paradigm-change? Frak'g Causes Environmentalists Go Pro-Nuclear?

[c1ue]

Re: paradigm-change? Frak'g Causes Environmentalists Go Pro-Nuclear?

It's probably important to distinguish between an environment that plants love and one that's great for humans. The last time we were at roughly 400PPM CO2 was in years orders of magnitude before humans mattered as a species. Since we've been a dominating force, it's been fairly stable. We should, at a minimum, question if this change is an issue for humans. Some plants will love it but others have adapted over the last few million years to low levels of CO2.

Really? You're trying to say humans can't handle 400 ppm as a species?

That's utterly ridiculous. There are many and varied examples of humans living in far higher CO2 ppm concentrations - not least of which is the CO2 concentration in every human's out-breath.

Average installation cost for large scale systems in Japan is ~$2.00 a watt. It's typically 20-30% higher in the US which is a much smaller and more diverse market. Since I'd just be talking my own book, I'll let others decide if this makes economic sense.

Except of course, this cost doesn't include: grid cost to handle upstream power inflows, backup generation cost(for when there's no sun), inverters and other associated infrastructure, installation, storage, etc.

[Penguin]

Re: paradigm-change? Frak'g Causes Environmentalists Go Pro-Nuclear?

I read the archdruid's weekly epistles in a steady state of denial. "Surely this won't come to pass", I keep telling myself.

It is a tough one to swallow and that's a fact.

I don't know about you but when I tred the stomping grounds of the Peak Oil world (or those who adamantly deny PO) I am very cautious. Even the most even keeled and intellectually honest have a hard time getting good hard data. There seem to be a lot of folks wishing for the fall of industrial civilization and they can muddy up the waters as much as those who deny that any limits whatsoever exist on our ability to fuel the future. I like the archdruid because most of the time he tries very hard to avoid the usual hyperbole surrounding the topic much like EJ does.

I'm coming to believe that even if we could maintain crude production at this level and at these prices we would still be in a world of hurt. Efficiency gains aside, that would make transportation fuel dangerously close to being a zero sum game.

A paradigm change in environmental thinking is far past due. But if things play out in a PCO world I am not sure how much good they can do.

Will

[Polish_Silver]

Re: what nukes can do

While I agree with both your overall point, and most of your arguments, it should be pointed out that running turbines or other heat-exchange processes at very high temperatures also means shorter lifetimes, and a slew of other non-trivial problems. Given scarce availability for large volumes of indium, that is also highly unlikely to be a heat transfer medium. (Even thin films of Indium Tin Oxide are of increasingly dubious economic value for this very reason.) The future does hold some real promise, and there are vastly safer nuclear reactor designs than are installed today, but it is still not a panacea. Some very real investments (and for the US, controversial new reactor builds) will need to be made before some of these ideas can become a reality.

Optimism may well be in order, but exuberance, perhaps not just yet. ;-)

Siemens is running turbines with the exhaust temperature at 500C.

The original question was about the abundance of uranium.

Indium is almost a precious metal, at $400/kg. I have no idea how many kg would be needed to cool a reactor. Lead, anyone?

[Prazak]

Re: paradigm-change? Frak'g Causes Environmentalists Go Pro-Nuclear?

I don't know about you but when I tred the stomping grounds of the Peak Oil world (or those who adamantly deny PO) I am very cautious. Even the most even keeled and intellectually honest have a hard time getting good hard data. There seem to be a lot of folks wishing for the fall of industrial civilization and they can muddy up the waters as much as those who deny that any limits whatsoever exist on our ability to fuel the future. I like the archdruid because most of the time he tries very hard to avoid the usual hyperbole surrounding the topic much like EJ does.

Agreed, and indeed I've long since stopped going onto those sites at all. Too many eschatological axes grinding away. The archdruid is the only one of those that I do keep in my news feed, like you because of the lucidity and factual sweep he brings to his analysis. I can't read any of the comments, though. The man has some crazies following his blog.

I'm coming to believe that even if we could maintain crude production at this level and at these prices we would still be in a world of hurt. Efficiency gains aside, that would make transportation fuel dangerously close to being a zero sum game.

I'm still holding onto a naive faith in human ingenuity and doing impotent things like looking into solar for my house and watching real estate listings of small farms within a reasonable bike ride. Deer, meet headlights.

[BadJuju]

Re: paradigm-change? Frak'g Causes Environmentalists Go Pro-Nuclear?

I'm coming to believe that even if we could maintain crude production at this level and at these prices we would still be in a world of hurt. Efficiency gains aside, that would make transportation fuel dangerously close to being a zero sum game.

A paradigm change in environmental thinking is far past due. But if things play out in a PCO world I am not sure how much good they can do.

Will

The thing is, life using considerably less oil is easy. I walk or bike everywhere. It isn't that difficult. Maybe it seems impossible to people that have never lived it. Americans would be a hell of a lot better off if they started using their legs more.

[Polish_Silver]

liquid metal coolant

Gen4energy wants to use lead-bismuth for coolant, not indium.

