.

[Ecocharger + 1,474]

18 hours ago, waltz said:

As someone who lives just outside of a Great Lake city, Chicago, I can assure you nuclear is not the problem.  We are averaging a freeway shooting in less than every 48hrs. year to date, over 200 carjackings ytd along with our normal nationally known level of shootings.  All this with over 48” of snow in the same time frame.  
 

Tell me about the problems with nuclear again.

     waltz 

I love Chicago, one of my ancestors owned a large farm in the 1830's in what is now downtown Chicago. He sold it when it was still farmland. I heard the Chicago Symphony and saw the Institute of Art  a few years ago. Top class.

But if nuke goes wrong, nothing you  mention above will compare to the disaster.

[turbguy + 1,545]

1 hour ago, Ecocharger said:

But if nuke goes wrong, nothing you  mention above will compare to the disaster.

That is why nuc is so expensive to build and operate. 

It takes considerable cash to build and maintain the extreme safety culture demanded by putting ALL your fuel for 2 years in a little box.

Anybody ever been in a spent fuel pool area?  I have.  Looking down into a huge stainless steel bathtub, through that crystal clear borated water, the submerged fuel bundles have the neatest blue glow around them (from electrons traveling faster than the speed of light in water).

If one bundle ever gets inadvertently lifted out of the pool, and you're in the same room, you are on your way to a hospital.  And you may not arrive alive.

 

Edited February 27, 2021 by turbguy

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

2 hours ago, Richard D said:

Good point about Antarctica. A matter that I have never heard discussed;if the world gets warmer and the seas heat up,then the extra moisture from the warmer seas will fall as snow in Antarctica and the heat from that condensation and freezing will immediately be radiated out into space. It is quite extraordinary that we have mostly sea near the North Pole,but we have a whole continent at the South Pole. How this situation alters climate seems to be anybody's guess,but the southern hemisphere is cooler than the northern one.

 

14 minutes ago, Dan Warnick said:

WhatsHerFace has a really interesting take on the Texas Power Outage:

Texas Power Outage

What do you guys think?

The video is great. Maybe a bit too much coffee driving an overactive imagination but just great. 

When you look at paleomagnetic data, the magnetic poles have wandered. From a rock you can determine from its paleomagnetic compass whether the magnetic pole was in the north or the south when the rock was formed. Land masses move around in geologic time. For example, there are tropical atolls in Canada, tropical limestones in Siberia, also in Antarctica. Plate tectonics explain much of this. 

When plates separate they produce oceans. When they collide they produce mountains. So, at this particular microscopic slice in geologic time, we have our current distribution of land mass and sea structure. The tilt of our planet on its rotational axis is somewhere around 23 degrees and that produces our temperatures and seasons. In essence, it produces our weather. 

The burning question in my aging brain is, has our planet always had a tilt of 23 degrees? Have plate tectonics and continental drift--moving India, for example, up from the Southern Hemisphere--also affected tilt? It's a very naive question and I imagine one of you torpedoes has the answer, which I'd like to learn.

One thing is for sure: our planet has undergone at least fifty cycles of extreme warming and cooling. The Ice Age will almost certainly revisit the earth at some point. There have been extreme levels of methane in our atmosphere in the past--but it was more likely secondary to the weather than causing the weather to change.  

As to the Chinese Communist Party changing our weather, I doubt it. But I'm sure they're working on it. I suppose I'm more worried about Covid-20 than their fiddling around with the weather. 

[Ecocharger + 1,474]

8 minutes ago, turbguy said:

That is why nuc is so expensive to build and operate. 

It takes considerable cash to build and maintain the extreme safety culture demanded by putting ALL your fuel for 2 years in a little box.

The expense alone rules out nuke as a practical source. The pro-nuke folks always underplay the hidden costs.

[turbguy + 1,545]

Another observation about nuc power. The spent fuel eventually gets stored dry, in massive steel/concrete casks and laid out in an exterior spent fuel cask storage area.  The spent fuel is now cooling off inside the casks for the next, say, 300+ years.  I understand that a "fresh' spent fuel volume of about a 55 gallon drum continually produces about 5 KW (+/-) of residual heat.

I have observed that snow never accumulates on those casks.  No matter what the ambient temperature, it melts.

