SHORT UPDATE (AT LEAST FOR A WHILE!)
In just the few days since my last rant, a lot of
things have popped up. First, I need to
expand on my critique of fusion power.
My description of the fuel needed is incomplete, although it is true
that hydrolysis of seawater is necessary to separate the deuterium atoms from
the hydrogen atoms. (1 atom of deuterium
for every 6,420 atoms of hydrogen.) The
other component of the fuel is tritium, and this does not occur in nature but
is produced by activating lithium in a fission nuclear reactor, so we would
need to have some of those reactors around in the future. Tritium decays to helium in about 25 years,
which is why the military needs to replenish its availability in our H2 nuclear
warheads and fusion reactors. The large infrastructure, energy requirements,
and supply chains necessary to support a fusion energy economy would be huge;
and like our current nuclear power infrastructure, it will have a fairly large
carbon footprint, making the whole NO CO2 argument pointless.
China just achieved a milestone in fusion research…a
tiny fusion reaction for 17 minutes!
Check out this story…proceed to the end where “story continues,”
and look at the video. A lot of heat to
deal with!!
While Congress continues to sit on its thumbs, the rest
of the world moves on with renewables and Hydrogen. The energy industry is finally beginning to
address a new direction for the future use of Hydrogen in stationary storage
for microgrids based on renewable energy.
A solution for the age-old question “what do you do when the sun doesn’t
and the wind doesn’t blow?” Hydrogen and
fuel cells, along with current battery technology, future solid-state batteries,
and a whole range of new storage and digital technologies, will work in tandem
to provide reliable electricity to microgrids, minigrids, picogrids…the concept
of THE GRED is changing and expanding.
It is no longer a huge collection of transmission wires linking huge
power plants to demands thousands of miles away. Decentralized generation, using varied local
resources, can work in First world, as well as Second and Third world
countries. The manufacture of renewables
and their related technologies can/is happening at an ever-increasing rate…much
faster than any nuclear option. Can/will we have the political courage to free
the development and deployment of these necessary technologies which require both
economic and social incentives? We’ll
see!
One last summary of the new nuclear push with SMR by
the industry again pins hopes on some 61 different designs, hoping for at least
one of them being feasible, cheaper, safer, cleaner? (no mention of wastes
produced), and actual need. TerraPower,
the reactor supported by Bill Gates is a sodium-cooled reactor that would
require recycling of nuclear waste (reprocessing) for its fuel. We already know that reprocessing creates
huge amounts of other nuclear wastes in liquid form. Hanford was the government reprocessing site
for plutonium production, and today is still uncleanable after billions of
dollars spent. The industry would create
another infrastructure component that will demand huge technology and money to operate,
let alone deal with the wastes and dispose of them. The infamous Monju sodium
reactor in Japan in the early 1900s had a huge sodium fire that shut down that
whole reactor program. TerraPower’s
345MW reactor is to be built in a remote area of Wyoming at the current
estimate of $4.1billion and maybe come online by 2028 if it works. Just another nuclear time and money dream.
The four small reactors slated for Eastern Washington
are based on “pebble-bed fuel” ideas that came up about 20 years ago and have
never been demonstrated. Nuscale’s 6
very small reactors project is slated for Utah at a cost estimate of $5.1
billion and to projected to be online by 2029, is already falling behind on
time and budget. Again, these are all
unproven technologies that may look good on paper (or a computer screen) but as
with past ideas and projects, most have proved to be too technologically,
economically, and socially complex. Even
if they were to prove successful, their construction, deployment, etc. would
not make a dent in the upcoming renewable supply.
It will be an interesting year, and I am no longer in
awe at most of the renewable projects and new technologies that appear every
day. I will try and keep my enthusiastic
blogs to a minimum.
The sun is shining, and the wind is blowing!
Some current background:
https://www.eenews.net/articles/new-york-renewable-hydrogen-hub/
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