turned out not to be the case.
I remain on the fence about the nuscale nuclear reactors. I think they might have a place in the energy source mix of the future, but I am not sure that is true. The traditional large nuclear power plants continue to look like bad news to me because they produce dangerous pollutants and waste that exist on a time scale that is likely to exceed human safety and disposal engineering. Maybe that stuff will be ok, but why take the chance if cleaner energy and reasonable energy storage technology can meet our needs?
RC: If liquid fuel and electricity are decarbonized the comparison stands pretty much exactly the same.
I was under the impression that we were talking about something close to the current reality, in which liquid fuels are overwhelmingly FF. If you’re talking about a system in which those liquid fuels are maximally ‘green’ synfuel or some such, then I suppose you are correct, or close enough as merits no fretting.
But I think we’re going to see EVs dominate the light duty transport sector (and some heavy duty segments, too) long before we see the liquid fuel system transformed.
US electric power sector is halfway to zero carbon emissions
Most of this is due to the substitution of gas-fired poweplants for coal-fired ones. But that path dead-ends when all the coal is gone. Increasing amounts of unreliable power can INCREASE emissions, as efficient combined-cycle plants have to be replaced by faster-ramping simple-cycle gas turbines due to the need to start up, shut down and ramp more quickly than the steam sections allow.
This is why all production tax credits and feed-in tariffs for “renewables” should be terminated forthwith. It doesn’t matter HOW much wind or PV energy you generate, what matters is how much fossil carbon goes into the atmosphere. We need to treat the “wind plus gas” system AS A SYSTEM and rate it by its performance on that crucial metric.
I hate this propaganda. “The grid” is not now and will never be “decarbonized.” That solar panels and wind generators don’t directly emit carbon does not mean they are decarbonized. Their manufacture is carbon-intensive. It is far more accurate to say the grid can become less carbon-intensive, and that is what we should say. This jargon is so powerful the typical person – and most of the supposed experts, “thought leaders” and activists! – actually believe this shit and get REALLY ffffing testy when you merely state the truth.
But reality is a *necessary* precondition to a regenerative future.
Not going at yoi, Kevin, but at the misleading, maladaptive jargon.
Richard Caldwellsays
Nigel: Design often tends naturally towards complexity, but
RC: only if the designer is half-ass.
As in, design has two phases. The easy half comes first, where one adds whatever parts are needed to make a monstrosity actually work. Think of most movies with an invention. The invention has wires and parts and looks like a complicated jumble, right?
Lots of folks get to this point and call it done.
But it’s not done. The second, most important half is to boil the monstrosity down until it is lean and flexible.
A program will have similar segments that MUST be turned into a subroutine and its callings. 10 pages of hard to follow crap that functions adequately if not stressed with unusual data MUST condense to perhaps three pages of easy to follow and modify “song”.
A design that doesn’t sing isn’t finished.
A physical invention MUST have its parts groomed and culled. Groups of parts condense to one. A part or choice leaves a “hole”, as in a characteristic that doesn’t perform a function? One has a “handle” that NEEDS to be used to improve the system, often drastically, beyond what the designer originally conceived.
Again. Designs must sing.
Richard Caldwellsays
Killian: Hydro is never right except on very small scales.
RC: Not accurate. How about, “To date nobody has designed a large hydro system that satisfies my principles”?
I doubt it would be terribly difficult to design (and simplify) a large hydro system that would.
Richard Caldwellsays
Nigel: Hmmm. I’m not sure diversity of power supply is desirable just because nature does diversity.
Killian: Just dumb.
RC: Yeah, if you sub-quote. Nigel’s next words noted that diversity is often the best.
I’d chime in that “often” is really 99% or so. Yep, a mountainous region might do best with pure hydropower. A polar region might go pure nuke, with synfuel as the primary storage. Nigel’s right. But …
Beyond those extreme cases Killian is right.
More disagreement about fringe issues?
Richard Caldwellsays
One of Mike’s links to competing stories: Finally, natural gas generation grew rapidly, driven by the shale gas revolution and low fuel prices. This pushed much of the generation of coal – the most carbon-intensive electricity source – out of the market.
RC: What a “lipstick on a pig” story. It boils down to: according to capitalism fracking appears to be cheap, and according to current GHG accounting fracking appears to spew half as much as coal. Oh, and the negligible amount of wind and solar has increased enough to be kinda sorta relevant.
Fugative methane blows the emissions argument out of the water and the fact that fracking is consuming capital that will never be recovered destroys the economic argument.
Then Mike’s: “Let’s look at the real CO2 level” screams loudly:
Reality isn’t impressed with incomplete and twisted accounting.
Richard Caldwellsays
Michael Sweet to EP: Why do you make such easily Googled lies?
RC: Yeah. EP has tons to offer to the conversation but BS is runny. It doesn’t stay in its own lane. BS gives all of one’s other contributions that recognizable “stockyard” odor.
You shoot yourself in the foot constantly, EP. I suggest you button your mouth on social issues.
If you actually care about the technical stuff, that is.
Not going at yoi, Kevin, but at the misleading, maladaptive jargon.
Appreciated. I’m going to push back a bit, but in the same spirit.
“The grid” is not now and will never be “decarbonized.” That solar panels and wind generators don’t directly emit carbon does not mean they are decarbonized. Their manufacture is carbon-intensive.
1) Accepting that framing for a moment, to what extent is that carbon intensity inherent, and to what extent can it be changed? Probably most carbon-intensive aspect of the manufacturing process is the power consumed–the majority of which comes from the grid itself. (Other possible sources include emissions from FF machinery used in mining and transportation of materials; FF-source process heat; and (possibly) direct emissions of GHGs from material processing.) So, as the grid emits less, the embodied carbon footprint of solar panels and wind turbines shrinks as well.
2) I think there’s an important question here, which is, what is the most useful way to account for emissions? Because everything in the economy is linked in some way to everything else, categories can easily blur. You see that often with agriculture, estimates of the emissions from which seem to vary especially widely, usually because of the inclusion–or not–of “indirect” or “indirect-ish” emissions. (E.g., does the carbon cost of trucking chickens go under ag or transport?)
On one hand, it makes sense if you are trying to assess the total impact of, say, a solar panel, to take it all the way back to mining lithium in the Atacama. On the other, if you’re not careful you can end up double-counting like crazy. I don’t have a proposal in this regard. But it would be great if there were standards of some sort so we more often all ending up talking apples or oranges, but not both.
It is far more accurate to say the grid can become less carbon-intensive, and that is what we should say.
Yes. Most preferably, with some sort of quantity attached. False binaries are indeed misleading.
But reality is a *necessary* precondition to a regenerative future.
We need to treat the “wind plus gas” system AS A SYSTEM and rate it by its performance on that crucial metric.
No, we need to be squeezing the gas out of the system to the greatest economically efficient extent, using the numerous methods we’ve been discussing at great length in order to maintain stability and reliability.
michael Sweetsays
EP at 456:
You say “Increasing amounts of unreliable power can INCREASE emissions, as efficient combined-cycle plants have to be replaced by faster-ramping simple-cycle gas turbines”
Can you provide data from even one location in the world that installed a significant amount of renewable energy and that caused an increase in emissions because of this issue? It sounds to me like a problem you have just made up. In real life wind and solar can be predicted hours in advance and combined cycle units can be warmed up so that they can be used when needed.