Edited February 27, 2021 by turbguy

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

6 hours ago, Wombat said:

Half correct Dan. The largest H2 production site will be in Western Australia, powered by Wind and Solar. The coal-based plant in Victoria (if it goes ahead), will involve CCS. ie: Blue Hydrogen. There will also be a "green ammonia" facility built in QLD. Australia's plans to cut greenhouse emissions are far more advanced than that of the US, but we cop a lot of flak for not promising net zero by 2050. We will probably get to absolute zero by then, as well as export more green energy than any other country on the planet, but as long as the rest of the world is racing to sell as much fossil fuel as they can, we will do the same. Indonesia recently overtook Australia as the worlds' largest exporter of coal, and USA will overtake our position as largest exporter of LNG within 3 years, but you never hear anyone complain about Indonesia and Biden's "pledge" is just "grand-scale greenwashing". 

I will believe in CCS when someone actually does it at scale on an ongoing basis. The biggest CCS plants in the US ended up shutting down, and most of the "captured" carbon (in the form of CO2) was being used industrially, not "captured", and was therefore ending up in the atmosphere anyway.  To truly capture carbon, the carbon atoms must end up in a form and in a location where they will not enter the atmosphere as CO2 for at least a few hundred years. Either the CO2 must be injected into locations where it will not sneak back out, or the carbon must be bound into solids (graphene, carbon fibers, nanotubes, diamonds, etc.) and unless there are radical breakthroughs in the technology, solids at scale will never make economic sense. I wish solids made sense: I would love to have a house, car, highway, etc. built from them.

Actually, there is one existing large-scale carbon capture technology in use today: putting disposable plastic into landfill. Since we don't do it properly, it's an additional problem instead of a solution, and we struggle to recycle plastics instead of sequestering them.

NOTE: I am not commenting here on whether or not CO2 causes climate change.

[waltz + 140]

1 hour ago, Ecocharger said:

I love Chicago, one of my ancestors owned a large farm in the 1830's in what is now downtown Chicago. He sold it when it was still farmland. I heard the Chicago Symphony and saw the Institute of Art  a few years ago. Top class.

But if nuke goes wrong, nothing you  mention above will compare to the disaster.

It was your claim that nuclear was some deterrent to tourism in the area, I was just pointing out that was not the case.  You may dislike nuclear but your premise was false.  By the way, we just emerged from a two plus week period where the temperature never rose above 32*F and have seen five freeway shootings in as many days.  From a tourists point of view, do you think they believe they are more likely to run into a problem because of someone committing an armed criminal act or a problem from one of the nuclear plants?  Would you say that concern is justified?

     waltz 

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

15 hours ago, Boat said:

Iowa runs at 40% renewables and is the nations leader in wind. Check a map. They have severe winters. I’ll let you research how they do it but a hint is heat for part of their winterization pkg.

No. It. Isn't. 

This is called EVIDENCE you should try it sometime. 

Quote

QUICK FACTS

• Texas is the top U.S. producer of both crude oil and natural gas. In 2019, the state accounted for 41% of the nation's crude oil production and 25% of its marketed natural gas production.
• As of January 2019, the 30 petroleum refineries in Texas were able to process about 5.8 million barrels of crude oil per day and accounted for 31% of the nation's refining capacity.
• Texas leads the nation in wind-powered generation and produced about 28% of all the U.S. wind-powered electricity in 2019. Texas wind turbines have produced more electricity than both of the state's nuclear power plants since 2014. 
• Texas produces more electricity than any other state, generating almost twice as much as Florida, the second-highest electricity-producing state.
• Texas is the largest energy-producing and energy-consuming state in the nation. The industrial sector, including its refineries and petrochemical plants, accounts for half of the energy consumed in the state.

 

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

15 hours ago, Gerry Maddoux said:

The Texas power market does not include a capacity market that pays generators to keep power plants available. As inexpensive natural gas and subsidized renewable power pushed down power prices, coal’s market share dipped below that of natural gas

@NickW blithely commented many pages ago that we ought to build one 500MW gas power plant for every 500MW of wind generation (paraphrased). I criticized that, naturally, but when you've become indoctrinated into the clown world that is the EU things that make no economic sense become de rigeur. So why not build a massively underutilized generating system, raising the cost of power for all, all in the name of "green"? I mean, if you just built the gas plant you'd be $Billions ahead! The electricity produced would be dirt cheap and reliable! Logic, common sense? Thought crimes now. 

[Ecocharger + 1,474]

52 minutes ago, waltz said:

It was your claim that nuclear was some deterrent to tourism in the area, I was just pointing out that was not the case.  You may dislike nuclear but your premise was false.  By the way, we just emerged from a two plus week period where the temperature never rose above 32*F and have seen five freeway shootings in as many days.  From a tourists point of view, do you think they believe they are more likely to run into a problem because of someone committing an armed criminal act or a problem from one of the nuclear plants?  Would you say that concern is justified?

     waltz 

Check out the smaller towns along the Great Lakes coasts, the ones close to nuke facilities have taken a huge hit from lost tourist dollars. I know whereof I speak.