I thought of indium because of personal experience with it, and because it has such a low melting point, low toxicity etc.

[astonas]

Re: what nukes can do

Siemens is running turbines with the exhaust temperature at 500C.

The original question was about the abundance of uranium.

Like I said before, I agree with you, both in your overall point, and most of your arguments. I was merely bounding the optimism at just a bit below euphoria, which isn't that unreasonable. (I'm actually quite hopeful regarding nuclear, in general, though not the US plant designs.)

The Siemens turbines do indeed seem impressive, and I have no doubt advanced thermal barrier coatings can continue to improve them further, if only incrementally. There's certainly enough money being spent on that research!

But most material degradation effects will still depend on the Boltzmann energy distribution, and that means that temperature-dependant failure can certainly be delayed, but never eliminated, through clever materials engineering tricks. Diffusion will accelerate with T, so grains will Ostwald-ripen faster, and kinetically-limited structures (as all composite materials fundamentally must be) will eventually have to degrade on the way toward thermodynamic equilibrium. There is no way to avoid the fact that this must always depend on temperature, and higher temperatures will therefore in general shorten lifetimes. (Damn you, Newton, and your entropy too! ) ... That's all I was really alluding to with my previous comment.

The real question is of course in the economics: "When is that still a good tradeoff?"

I honestly have no idea what the answer is on the Siemens turbines, or others for that matter, so I'll happily trust your engineering judgement on that one. It's been a long time since I took a structural materials or environmental engineering course, and would have to do some serious studying before I did one of those calculations myself. In any event, it is safe to presume they wouldn't have developed them if they didn't think they could find a customer, so it is reasonable to assume there is at least one. And yeah, if it holds up well in the field, I can certainly see such developments spreading as rapidly as turbine-rebuild schedules permit. There's no good* reason to operate the high-temp end of turbine at lower temperatures than you have to. Old man Carnot will get you if you don't.

Indium is almost a precious metal, at $400/kg. I have no idea how many kg would be needed to cool a reactor. Lead, anyone?

Based on abundance, you're pretty much right. If silver is a precious metal, indium should be considered one as well. But it is so soft and dull, and oxidizes so easily, that it hasn't ever been used for jewelry, and thus by tradition is not classified as such:



It's funny you should mention lead. I was thinking that some lead eutectics might be really good. (Indium eutectics are not only expensive, but some can degrade certain grain boundaries under high-temperature conditions.) Who knows, maybe we'll be running a lead-tin eutectic through all our heat exchangers soon! It's not like we need to be RoHS-compliant over here.

The challenge with lead, pure or alloyed, is that a large atom also means a low heat capacity: (~130 J/kgK vs steam's ~2100 J/kgK) and a viscous liquid is much more complicated to deal with than a gas. I'm not sure offhand what the lightest element that has a eutectic (or even azeotropic) relationship with lead is, but if I were looking, that'd be one place to start. Go small or go home? ;-)

* There are a few really bad reasons to do it, though. A while back UC Berkeley had to change its co-gen plant operating temperatures because protestors thought that the (visible) steam coming out was pollution, and wouldn't believe that eliminating it would harm the environment by making the plant less efficient. (The protests weren't led by students, but outsiders.) "Smoke"=pollution, right? Anyone can see that! So they tweaked the temperatures until the exhaust was no longer visible over the smokestacks, and the protestors went away believing they had made the world a better place.

[Polish_Silver]

heat per volume vs per particle

. . .
The challenge with lead, pure or alloyed, is that a large atom also means a low heat capacity: (~130 J/kgK vs steam's ~2100 J/kgK) and a viscous liquid is much more complicated to deal with than a gas. I'm not sure offhand what the lightest element that has a eutectic (or even azeotropic) relationship with lead is, but if I were looking, that'd be one place to start. Go small or go home? ;-)

. ..

I wonder if the volumetric heat capacity isn't just as important as the heat stored per unit mass or per particle?

Wouldn't a kg of lead take up a lot less volume than a kg of steam?

I don't know enough about heat exchangers to say for sure, but I think liquid metal might kick but on steam.

Exploration of molten salt heat exchangers has a long history, going back to the days of designing nuclear powered airplanes. Euphoria is relative.

[Penguin]

Re: paradigm-change? Frak'g Causes Environmentalists Go Pro-Nuclear?

... I'm still holding onto a naive faith in human ingenuity and doing impotent things like looking into solar for my house and watching real estate listings of small farms within a reasonable bike ride. Deer, meet headlights.

Maybe, but maybe not.

Hard to say what the future holds. But if it makes you feel any better I don't believe in the full blown apocalypse scenario myself. But if the past is any guide to the future it won't be pretty. Be honest, if someone went back in time to 1973 and informed you of the situation of the US in 2013 how would it affect you? Wouldn't you be shocked? I sure as hell would have been... although I would have been much too young to understand it, lol.

But I am hopeful that although we are starting to feel the effects of resource scarcity the main problem we have now is policy. That could be structured in a way that would improve the future drastically which is after all the gist of the original post. Now all we have to do is figure out how to make that happen. Maybe taking on the two criminal enterprises that comprise our political parties would be a good start?