Countries like Sweden that install large amounts of renewable energy emit less carbon than countries that build out nuclear power. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201005112141.htm
“The evidence clearly points to nuclear being the least effective of the two broad carbon emissions abatement strategies, and coupled with its tendency not to co-exist well with its renewable alternative, this raises serious doubts about the wisdom of prioritising investment in nuclear over renewable energy. Countries planning large-scale investments in new nuclear power are risking suppression of greater climate benefits from alternative renewable energy investments.”
David B. Bensonsays
michael Sweet @450 has it wrong yet once more.
In the USA about 20% of electricity is generated by nuclear power plants. The figure is much higher in France, at least 75% at one time.
nigeljsays
MS Sweet @450
“Meanwhile you (Ep) post numerous errors in your seat of the pants calculations and say we should believe them. ”
You need to show in detail where his calcs are wrong or why would anyone believe you? Its not good enough to quote some paper and expect people to buy it and dig through to find out if its even relevant. You have to at least copy and paste the relevant calcs.
“No-one uses more than 2% nuclear power, and most use none.”
America gets 20% of its power from nuclear. I assume your comment was a typo.
“As far as reproducibility is concerned I can cite at least 30 papers that all conclude renewable energy can power the world.”
I agree and its obvious. Wind plus solar plus storage plus some level of overbuild must work. Its basic physics and the engineering is known well enough. Its all about costs, which are helpfully falling.
I have no problem with nuclear power but it faces big hurdles in western countries with public opinion and time issues with construction, and that cant be lightly dismissed. Some countries will probably elect to stay with nuclear power, if it suits them and has public buy in. Better that than fossil fuels.
nigeljsays
Richard Caldwell @459, “But it’s not done. The second, most important half is to boil the monstrosity down until it is lean and flexible….” Hmmm yes well thats what I was getting at @363. Thanks for amplifying. Its the part of design I find hardest. Ive noticed some people cant get beyond a flawed simplicity (talking design and technology here Killian – not ‘simplification’).
E-P 456: all production tax credits and feed-in tariffs for “renewables” should be terminated forthwith.
BPL: all production tax credits and feed-in tariffs for NUCLEAR POWER should be terminated forthwith.
There, I fixed it for you.
michael Sweetsays
David Benson at 467:
At 450 I did not describe either the percent of nuclear in the USA electric grid or the electric grid of France. Perhaps you are referring to my statement that future proposed energy systems will be only 2% or less nuclear. Note I say “energy” systems, not electric power systems. Nuclear proponents are used to describing current electric systems, not All Energy future systems like those modeled by Connelly and Jacobson.
All Energy is 4-5 times the amount of energy as electric only. The US electric grid is about 20% nuclear so nuclear provides only 4-5% of All Energy. Since the USA has more nuclear than most countries, only 2% or so of All Energy in the world economy is currently generated by nuclear reactors.
Can you provide a citation to a peer reviewed energy plan that contains more than 2% nuclear? I can cite at least 25 papers that use 100% renewable energy (primarily wind and solar). I doubt you can even cite a serious non-peer reviewed plan that uses more than 10% nuclear to back up wind and solar.
Both the USA and France are currently shutting down reactors every year. Only one nuclear plant is under construction in France and only 2 in the USA. All three are years behind schedule and over double the initial estimated cost. No free market investment would build a nuclear plant in either country. Nuclear is dying out because it is not economic. Both France and the USA are building out considerable renewable energy for the future.
I note that France currently only generates about 70% of its electricity from nuclear, not the 75% you claim. They propose to lower that to 50% by 2030. They are lowering the amount of nuclear because their reactors have failed to be economic. France, and all other nuclear countries, are abandoning nuclear and building out renewable energy. Sweden is a perfect example. The free market is building out renewable energy and nuclear plants are shutting down.
michael Sweetsays
Nijgelj at 468:
Upthread EP described his calculations to make liquids from biomaterials. He corrected his calculations at least twice. I do not need to show where his errors were, he described them himself. Why should I think he has now found all his errors?
I described an All Energy system, not an electricity only system. Nuclear proponents need to read the peer reviewed literature and learn the proper terms for Energy. It is not my job to teach you the vocabulary of energy systems.
Nuclear proponents like to describe current electric systems because it is impossible for nuclear plants to generate a significant amount of world All Energy in the future.
Richard Caldwellsays
How my engine solves “unsolvable” problems with engines:
Friction:
In layman-speak friction is a multiple of the tension in the pistion rings times the speed of the piston squared.
The Combustion cylinder (CC) evades significant friction via a 2:1 bore to stroke ratio coupled with a 8:1 compression ratio.Thus, the pistion travels at (not gonna do the math again) 15-25% of a traditional engine’s piston’s linear speed. Square that.
Then, the segregation of the hot parts from the oiled parts allows the oiled parts to be far better fitting. My engine carries this to the extreme by keeping the oil near operating temperature at least overnight. And since the engine uses an insulated box to reduce thermal losses (as opposed to a traditional radiator), it is simple to mitigate thermal losses between runs. Heck, the engine can run for a minute every few hours, feeding whatever load is available.
The Re-expansion cylinder (RC) evades friction by operating at half RPM, dropping friction to 25%. But 25% of what? Unfortunately, 25% of an 80:1 compression ratio traditional engine. But like the CC a very over-square design slows the piston down. Plus, the rings only need to handle what is essentially a traditional engine’s peak exhaust manifold pressure. Half RPM, way over-square, and wimpy rings combine to slay friction
The Pre-compression Cylinder (PC) has it easy. It is slow like the RC and has even lower pressure. And it’s smaller than the RC. Plus, its temp peaks in plastics-and-oil-friendly territory. A materials person’s playground, that.
Next time I’ll probably speak emissions. Dunno.
Richard Caldwellsays
One reason a good piston to cylinder fit is important is that the rings have to resist (pressure * area of the gap). Cut the gap by 75% and the force on the rings drops accordingly, allowing for wimpier rings.
Richard Caldwellsays
Mike’s link: There is wildlife living in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone besides dogs. In 2016, Sarah Webster, a US government wildlife biologist who was working at the University of Georgia at the time, and colleagues published a paper in which they revealed how mammals, from wolves to boars and red foxes, had colonised the Exclusion Zone. Camera trap data showed that the animals’ numbers were not noticeably lower in those areas where radioactive contamination is higher.
RC: Point, EP.
Mike: It is true and should be mentioned that the Chernobyl nuke facilities are an old design that is probably more dangerous than anything being designed and produced today, but it is also worth mentioning that when these were designed, the design was thought to be pretty safe
RC: Total crap. Compare a Western design of the era to Chernobyl and get back to us.
Richard Caldwellsays
Michael Sweet: Richard Caldwell at 446:
In a decarbonized grid it takes much more primary energy to make liquid fuels than to provide electricity. There is a limited amount of biomaterials to make liquid fuels from and making electrofuels is extremely energy intensive.
RC: Good points, Michael.
But we’re not talking about when daisies bloom and everything is Perfecto.
A good analogy is combined cycle power plants. The second engine in such a plant has shitty efficiency and is stupid-expensive per megawatt.
But the fuel is free. Just as it is when the wind blows like a fuck on a sunny day.
Whatcha gonna do with all that excess capacity? How are you going to store it for lulls? How many batteries you going to build? You agree to go dark if the weather sucks for a few weeks?