I know Chicago has problems with shootings, I have not been there since I heard the Chicago Symphony in 2011, so that is my most recent visit. The place still looked great at that time. And we drove the freeways around town.

I was expecting Trump to send in the Guard and do a thorough house-by-house check for firearms, but that did not happen. The Chicago politicos have to step up and support legal enforcement.

 

Edited February 27, 2021 by Ecocharger

[turbguy + 1,545]

Hey, TEXAN'S!  Get your act together!  Get your personal consumption up there!

Like they say @ Frito-Lay:

USE ALL YOU WANT, WE'LL MAKE MORE!

Edited February 27, 2021 by turbguy

[waltz + 140]

14 minutes ago, Ecocharger said:

 

Truer words have never been spoken but unfortunately from the Mayor, the Governor and local State’s Attorney they can expect zero assistance.  Law enforcement is in an unenviable position here.

If you ever make it back I would recommend the Architectural boat tour, impresses both locals and tourists alike.

     waltz 

added:  meant to quote your last sentence.

Edited February 27, 2021 by waltz

[surrept33 + 609]

2 hours ago, turbguy said:

That is why nuc is so expensive to build and operate. 

It takes considerable cash to build and maintain the extreme safety culture demanded by putting ALL your fuel for 2 years in a little box.

Anybody ever been in a spent fuel pool area?  I have.  Looking down into a huge stainless steel bathtub, through that crystal clear borated water, the submerged fuel bundles have the neatest blue glow around them (from electrons traveling faster than the speed of light in water).

If one bundle ever gets inadvertently lifted out of the pool, and you're in the same room, you are on your way to a hospital.  And you may not arrive alive.

 

I think there is a lot to learn (for everybody) from the nuclear folks. I think the fundamental change with nuclear over the years is that when comminishing a nuclear plant, the whole lifecycle gets planned for, including the cost of decommissioning the plant and taking care of the spent fuel (a more general form of this is called life cycle analysis (LCA), but it helps everyone be incrementally mindful of the future and external costs to any sort of human activity, something we've all been bad at as a species historically because we hyperbolically discounted the future). It's why from a cost perspective, there hasn't been as much investment in new nuclear plants recently. Some of the plants in Texas have literally been 'on sale' for $1 in years past (this basically means the risk of insurance didn't make the free cash flow worth for any buyers it till more safety protocols were introduced). 

I think the most interesting developments in nuclear are actually in fusion, not fission. It's almost gone from a science to engineering problem with a view to quick commercialization (rather than always being 40 years away), for example, the MIT 'smaller and sooner' reactor: https://www.psfc.mit.edu/news/2021/an-aggressive-market-driven-model-for-us-fusion-power-development 

This is kind of a leapfrogging attempt of ITAR, the international 'fusion accelerator' in Europe, which will go online in 2025, but uses MASSIVE magnets (~6 stories each) which may not be that pragmatic (for example, the world has about $100 trillion stock of capital, but from a pragmatic point of view, the bottleneck isn't money in a fiat system, it's heavy forges in this case, what do you use them to build?)

I think the biggest source of drivers for changes has been the corporate sector from what I've seen recently:

https://sciencebasedtargets.org/sbti-progress-report-2020

In addition to looking at their own pollution, companies look at the sustainability of their operations both upstream/downstream from themselves, so this an effect on how companies assess the "greenness" of other companies, which for example has an effect on who they buy power/electricity from, but also tends to span international borders, for example, China will probably have the world's largest carbon market soon because 'green manufacturing' has become important. 

https://www.epa.gov/climateleadership/scope-1-and-scope-2-inventory-guidance

 

Edited February 27, 2021 by surrept33

[Ecocharger + 1,474]

Just now, waltz said:

Truer words have never been spoken but unfortunately from the Mayor, the Governor and local State’s Attorney they can expect zero assistance.  Law enforcement is in an unenviable position here.

If you ever make it back I would recommend the Architectural boat tour, impresses both locals and tourists alike.

     waltz 

I am aware of that tour, but I have an ancestral connection there, and I will probably look into the archives of properties some day, and try and locate exactly where in the downtown area the family farm was in the 1830's. My ancestor regretted that sale after Chicago developed, and he lived until 1867.