Will

[Penguin]

Re: paradigm-change? Frak'g Causes Environmentalists Go Pro-Nuclear?

The thing is, life using considerably less oil is easy. I walk or bike everywhere. It isn't that difficult. Maybe it seems impossible to people that have never lived it. Americans would be a hell of a lot better off if they started using their legs more.

In a way I agree with you. But it all depends on where you live and where you work. I know people always say "Well live closer to where you work!"

Now that is easier said than done. Job changes? Travel arrangements? Child care? Age restraints? And so many other things make it all but unworkable for many folks. In many cases the current infrastructure and mass transit systems just won't get the job done. I believe that in the end we are going to have to make some major remodeling of the current systems. These changes are fairly drastic. And just exactly how would we get this funded in the current political climate?

Hard to tell.

Will

[astonas]

Re: heat per volume vs per particle

. ..

I wonder if the volumetric heat capacity isn't just as important as the heat stored per unit mass or per particle?

Wouldn't a kg of lead take up a lot less volume than a kg of steam?

I don't know enough about heat exchangers to say for sure, but I think liquid metal might kick but on steam.

Exploration of molten salt heat exchangers has a long history, going back to the days of designing nuclear powered airplanes. Euphoria is relative.

You could well be right. I was assuming that the additional viscosity of a liquid metal would dominate, but as I've said, I haven't done the calculations. I'd bet that someone has published a Lagrangian to optimize the problem, though, based either on Navier-Stokes, or another picture. (I'm away from my lit. search tools t the moment, so I can't check that a.t.m.)

[c1ue]

Re: paradigm-change? Frak'g Causes Environmentalists Go Pro-Nuclear?

I wonder if the volumetric heat capacity isn't just as important as the heat stored per unit mass or per particle?

I knew a Russian reactor designer living/working in Tokyo - and asked him why they used sodium.

High heat capacity is one factor - it means you don't need to pressurize the coolant, which is a huge safety consideration.

A second factor is that sodium doesn't corrode steel - which water does.

Sodium isn't ideal, though, because it does react very energetically with water - hence the exploration of other metals (sodium is a metal)
.

[santafe2]

Re: What is "it" ?

ahh so - thot you were meaning that 6% was US - and sorry for sounding confrontational, santa - it wasnt my intention.again, didnt mean to 'pick on' you and i apologize for my tone - but this - nuke power - is a political issue, is it not?from what i've been able to gather over the past 30years, political issues are The Primary Energy Problem in The US and not technological - else we could've avoided nearly all of the environmental problems, to say nothing of the economic problems associated with the geo-politix of oil and fossil fuels in general; ie: had nuke power capabilities been fully developed, The US might never have needed to be blowing TRILLIONS on endless war over oil, nor fouling the biosphere with combustion of dirty coal (or 'clean' coal for that matter) for electric production.and as much as i am a proponent of renewables on the smaller/individual building scale - PV and solar water/space heating make sense when its on your own house - i just dont see how it could ever make a dent in the macro energy equation = why i dont see much choice but to fully develop nuke power.nears i can tell, its ALL POLITIX and ideology at this point, that prevents The US from making critical changes in how we keep the lights on and sustainable transportation options - esp transport, as i for one would not want to revert back to the days when only the rich could afford to travel (never mind commute to work)but again, sorry for my tone earlier - i get a bit carried away at times, esp on the energy/politics issue.

No problem lektrode. I think we're on the same page. It's better to use any type of energy that doesn't require us controlling another country and spending trillions to satisfy our energy requirements. PV is finally beginning to scale up in the US but it and wind energy have a long way to go before they make a real dent. If we can really get 80 years, even 50 years out of nuclear energy that will go a long way toward buying us the time we need with renewable technology.

[santafe2]

Re: What is "it" ?

[/B]

Santa Fe: do you have a citation for the bolded text?
I am asking because I had the idea that the price was more on the order of $3 per peak watt. In a country with average insolation you could expect 1 pw. to be about 1/4 th. in terms of constant output. Then a 500 MW installation would cost about $6bn. If price goes down to $2 for pw. then cost comes down to 4bn.

Sorry I don't Southernguy. We were talking about it in the office the other day with one of our Japanese vendors and they were telling us that a multi megawatt large field array in Japan has gotten down to about 200 Yen/watt. That assumes the array is adjacent to power lines sufficient to off-take the energy. Japan has the most aggressive program in the world now and will be the largest market this year. PV still has a ways to go in most markets to meet grid parity without supports but it's come a long way in the last 10 years.

[santafe2]

Re: paradigm-change? Frak'g Causes Environmentalists Go Pro-Nuclear?

Really? You're trying to say humans can't handle 400 ppm as a species?

That's utterly ridiculous. There are many and varied examples of humans living in far higher CO2 ppm concentrations - not least of which is the CO2 concentration in every human's out-breath.

Maybe your on to something c1ue, mouth breathers don't want to look so dumb, they're just getting too much CO2.