Richard Caldwellsays
Kevin, you know me. I would never speak of the current reality other than as a cautionary tale.
Kevin:
But I think we’re going to see EVs dominate the light duty transport sector (and some heavy duty segments, too) long before we see the liquid fuel system transformed.
Could be. It will be fun to find out. But my focus is on trucks, taxies, planes, intercity car travel, and ships.
I don’t want to kill the EV. If you’re going less than 5 miles or so using an engine is stupid. I put the flag at 20 miles. EP has said 40. All (5 to 40 miles) are defensible.
Study of the links on this thread is recommended to avoid future embarrassment.
Richard Caldwellsays
Kevin,
Remember my model:
A 20-40 mile EV with space that can be used for storage, plus a person-portable way efficient engine that turns said EV into a continent-crosser.
The other model has a permanent engine, but some wicked design that, well, I haven’t finished deciding on how I am going to treat intellectual property (I’m leaning towards telling the whole system to ef itself. I need to do what I do, not chase Caesars).
Killiansays
469 nigelj says:
26 Apr 2021 at 3:58 AM
Ive noticed some people cant get beyond a flawed simplicity (talking design and technology here Killian – not ‘simplification’).
Once again you reveal poor grasp of what you profess to know something of. Whether a thing is complex or not, simple or not, seemingly simple but complex, or seemingly complex but simple is entirely context-dependent. I think I would be hoping you were not on my team if we had to divvy the world up for a design project.
All the times we spoken of design, permaculture, simplicity, regenerative systems, you still don’t seem to understand it all comes down to design. There is absolutely no difference from a purely design perspective between designing a bridge and designing a farm.
The kicker is that because the quarry head is elevated, the payload is 65 tons, and the truck uses regenerative braking, they never need external charging! In fact, they need to ‘bleed’ power back into their local grid.
(OTOH, 50,000 liters of diesel fuel saved in ~2 years makes it kind of serious fun.)
David B. Bensonsays
michael Sweet @471 — The French seem to have changed their mind; the government has asked EdF to build 5 more of their over designed EPR nuclear reactors.
Think of that.
David B. Bensonsays
Richard Caldwell @475 — The Chernobyl RBMK nuclear power reactor was a graphite moderated, water cooled design derived from weapons plutonium producing reactors. The design is inherently unsafe, being subject to void, i.e., vapor, runaway.
The only comperable reactors in the USA were the weapons plutonium production reactors on the Hanford site. At least those didn’t have the insanely dangerous control rod endings of the RBMK design.
The dangers of the design were recognized in the USA. I doubt that the Soviet designers of the RBMK reactors gave the matter much thought. Hell, they didn’t even put a containment over the structure!
nigeljsays
Killian @480, it looks like you have missed part of this conversation. I’m not talking about any of the things you mentioned, which sounds reasonable enough. It was an observation that some people psychologically tend to be attracted towards complexity in design, sometimes over complexity, while other people struggle to get beyond simple, singular solutions when clearly they don’t suffice. This is why design is sometimes sub optimal.
michael Sweetsays
Richard Caldwell at 476:
Energy will never be free. To make liquid fuels you require either biomaterials or you have to capture carbon from somewhere. Each of these costs money. As I pointed out before, there are not enough biomaterials to make liquids for hard to electrify industries like airplanes and marine transport. Those industries will use up all the liquid fuels. The first step in all the All Energy plans that I have seen is to convert everything possible to electricity. That means all cars electric or fuel cells.
I get the impression that your engine is a completely paper design. Have you ever designed and built a working engine before? Have you actually built even one of your engines to determine if your scheme actually works? I doubt that with an 8:1 compression ratio you will get rid of all the friction. Using three cylinders instead of one seems too complicated. You need to build a working model to show that your scheme actually works in practice. Big claims are easy to make when you have nothing to test. Sounds a lot like “nuclear power will be too cheap to meter”.
I note that the French plan to remove 14 reactors from the grid in the near future (two this year) so even if they build 5 new ones (my reference says 6), they will net lose nuclear power. Almost all their plants are at the end of life. Major rebuilds are not economic. The French government has never charged enough for the power they generate to retire the mortgages from building the plants so when they are shut down taxpayers will be stuck with the bill for building them all those years ago. Another government subsidy of the nuclear power industry.
There have been many announcements over the years about new nuclear plants that were never built. We will see if they ever break ground. The Swedish look to be shutting down all their reactors in the next 5 years as more wind comes online. The French nuclear plants cannot compete with wind and solar built in other countries.
michael Sweet @486 — Reuters surely has reported properly. But note that 6 EPRs produce about the same as the oldest 14 of EdFs large fleet of reactors.
I seriously doubt any claim that EdF is losing money with their current rates.
nigeljsays
One reason that the Chernobyl disaster happened is possibly because government was both owner and safety regulator. In that situation corners sometimes get cut with safety because of the desire to save money to spend on other things (luxury cars for government officials and other little luxuries).
At least in the USA the ownership of nuclear power plants is separated from the government regulator. Its still a bit incestuous because industry can sometimes capture the regulator, but not nearly as much as in the soviet union.
Richard Caldwellsays
Michael Sweet: doubt that with an 8:1 compression ratio you will get rid of all the friction
RC: “all” is a dorky word. But I’ll add some more data. The CC is 1/4 the size of an equivalent traditional engine’s piston. And then cut the size in half because of increased efficiency, resulting in the CC (the only high pressure piston in the system) being 1/8 the size of a traditional piston. Now drop the compression ratio to 8:1 and increase the bore:stroke to 2:1.
“Negligible” is the appropriate word for the remaining friction, not “zero”.
I was a programmer in my previous life. Ya know how folks pontificate about how important testing is? Well, testing beyond ensuring stuff compiles is largely a waste of time if the programmer is worth his/her salt.
My stuff works. And the environment I worked in was one where the client’s systems were on their death beds. I was called in when the migration to a new system was obviously going to fail spectacularly. MY job was to type as fast as my fingers would fly, producing many inches of tight, concise, pristine, and future-proofed flexible code per day (with “inches” defined not as 11 inches per page but as how tall the printouts stacked. You want me to drop my productivity by 95% just to perform useless tests?
Not happening. I never even learned how to run a program, let alone how to set up a test. Users know how to run programs. WTF would a programmer waste his/her time learning and doing what a primary user will always do better?
My favorite story was when a user called me to ask for an upgrade. I said, “No prob. I’ll have it in “test” in a few minutes”. I did the upgrade and wandered to my contact’s cubicle to let him know. He was on the phone to the user explaining that the request was denied because it would take a team of four programmers a month to complete.
Yep. About right. Regular programmers who have to test their stuff in reality are not just slow, but they produce garbage.
100% success rate over decades is proof enough that I can design with only virtual runs and testing, with the compiler pointing out the inevitable typoes that result from a godawful rate of typing. I wrote the code at breakneck speed then compiled repeatedly, fixing the typoes the compiler found. Once the compile worked all the way to the end of the program and the initial screen came up correctly I put it in test and called the user.
That you aren’t skilled enough to do things in virtual space says nothing about me and my skills/techniques.
I do my builds and tests in my mind. Don’t like it? Try to beat (or even match) 100% success.
Over an entire career I never had a bug that lasted longer than a single day.
You ask how I know it works. I ask, “How do you not know?”