[turbguy + 1,545]

2 hours ago, Ecocharger said:

The expense alone rules out nuke as a practical source. The pro-nuke folks always underplay the hidden costs.

I believe they are practical, even from an economic sense (once built).  Base load, low carbon power.  What's not to like?   So you gotta pay 5-6 more cents per KWH on that fraction they provide to your overall consumption. 

They work fine, are somewhat poor in thermal efficiency, but capacity factors are WAY up there!  I've seen capacity factors above 100% on some units. 

I am concerned about the "changeover of heads" and economic pressures that occurs at the facilities that has to occur over their 40-60 year life.

[Ecocharger + 1,474]

8 minutes ago, waltz said:

Truer words have never been spoken but unfortunately from the Mayor, the Governor and local State’s Attorney they can expect zero assistance.  Law enforcement is in an unenviable position here.

If you ever make it back I would recommend the Architectural boat tour, impresses both locals and tourists alike.

     waltz 

added:  meant to quote your last sentence.

Chicago law enforcement is hamstrung by regulations, the need to fill out endless reports for any interaction with anyone, a joke. That is why the only solution is for the Prez to send in the National Guard, block off neighbourhoods, and do a thorough house-by-house search for illegal firearms. That would flush out a lot of problems which are contributing to this crisis. Look, it is not impossible. New York turned things around under Giuliani. It can be done elsewhere, too.

Edited February 27, 2021 by Ecocharger

[waltz + 140]

5 minutes ago, Ecocharger said:

I am aware of that tour, but I have an ancestral connection there, and I will probably look into the archives of properties some day, and try and locate exactly where in the downtown area the family farm was in the 1830's. My ancestor regretted that sale after Chicago developed, and he lived until 1867.

Doesn’t sound like your uncle’s last name was O’Leary so I guess you would be welcome.

[Ecocharger + 1,474]

4 minutes ago, turbguy said:

I believe they are practical, even from an economic sense (once built).  Base load, low carbon power.  What's not to like?   So you gotta pay 5-6 more cents per KWH on that fraction they provide to your overall consumption. 

They work fine, are somewhat poor in thermal efficiency, but capacity factors are WAY up there!  I've seen capacity factors above 100% on some units. 

I am concerned about the "changeover of heads" and economic pressures that occurs at the facilities that has to occur over their 40-60 year life.

What? "Once built"? Give me a break. The costs of building are prohibitive and rule out any economic rationality for these things. 

[surrept33 + 609]

I think the coolest part of Chicago was how it managed to be something like the 'infrastructure capital of the world' for various reasons - geography for one, but also the ingenuity of her people:

https://interactive.wttw.com/chicago-river-tour/how-chicago-reversed-river-animated

 

[Ecocharger + 1,474]

13 minutes ago, waltz said:

Doesn’t sound like your uncle’s last name was O’Leary so I guess you would be welcome.

Last name was Kemp (not my last name), a great-great-great-grandfather, he had a colorful history, served as a captain in the Michigan/Illinois militia, fought in the Blackhawk War of 1832/3, was overrun in battle and survived by feigning death, later seconded to fight against Mexican army. Oh, he had also survived the Battle of Waterloo, was a non-com in the British Army. The late Jack Kemp is about an eighth cousin. Still welcome? That's okay, I didn't think so.

I think that my ancestor might have been able to survive in Chicago today.

Edited February 27, 2021 by Ecocharger

[turbguy + 1,545]

33 minutes ago, surrept33 said:

I think there is a lot to learn (for everybody) from the nuclear folks. I think the fundamental change with nuclear over the years is that when comminishing a nuclear plant, the whole lifecycle gets planned for, including the cost of decommissioning the plant and taking care of the spent fuel (a more general form of this is called life cycle analysis (LCA), but it helps everyone be incrementally mindful of the future and external costs to any sort of human activity, something we've all been bad at as a species historically). It's why from a cost perspective, there hasn't been as much investment in new nuclear plants recently. Some of the plants in Texas have literally been 'on sale' for $1 in years past (this basically means the risk of insurance didn't make the free cash flow worth for any buyers it till more safety protocols were introduced). 

I think the most interesting developments in nuclear are actually in fusion, not fission. It's almost gone from a science to engineering problem with a view to quick commercialization (rather than always being 40 years away), for example, the MIT 'smaller and sooner' reactor: https://www.psfc.mit.edu/news/2021/an-aggressive-market-driven-model-for-us-fusion-power-development 

This is kind of a leapfrogging attempt of ITAR, the international 'fusion accelerator' in Europe, which will go online in 2025, but uses MASSIVE magnets (~6 stories each) which may not be that pragmatic (for example, the world has about $100 trillion stock of capital, but from a pragmatic point of view, the bottleneck isn't money in a fiat system, it's heavy forges in this case, what do you use them to build?)