Mr. Know It Allsays
481 – Kevin McKinney
“OK, this is just fun: A 123-ton EV mega-dumptruck using LI battery tech:
The kicker is that because the quarry head is elevated, the payload is 65 tons, and the truck uses regenerative braking, they never need external charging! In fact, they need to ‘bleed’ power back into their local grid.”
mkia: If it uses lithium batteries, the fire will be spectacular! However, per this article, the design did not include lithium batteries:
It does have external charging via the work required to break up the mountain at the top, move it to the loading site, and load it into the edumper; likely all done with diesel-powered machines. It is a cool project – I’d like to see the energy use/transfer calculations for it. It IS wild when you see “greenies” gushing over a mining project that is destroying a mountain. :)
486 – michael Sweet
” The French nuclear plants cannot compete with wind and solar built in other countries.”
Except when it’s dark 16 hours per day in the dead of winter, and no wind for a week.
:)
Mr. Know It Allsays
486 – michael Sweet
“The French nuclear plants cannot compete with wind and solar built in other countries.”
France is doing pretty good on low CO2 emissions with only 5.13 tons/capita. What is going on with Australia with 17.1 and Canada with 18.58 tons/capita? Both are higher than the evil USA at 15.52. How embarrassing. ;)
Re, R. C. and “I do my builds and tests in my mind. Don’t like it? Try to beat (or even match) 100% success.
Over an entire career I never had a bug that lasted longer than a single day.”
Good Lord! Is your other name Lex Luthor???!!!
michael Sweetsays
David Benson at 488:
So your claim that the French were going to build new reactors was false and easily Googled. The reports I see are that 14 900 MW reactors will be shut down. That is more power than 6 new 1650 MW reactors would produce. You appear math challenged. The person in charge of the division that will make the decision is anti-nuclear so they will likely decide not to build. The decision will be made after the Flamanville reactor is fueled. That may be a long time since they have badly designed welds in the main cooling loop that must be repaired and they have no plan to do the work.
Still no peer reviewed or non-peer reviewed plans that use a significant amount of nuclear power in future energy systems. (significant is >10% of final power used).
The French Government just bought out free market investors in EDF (the French Power Company) so that they can bail out the debt ridden nuclear portion. The EU is investigating whether they are illegally subsidizing the nuclear plants. Apparently EDF has not paid off the mortgages for their 40 year old plants and has also not set aside enough money to decommission the plants.
Sorry, nuclear reactors produce 4% of world primary power and not 2% as I said. I forgot that their primary product is waste heat dumped into the environment. It is still an insignificant portion of world energy. Renewable energy produces little waste heat.
michael Sweetsays
Richard Cardwell:
So you have no experience designing engines and your engine exists only on paper. It appears from your previous posts that you also are homeless. Good luck with your new engine design. Perhaps getting an experienced engine designer to look over your plans would help.
“In newly published research from farms across the UK, we discovered that an alternative approach called no-till farming, which does not disturb soils and instead involves placing seeds in drilled holes in the earth, could slash greenhouse gas emissions from crop production by nearly a third and increase how much carbon soils can store.”
Some of us have been suggesting that these kind of changes would produce large benefits. They would be hard on the industries that produce tilling machinery that breaks up the soil on an industrial scale, so there are definitely tradeoffs.
“Though no one besides the Soviet Union made RBMK-1000 reactors, some proposed new reactor designs do involve a positive void coefficient, Lyman said. For example, fast-breeder reactors, which are reactors that generate more fissile material as they generate power, have a positive void coefficient. Russia, China, India and Japan have all built such reactors, though Japan’s is not operational and is planned for decommission and India’s is 10 years behind schedule for opening. (There are also reactors with small positive void coefficients operating in Canada.)
“The designers are arguing that if you take everything into account, overall they’re safe, so that doesn’t matter that much,” Lyman said. But designers shouldn’t be overconfident in their systems, he said.
“That kind of thinking is what got the Soviets into trouble,” he said. “And it’s what can get us into trouble, by not respecting what we don’t know.”
The Soviets believed their RBMK reactors were safe enough to operate. The article says there are ten RBMK type reactors still in operation, but now with additional safety enhancements.
It’s hard some days to have sufficient respect for what we don’t know.
Cheers
Mike
Richard Caldwellsays
Michael Sweet: So you have no experience designing engines and your engine exists only on paper. It appears from your previous posts that you also are homeless. Good luck with your new engine design. Perhaps getting an experienced engine designer to look over your plans would help.
RC: Excellent suggestion. Perhaps a professor who runs the combustion engine department at a top tier University, who would pass me on to an engineer who worked on, say, the Volvo Super truck design?
Why didn’t I think of that?
I am similarly impressed with your expertise on PC/CC/RC engines what with almost 20 minutes of experience.
MotivEngines has a reasonable, but obsolete design.
I suggest you start there, and then add the improvements I’ve shared so far.
Complexity? A monotriple of my design will be as smooth as a four-banger (a twin triple will be way smoother than an inline six).Only one tiny high pressure cylinder, one low pressure fuel injector (price port (low pressure) injectors vs direct injection.
The PC is cheap, cheap, cheap and functions as an oil cooler..
Enough for now. Go study, Michael Sweet
Oh, and no, I am not homeless.
I’ve even got a 30’x10’x2′ tall raised bed garden I made out of a pile of compost my landlord had at the end of my yard.
I’ve got lots of space and privacy even though I live right in the middle of everything.
But it sure was a bitch getting from Book 2 to Book 3
What about hydrogen as a transportation fuel?
https://bravenewclimate.proboards.com/thread/718/hydrogen-fuel?page=4
…and other uses.
Richard Caldwell at 446:
In a decarbonized grid it takes much more primary energy to make liquid fuels than to provide electricity. There is a limited amount of biomaterials to make liquid fuels from and making electrofuels is extremely energy intensive. Battery powered cars are about 90% efficient in use of energy for propulsion. Even if your engine design is twice as efficient as current engines (20-25% efficient) you will still require at least twice as much primary energy to make your car go. Counting the energy to make and distribute the liquid fuel you will need at least triple the energy.
It is difficult to provide enough liquid fuels for other uses like marine transport and airplanes in a renewable energy system. Adding auto transportation would be extremely difficult. Just because you can make liquid fuels in a renewable energy world does not mean that it is practical for every use.
I doubt that any improvement on internal combustion engines could hope to compete with battery electric.
Some basics about the mechanics of reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere from: https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/2016/05/23/why-has-a-drop-in-global-co2-emissions-not-caused-co2-levels-in-the-atmosphere-to-stabilize/
“There’s a pretty simple reason why the recent stabilization in global emissions hasn’t caused CO2 levels to stabilize. The ocean and land sinks for CO2 currently offset only about 50 percent of the emissions. So the equivalent of 50 percent of the emissions is still accumulating in the atmosphere, even with stable emissions. To stabilize CO2 levels would require roughly an immediate roughly 50 percent cut in emissions, at which point the remaining emissions would be fully offset by the sinks, at least for a while.
Eventually, additional emissions cuts would be required because the sinks will slowly lose their efficiency as the land and ocean start to saturate. A permanent stabilization at current levels therefore requires both an immediate 50-percent cut as well as a slow tapering thereafter, eventually approaching zero emissions. The recent stabilization in emissions might be viewed as a very small first step toward the required cuts.”
from May 2016 when CO2 levels at MLO were 407.70 as the monthly average. March 2021 monthly average was 417.64
Cheers
Mike
interesting article about the dogs of Chernobyl and the guards who care for them at the Beeb:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210422-the-guards-caring-for-chernobyls-abandoned-dogs
which led to this article about the true cost/impact of the Chernobyl disaster:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190725-will-we-ever-know-chernobyls-true-death-toll
It is true and should be mentioned that the Chernobyl nuke facilities are an old design that is probably more dangerous than anything being designed and produced today, but it is also worth mentioning that when these were designed, the design was thought to be pretty safe. Sadly, that turned out not to be the case.
I remain on the fence about the nuscale nuclear reactors. I think they might have a place in the energy source mix of the future, but I am not sure that is true. The traditional large nuclear power plants continue to look like bad news to me because they produce dangerous pollutants and waste that exist on a time scale that is likely to exceed human safety and disposal engineering. Maybe that stuff will be ok, but why take the chance if cleaner energy and reasonable energy storage technology can meet our needs?
Cheers
Mike
RC, #446–
I was under the impression that we were talking about something close to the current reality, in which liquid fuels are overwhelmingly FF. If you’re talking about a system in which those liquid fuels are maximally ‘green’ synfuel or some such, then I suppose you are correct, or close enough as merits no fretting.
But I think we’re going to see EVs dominate the light duty transport sector (and some heavy duty segments, too) long before we see the liquid fuel system transformed.
@444:
Most of this is due to the substitution of gas-fired poweplants for coal-fired ones. But that path dead-ends when all the coal is gone. Increasing amounts of unreliable power can INCREASE emissions, as efficient combined-cycle plants have to be replaced by faster-ramping simple-cycle gas turbines due to the need to start up, shut down and ramp more quickly than the steam sections allow.
This is why all production tax credits and feed-in tariffs for “renewables” should be terminated forthwith. It doesn’t matter HOW much wind or PV energy you generate, what matters is how much fossil carbon goes into the atmosphere. We need to treat the “wind plus gas” system AS A SYSTEM and rate it by its performance on that crucial metric.
Looks like Down Under is pushing to become a renewables powerhouse.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/14/green-giants-the-massive-projects-that-could-make-australia-a-clean-energy-superpower
Kevin M: Not if the grid is decarbonized!
I hate this propaganda. “The grid” is not now and will never be “decarbonized.” That solar panels and wind generators don’t directly emit carbon does not mean they are decarbonized. Their manufacture is carbon-intensive. It is far more accurate to say the grid can become less carbon-intensive, and that is what we should say. This jargon is so powerful the typical person – and most of the supposed experts, “thought leaders” and activists! – actually believe this shit and get REALLY ffffing testy when you merely state the truth.
But reality is a *necessary* precondition to a regenerative future.
Not going at yoi, Kevin, but at the misleading, maladaptive jargon.
Nigel: Design often tends naturally towards complexity, but
RC: only if the designer is half-ass.
As in, design has two phases. The easy half comes first, where one adds whatever parts are needed to make a monstrosity actually work. Think of most movies with an invention. The invention has wires and parts and looks like a complicated jumble, right?
Lots of folks get to this point and call it done.
But it’s not done. The second, most important half is to boil the monstrosity down until it is lean and flexible.
A program will have similar segments that MUST be turned into a subroutine and its callings. 10 pages of hard to follow crap that functions adequately if not stressed with unusual data MUST condense to perhaps three pages of easy to follow and modify “song”.
A design that doesn’t sing isn’t finished.
A physical invention MUST have its parts groomed and culled. Groups of parts condense to one. A part or choice leaves a “hole”, as in a characteristic that doesn’t perform a function? One has a “handle” that NEEDS to be used to improve the system, often drastically, beyond what the designer originally conceived.
Again. Designs must sing.
Killian: Hydro is never right except on very small scales.
RC: Not accurate. How about, “To date nobody has designed a large hydro system that satisfies my principles”?
I doubt it would be terribly difficult to design (and simplify) a large hydro system that would.
Nigel: Hmmm. I’m not sure diversity of power supply is desirable just because nature does diversity.
Killian: Just dumb.
RC: Yeah, if you sub-quote. Nigel’s next words noted that diversity is often the best.
I’d chime in that “often” is really 99% or so. Yep, a mountainous region might do best with pure hydropower. A polar region might go pure nuke, with synfuel as the primary storage. Nigel’s right. But …
Beyond those extreme cases Killian is right.
More disagreement about fringe issues?
One of Mike’s links to competing stories: Finally, natural gas generation grew rapidly, driven by the shale gas revolution and low fuel prices. This pushed much of the generation of coal – the most carbon-intensive electricity source – out of the market.
RC: What a “lipstick on a pig” story. It boils down to: according to capitalism fracking appears to be cheap, and according to current GHG accounting fracking appears to spew half as much as coal. Oh, and the negligible amount of wind and solar has increased enough to be kinda sorta relevant.
Fugative methane blows the emissions argument out of the water and the fact that fracking is consuming capital that will never be recovered destroys the economic argument.
Then Mike’s: “Let’s look at the real CO2 level” screams loudly:
Reality isn’t impressed with incomplete and twisted accounting.
Michael Sweet to EP: Why do you make such easily Googled lies?
RC: Yeah. EP has tons to offer to the conversation but BS is runny. It doesn’t stay in its own lane. BS gives all of one’s other contributions that recognizable “stockyard” odor.
You shoot yourself in the foot constantly, EP. I suggest you button your mouth on social issues.
If you actually care about the technical stuff, that is.
Killian, #458–
Appreciated. I’m going to push back a bit, but in the same spirit.
1) Accepting that framing for a moment, to what extent is that carbon intensity inherent, and to what extent can it be changed? Probably most carbon-intensive aspect of the manufacturing process is the power consumed–the majority of which comes from the grid itself. (Other possible sources include emissions from FF machinery used in mining and transportation of materials; FF-source process heat; and (possibly) direct emissions of GHGs from material processing.) So, as the grid emits less, the embodied carbon footprint of solar panels and wind turbines shrinks as well.
2) I think there’s an important question here, which is, what is the most useful way to account for emissions? Because everything in the economy is linked in some way to everything else, categories can easily blur. You see that often with agriculture, estimates of the emissions from which seem to vary especially widely, usually because of the inclusion–or not–of “indirect” or “indirect-ish” emissions. (E.g., does the carbon cost of trucking chickens go under ag or transport?)
On one hand, it makes sense if you are trying to assess the total impact of, say, a solar panel, to take it all the way back to mining lithium in the Atacama. On the other, if you’re not careful you can end up double-counting like crazy. I don’t have a proposal in this regard. But it would be great if there were standards of some sort so we more often all ending up talking apples or oranges, but not both.
Yes. Most preferably, with some sort of quantity attached. False binaries are indeed misleading.
Indeed.
#456, E-P–
No, we need to be squeezing the gas out of the system to the greatest economically efficient extent, using the numerous methods we’ve been discussing at great length in order to maintain stability and reliability.
EP at 456:
You say “Increasing amounts of unreliable power can INCREASE emissions, as efficient combined-cycle plants have to be replaced by faster-ramping simple-cycle gas turbines”
Can you provide data from even one location in the world that installed a significant amount of renewable energy and that caused an increase in emissions because of this issue? It sounds to me like a problem you have just made up. In real life wind and solar can be predicted hours in advance and combined cycle units can be warmed up so that they can be used when needed.