I think the biggest source of drivers for changes has been the corporate sector from what I've seen recently:

https://sciencebasedtargets.org/sbti-progress-report-2020

In addition to looking at their own pollution, companies look at the sustainability of their operations both upstream/downstream from themselves, so this an effect on how companies assess the "greenness" of other companies, which for example has an effect on who they buy power/electricity from, but also tends to span international borders, for example, China will probably have the world's largest carbon market soon because 'green manufacturing' has become important. 

https://www.epa.gov/climateleadership/scope-1-and-scope-2-inventory-guidance

 

Yeah, building a fusion boiler has promise.  There's gonna be a heap of metallurgical issues to deal with along the way.

And a few unusual issues.

For one:

Those huge superconducting magnets.  There's a LOT of energy stored in them things. If ( actually, when) a fault occurs in the exotic windings of one magnet while in operation, you better not be in the same room. The field collapses, and all that energy gets dissipated in the resulting plasma (that's outside the reactor vessel).  And then the neighboring magnets fail in a cascade. 

They may not go "boom" in a nuclear sense, but they certainly can still go "boom".

Edited February 27, 2021 by turbguy

[turbguy + 1,545]

15 minutes ago, Ecocharger said:

What? "Once built"? Give me a break. The costs of building are prohibitive and rule out any economic rationality for these things. 

Yeah, I agree, that's the hard part to overcome. 

Yet, China seems to be doing it. Maybe the CCP provides some financial relief (using our $$)?

[Ecocharger + 1,474]

Just now, turbguy said:

Yeah, I agree, that's the hard part to overcome. 

Yet, China seems to be doing it. Maybe the CCP provides some financial relief (using our $$)?

They march to their own drumbeat.

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

57 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

@NickW blithely commented many pages ago that we ought to build one 500MW gas power plant for every 500MW of wind generation (paraphrased). I criticized that, naturally, but when you've become indoctrinated into the clown world that is the EU things that make no economic sense become de rigeur. So why not build a massively underutilized generating system, raising the cost of power for all, all in the name of "green"? I mean, if you just built the gas plant you'd be $Billions ahead! The electricity produced would be dirt cheap and reliable! Logic, common sense? Thought crimes now. 

Don't blame Nick. I said that! 😀. But it was in context: an existence proof that you can use wind in a capacity market, and I specifically stated that is might not make economic sense. Here's how it works:

1) Everybody agrees that you need to invest the money in enough gas-fired plants to cover worst-case demand without any contribution from wind or solar. You are going to buy those plants no matter what.

2) Recognize that electricity from wind and solar is (may be)  cheaper than the cost of the gas. Not the cost of the plant, but the cost of the consumed gas itself. and the the cost is going down and is predictable, while the cost of NG is highly variable.

3) Therefore:, it might be cost-effective to build wind and solar and use it when it is available in order to reduce the total cost.

Note that this is at the system level. If the company that owns the gas generator is not the same as the company that owns the wind generators, then the correct financial structure must be put in place to make sure the generator get financial credit for just being there when needed. This si exactly the same argument as the justification for having reserve capacity. The "reserve" portion of the capacity never used. but the system must have a way to pay for it.

[turbguy + 1,545]

11 minutes ago, Dan Clemmensen said:

Don't blame Nick. I said that! 😀. But it was in context: an existence proof that you can use wind in a capacity market, and I specifically stated that is might not make economic sense. Here's how it works:

1) Everybody agrees that you need to invest the money in enough gas-fired plants to cover worst-case demand without any contribution from wind or solar. You are going to buy those plants no matter what.

2) Recognize that electricity from wind and solar is (may be)  cheaper than the cost of the gas. Not the cost of the plant, but the cost of the consumed gas itself. and the the cost is going down and is predictable, while the cost of NG is highly variable.

3) Therefore:, it might be cost-effective to build wind and solar and use it when it is available in order to reduce the total cost.

Note that this is at the system level. If the company that owns the gas generator is not the same as the company that owns the wind generators, then the correct financial structure must be put in place to make sure the generator get financial credit for just being there when needed. This si exactly the same argument as the justification for having reserve capacity. The "reserve" portion of the capacity never used. but the system must have a way to pay for it.

You would think the total cost of the plumbers and replaced pipe alone would have covered the "weatherization" corrections to whatever went wrong.