Countries like Sweden that install large amounts of renewable energy emit less carbon than countries that build out nuclear power.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201005112141.htm
“The evidence clearly points to nuclear being the least effective of the two broad carbon emissions abatement strategies, and coupled with its tendency not to co-exist well with its renewable alternative, this raises serious doubts about the wisdom of prioritising investment in nuclear over renewable energy. Countries planning large-scale investments in new nuclear power are risking suppression of greater climate benefits from alternative renewable energy investments.”
michael Sweet @450 has it wrong yet once more.
In the USA about 20% of electricity is generated by nuclear power plants. The figure is much higher in France, at least 75% at one time.
MS Sweet @450
“Meanwhile you (Ep) post numerous errors in your seat of the pants calculations and say we should believe them. ”
You need to show in detail where his calcs are wrong or why would anyone believe you? Its not good enough to quote some paper and expect people to buy it and dig through to find out if its even relevant. You have to at least copy and paste the relevant calcs.
“No-one uses more than 2% nuclear power, and most use none.”
America gets 20% of its power from nuclear. I assume your comment was a typo.
“As far as reproducibility is concerned I can cite at least 30 papers that all conclude renewable energy can power the world.”
I agree and its obvious. Wind plus solar plus storage plus some level of overbuild must work. Its basic physics and the engineering is known well enough. Its all about costs, which are helpfully falling.
I have no problem with nuclear power but it faces big hurdles in western countries with public opinion and time issues with construction, and that cant be lightly dismissed. Some countries will probably elect to stay with nuclear power, if it suits them and has public buy in. Better that than fossil fuels.
Richard Caldwell @459, “But it’s not done. The second, most important half is to boil the monstrosity down until it is lean and flexible….” Hmmm yes well thats what I was getting at @363. Thanks for amplifying. Its the part of design I find hardest. Ive noticed some people cant get beyond a flawed simplicity (talking design and technology here Killian – not ‘simplification’).
E-P 456: all production tax credits and feed-in tariffs for “renewables” should be terminated forthwith.
BPL: all production tax credits and feed-in tariffs for NUCLEAR POWER should be terminated forthwith.
There, I fixed it for you.
David Benson at 467:
At 450 I did not describe either the percent of nuclear in the USA electric grid or the electric grid of France. Perhaps you are referring to my statement that future proposed energy systems will be only 2% or less nuclear. Note I say “energy” systems, not electric power systems. Nuclear proponents are used to describing current electric systems, not All Energy future systems like those modeled by Connelly and Jacobson.
All Energy is 4-5 times the amount of energy as electric only. The US electric grid is about 20% nuclear so nuclear provides only 4-5% of All Energy. Since the USA has more nuclear than most countries, only 2% or so of All Energy in the world economy is currently generated by nuclear reactors.
Can you provide a citation to a peer reviewed energy plan that contains more than 2% nuclear? I can cite at least 25 papers that use 100% renewable energy (primarily wind and solar). I doubt you can even cite a serious non-peer reviewed plan that uses more than 10% nuclear to back up wind and solar.
Both the USA and France are currently shutting down reactors every year. Only one nuclear plant is under construction in France and only 2 in the USA. All three are years behind schedule and over double the initial estimated cost. No free market investment would build a nuclear plant in either country. Nuclear is dying out because it is not economic. Both France and the USA are building out considerable renewable energy for the future.
I note that France currently only generates about 70% of its electricity from nuclear, not the 75% you claim. They propose to lower that to 50% by 2030. They are lowering the amount of nuclear because their reactors have failed to be economic. France, and all other nuclear countries, are abandoning nuclear and building out renewable energy. Sweden is a perfect example. The free market is building out renewable energy and nuclear plants are shutting down.
Nijgelj at 468:
Upthread EP described his calculations to make liquids from biomaterials. He corrected his calculations at least twice. I do not need to show where his errors were, he described them himself. Why should I think he has now found all his errors?
I described an All Energy system, not an electricity only system. Nuclear proponents need to read the peer reviewed literature and learn the proper terms for Energy. It is not my job to teach you the vocabulary of energy systems.
Nuclear proponents like to describe current electric systems because it is impossible for nuclear plants to generate a significant amount of world All Energy in the future.
How my engine solves “unsolvable” problems with engines:
Friction:
In layman-speak friction is a multiple of the tension in the pistion rings times the speed of the piston squared.
The Combustion cylinder (CC) evades significant friction via a 2:1 bore to stroke ratio coupled with a 8:1 compression ratio.Thus, the pistion travels at (not gonna do the math again) 15-25% of a traditional engine’s piston’s linear speed. Square that.
Then, the segregation of the hot parts from the oiled parts allows the oiled parts to be far better fitting. My engine carries this to the extreme by keeping the oil near operating temperature at least overnight. And since the engine uses an insulated box to reduce thermal losses (as opposed to a traditional radiator), it is simple to mitigate thermal losses between runs. Heck, the engine can run for a minute every few hours, feeding whatever load is available.
The Re-expansion cylinder (RC) evades friction by operating at half RPM, dropping friction to 25%. But 25% of what? Unfortunately, 25% of an 80:1 compression ratio traditional engine. But like the CC a very over-square design slows the piston down. Plus, the rings only need to handle what is essentially a traditional engine’s peak exhaust manifold pressure. Half RPM, way over-square, and wimpy rings combine to slay friction
The Pre-compression Cylinder (PC) has it easy. It is slow like the RC and has even lower pressure. And it’s smaller than the RC. Plus, its temp peaks in plastics-and-oil-friendly territory. A materials person’s playground, that.
Next time I’ll probably speak emissions. Dunno.
One reason a good piston to cylinder fit is important is that the rings have to resist (pressure * area of the gap). Cut the gap by 75% and the force on the rings drops accordingly, allowing for wimpier rings.
Mike’s link: There is wildlife living in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone besides dogs. In 2016, Sarah Webster, a US government wildlife biologist who was working at the University of Georgia at the time, and colleagues published a paper in which they revealed how mammals, from wolves to boars and red foxes, had colonised the Exclusion Zone. Camera trap data showed that the animals’ numbers were not noticeably lower in those areas where radioactive contamination is higher.
RC: Point, EP.
Mike: It is true and should be mentioned that the Chernobyl nuke facilities are an old design that is probably more dangerous than anything being designed and produced today, but it is also worth mentioning that when these were designed, the design was thought to be pretty safe
RC: Total crap. Compare a Western design of the era to Chernobyl and get back to us.
Michael Sweet: Richard Caldwell at 446:
In a decarbonized grid it takes much more primary energy to make liquid fuels than to provide electricity. There is a limited amount of biomaterials to make liquid fuels from and making electrofuels is extremely energy intensive.
RC: Good points, Michael.
But we’re not talking about when daisies bloom and everything is Perfecto.
A good analogy is combined cycle power plants. The second engine in such a plant has shitty efficiency and is stupid-expensive per megawatt.
But the fuel is free. Just as it is when the wind blows like a fuck on a sunny day.
Whatcha gonna do with all that excess capacity? How are you going to store it for lulls? How many batteries you going to build? You agree to go dark if the weather sucks for a few weeks?
Kevin, you know me. I would never speak of the current reality other than as a cautionary tale.
Kevin:
But I think we’re going to see EVs dominate the light duty transport sector (and some heavy duty segments, too) long before we see the liquid fuel system transformed.
Could be. It will be fun to find out. But my focus is on trucks, taxies, planes, intercity car travel, and ships.
I don’t want to kill the EV. If you’re going less than 5 miles or so using an engine is stupid. I put the flag at 20 miles. EP has said 40. All (5 to 40 miles) are defensible.
Barton Paul Levenson @ 40 — There are no PTCs or FITs for nuclear power plants. Many grid operators use
https://bravenewclimate.proboards.com/thread/714/pjm-style-electricity-markets
Study of the links on this thread is recommended to avoid future embarrassment.
Kevin,
Remember my model:
A 20-40 mile EV with space that can be used for storage, plus a person-portable way efficient engine that turns said EV into a continent-crosser.
The other model has a permanent engine, but some wicked design that, well, I haven’t finished deciding on how I am going to treat intellectual property (I’m leaning towards telling the whole system to ef itself. I need to do what I do, not chase Caesars).
469 nigelj says:
26 Apr 2021 at 3:58 AM
Ive noticed some people cant get beyond a flawed simplicity (talking design and technology here Killian – not ‘simplification’).
Once again you reveal poor grasp of what you profess to know something of. Whether a thing is complex or not, simple or not, seemingly simple but complex, or seemingly complex but simple is entirely context-dependent. I think I would be hoping you were not on my team if we had to divvy the world up for a design project.
All the times we spoken of design, permaculture, simplicity, regenerative systems, you still don’t seem to understand it all comes down to design. There is absolutely no difference from a purely design perspective between designing a bridge and designing a farm.
OK, this is just fun: A 123-ton EV mega-dumptruck using LI battery tech:
https://cleantechnica.com/2021/04/26/lithium-systems-acquires-123-ton-edumper-project/
The kicker is that because the quarry head is elevated, the payload is 65 tons, and the truck uses regenerative braking, they never need external charging! In fact, they need to ‘bleed’ power back into their local grid.
(OTOH, 50,000 liters of diesel fuel saved in ~2 years makes it kind of serious fun.)
michael Sweet @471 — The French seem to have changed their mind; the government has asked EdF to build 5 more of their over designed EPR nuclear reactors.
Think of that.
Richard Caldwell @475 — The Chernobyl RBMK nuclear power reactor was a graphite moderated, water cooled design derived from weapons plutonium producing reactors. The design is inherently unsafe, being subject to void, i.e., vapor, runaway.
The only comperable reactors in the USA were the weapons plutonium production reactors on the Hanford site. At least those didn’t have the insanely dangerous control rod endings of the RBMK design.
The dangers of the design were recognized in the USA. I doubt that the Soviet designers of the RBMK reactors gave the matter much thought. Hell, they didn’t even put a containment over the structure!
Killian @480, it looks like you have missed part of this conversation. I’m not talking about any of the things you mentioned, which sounds reasonable enough. It was an observation that some people psychologically tend to be attracted towards complexity in design, sometimes over complexity, while other people struggle to get beyond simple, singular solutions when clearly they don’t suffice. This is why design is sometimes sub optimal.
Richard Caldwell at 476:
Energy will never be free. To make liquid fuels you require either biomaterials or you have to capture carbon from somewhere. Each of these costs money. As I pointed out before, there are not enough biomaterials to make liquids for hard to electrify industries like airplanes and marine transport. Those industries will use up all the liquid fuels. The first step in all the All Energy plans that I have seen is to convert everything possible to electricity. That means all cars electric or fuel cells.
I get the impression that your engine is a completely paper design. Have you ever designed and built a working engine before? Have you actually built even one of your engines to determine if your scheme actually works? I doubt that with an 8:1 compression ratio you will get rid of all the friction. Using three cylinders instead of one seems too complicated. You need to build a working model to show that your scheme actually works in practice. Big claims are easy to make when you have nothing to test. Sounds a lot like “nuclear power will be too cheap to meter”.
David Benson at 482:
According to Reuters in January 2021, the decision on building the new reactors will not be made before the end of 2022. https://www.reuters.com/article/france-nuclearpower/france-will-not-decide-on-new-nuclear-reactors-before-end-of-2022-idUSL8N29E2Z7
I find no references to your claim that France plans to build 5 new reactors. Can you provide a reference to support your claim that the decision has been made to build the reactors?
I note that the French plan to remove 14 reactors from the grid in the near future (two this year) so even if they build 5 new ones (my reference says 6), they will net lose nuclear power. Almost all their plants are at the end of life. Major rebuilds are not economic. The French government has never charged enough for the power they generate to retire the mortgages from building the plants so when they are shut down taxpayers will be stuck with the bill for building them all those years ago. Another government subsidy of the nuclear power industry.
There have been many announcements over the years about new nuclear plants that were never built. We will see if they ever break ground. The Swedish look to be shutting down all their reactors in the next 5 years as more wind comes online. The French nuclear plants cannot compete with wind and solar built in other countries.
michael Sweet @471 is wrong yet further:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption
gives energy from nuclear reactors as 4.9% of the world’s total.
michael Sweet @486 — Reuters surely has reported properly. But note that 6 EPRs produce about the same as the oldest 14 of EdFs large fleet of reactors.
I seriously doubt any claim that EdF is losing money with their current rates.
One reason that the Chernobyl disaster happened is possibly because government was both owner and safety regulator. In that situation corners sometimes get cut with safety because of the desire to save money to spend on other things (luxury cars for government officials and other little luxuries).
At least in the USA the ownership of nuclear power plants is separated from the government regulator. Its still a bit incestuous because industry can sometimes capture the regulator, but not nearly as much as in the soviet union.
Michael Sweet: doubt that with an 8:1 compression ratio you will get rid of all the friction
RC: “all” is a dorky word. But I’ll add some more data. The CC is 1/4 the size of an equivalent traditional engine’s piston. And then cut the size in half because of increased efficiency, resulting in the CC (the only high pressure piston in the system) being 1/8 the size of a traditional piston. Now drop the compression ratio to 8:1 and increase the bore:stroke to 2:1.
“Negligible” is the appropriate word for the remaining friction, not “zero”.
I was a programmer in my previous life. Ya know how folks pontificate about how important testing is? Well, testing beyond ensuring stuff compiles is largely a waste of time if the programmer is worth his/her salt.
My stuff works. And the environment I worked in was one where the client’s systems were on their death beds. I was called in when the migration to a new system was obviously going to fail spectacularly. MY job was to type as fast as my fingers would fly, producing many inches of tight, concise, pristine, and future-proofed flexible code per day (with “inches” defined not as 11 inches per page but as how tall the printouts stacked. You want me to drop my productivity by 95% just to perform useless tests?
Not happening. I never even learned how to run a program, let alone how to set up a test. Users know how to run programs. WTF would a programmer waste his/her time learning and doing what a primary user will always do better?
My favorite story was when a user called me to ask for an upgrade. I said, “No prob. I’ll have it in “test” in a few minutes”. I did the upgrade and wandered to my contact’s cubicle to let him know. He was on the phone to the user explaining that the request was denied because it would take a team of four programmers a month to complete.
Yep. About right. Regular programmers who have to test their stuff in reality are not just slow, but they produce garbage.
100% success rate over decades is proof enough that I can design with only virtual runs and testing, with the compiler pointing out the inevitable typoes that result from a godawful rate of typing. I wrote the code at breakneck speed then compiled repeatedly, fixing the typoes the compiler found. Once the compile worked all the way to the end of the program and the initial screen came up correctly I put it in test and called the user.
That you aren’t skilled enough to do things in virtual space says nothing about me and my skills/techniques.
I do my builds and tests in my mind. Don’t like it? Try to beat (or even match) 100% success.
Over an entire career I never had a bug that lasted longer than a single day.
You ask how I know it works. I ask, “How do you not know?”
481 – Kevin McKinney
“OK, this is just fun: A 123-ton EV mega-dumptruck using LI battery tech:
https://cleantechnica.com/2021/04/26/lithium-systems-acquires-123-ton-edumper-project/
The kicker is that because the quarry head is elevated, the payload is 65 tons, and the truck uses regenerative braking, they never need external charging! In fact, they need to ‘bleed’ power back into their local grid.”
mkia: If it uses lithium batteries, the fire will be spectacular! However, per this article, the design did not include lithium batteries:
“The cornerstones of the battery pack have already been fixed: the battery pack for the e-dumper will weigh 4.5 tons and consist of 1,440 nickel manganese cobalt cells.” Source:
https://phys.org/news/2017-09-e-dumper-world-largest-electric-vehicle.html
It does have external charging via the work required to break up the mountain at the top, move it to the loading site, and load it into the edumper; likely all done with diesel-powered machines. It is a cool project – I’d like to see the energy use/transfer calculations for it. It IS wild when you see “greenies” gushing over a mining project that is destroying a mountain. :)
FYI, here’s a big dump truck: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BelAZ_75710
486 – michael Sweet
” The French nuclear plants cannot compete with wind and solar built in other countries.”
Except when it’s dark 16 hours per day in the dead of winter, and no wind for a week.
:)
486 – michael Sweet
“The French nuclear plants cannot compete with wind and solar built in other countries.”
France is doing pretty good on low CO2 emissions with only 5.13 tons/capita. What is going on with Australia with 17.1 and Canada with 18.58 tons/capita? Both are higher than the evil USA at 15.52. How embarrassing. ;)
https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-per-capita/
Re, R. C. and “I do my builds and tests in my mind. Don’t like it? Try to beat (or even match) 100% success.
Over an entire career I never had a bug that lasted longer than a single day.”
Good Lord! Is your other name Lex Luthor???!!!
David Benson at 488:
So your claim that the French were going to build new reactors was false and easily Googled. The reports I see are that 14 900 MW reactors will be shut down. That is more power than 6 new 1650 MW reactors would produce. You appear math challenged. The person in charge of the division that will make the decision is anti-nuclear so they will likely decide not to build. The decision will be made after the Flamanville reactor is fueled. That may be a long time since they have badly designed welds in the main cooling loop that must be repaired and they have no plan to do the work.
Still no peer reviewed or non-peer reviewed plans that use a significant amount of nuclear power in future energy systems. (significant is >10% of final power used).
The French Government just bought out free market investors in EDF (the French Power Company) so that they can bail out the debt ridden nuclear portion. The EU is investigating whether they are illegally subsidizing the nuclear plants. Apparently EDF has not paid off the mortgages for their 40 year old plants and has also not set aside enough money to decommission the plants.
Sorry, nuclear reactors produce 4% of world primary power and not 2% as I said. I forgot that their primary product is waste heat dumped into the environment. It is still an insignificant portion of world energy. Renewable energy produces little waste heat.
Richard Cardwell:
So you have no experience designing engines and your engine exists only on paper. It appears from your previous posts that you also are homeless. Good luck with your new engine design. Perhaps getting an experienced engine designer to look over your plans would help.
https://theconversation.com/farming-without-disturbing-soil-could-cut-agricultures-climate-impact-by-30-new-research-157153?utm_campaign=Carbon%20Brief%20Daily%20Briefing&utm_content=20210428&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20Daily
“In newly published research from farms across the UK, we discovered that an alternative approach called no-till farming, which does not disturb soils and instead involves placing seeds in drilled holes in the earth, could slash greenhouse gas emissions from crop production by nearly a third and increase how much carbon soils can store.”
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abe74e
Some of us have been suggesting that these kind of changes would produce large benefits. They would be hard on the industries that produce tilling machinery that breaks up the soil on an industrial scale, so there are definitely tradeoffs.
CO2 levels?
Daily CO2
Apr. 27, 2021 = 419.49 ppm
Apr. 27, 2020 = 416.12 ppm
co2.earth
We should probably get cracking and start bringing that CO2 number down. Let’s ignore the methane issue for the moment.
Cheers
Mike
#461, KIA–“Nickel-manganese-cobalt batteries” are a type of Li battery:
https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/types_of_lithium_ion
Perhaps the name “Lithium Systems” in the story could have served as a clue.
Those interested in French nuclear power are advised to read
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France
rather than paying any attention to michael Sweet.
a little more on nuclear safety:
“Though no one besides the Soviet Union made RBMK-1000 reactors, some proposed new reactor designs do involve a positive void coefficient, Lyman said. For example, fast-breeder reactors, which are reactors that generate more fissile material as they generate power, have a positive void coefficient. Russia, China, India and Japan have all built such reactors, though Japan’s is not operational and is planned for decommission and India’s is 10 years behind schedule for opening. (There are also reactors with small positive void coefficients operating in Canada.)
“The designers are arguing that if you take everything into account, overall they’re safe, so that doesn’t matter that much,” Lyman said. But designers shouldn’t be overconfident in their systems, he said.
“That kind of thinking is what got the Soviets into trouble,” he said. “And it’s what can get us into trouble, by not respecting what we don’t know.”
https://www.livescience.com/65618-are-chernobyl-style-reactors-still-operating-safe.html
The Soviets believed their RBMK reactors were safe enough to operate. The article says there are ten RBMK type reactors still in operation, but now with additional safety enhancements.
It’s hard some days to have sufficient respect for what we don’t know.
Cheers
Mike
Michael Sweet: So you have no experience designing engines and your engine exists only on paper. It appears from your previous posts that you also are homeless. Good luck with your new engine design. Perhaps getting an experienced engine designer to look over your plans would help.
RC: Excellent suggestion. Perhaps a professor who runs the combustion engine department at a top tier University, who would pass me on to an engineer who worked on, say, the Volvo Super truck design?
Why didn’t I think of that?
I am similarly impressed with your expertise on PC/CC/RC engines what with almost 20 minutes of experience.
MotivEngines has a reasonable, but obsolete design.
I suggest you start there, and then add the improvements I’ve shared so far.
Complexity? A monotriple of my design will be as smooth as a four-banger (a twin triple will be way smoother than an inline six).Only one tiny high pressure cylinder, one low pressure fuel injector (price port (low pressure) injectors vs direct injection.
The PC is cheap, cheap, cheap and functions as an oil cooler..
Enough for now. Go study, Michael Sweet
Oh, and no, I am not homeless.
I’ve even got a 30’x10’x2′ tall raised bed garden I made out of a pile of compost my landlord had at the end of my yard.
I’ve got lots of space and privacy even though I live right in the middle of everything.
But it sure was a bitch getting from Book 2 to Book 3