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148 comments on A review of the underlying fundamentals of nuclear energy
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Down Under - "Wind power can never provide significant power into a main AC grid because of it's intermittency. Most people advocating so called renewable power generation have no knowledge of the highly complex and technical requirements to keep a grid operational."
Absolute and complete rubbish. The report you mention is from the German Coal industry and is not an unbiased report. Wind is less intermittant than you think and can be predicted reasonably well from advanced weather prediction that is starting to be used today. Plenty of people without coal industry axes to grind have done studies to show that wind can be a significant part of the grid with little trouble. As you are also from Australia I would suspect that you are part of coal industry mafia that operates here and renewable power people in Oz battle against.
One of the problems is that thermal coal is baseload and is ill suited to interfacing with a rapidly changing grid. Combined cycle gas is much better as it can vary on demand rather than following demand. Look to Esperance for way forward with wind supplying up to 22% of the town's electricity supply, despite forming only 15% of the generating capacity, in combination with a natural gas power plant.
Coal's days are over mate. It it long past time that this 1800s technology was put to bed for good. Clinging onto the past like Howard's 1950s government is doing is really starting to look pathetic. Investing 100 million in a coal plant is really bordering on corrupt.
http://stevegloor.typepad.com/sgloor/2007/03/the_question_is.html
Ender,
It is not rubbish at all. I am not from the coal industry nor ever worked in it and in fact agree with you that coal is not a desirable form of power long term and gas is certainly preferable. Nuclear is in my opinion the best way forward for base power.
Wind cannot be predicted in advance and never will. It changes by the minute, always has and always will. Anyone stating this knows nothing about the weather. The E.on Netz report had nothing to do with coal companies as it is an electric utility. You didn't address the technical issues I raised because I suspect you don't understand them
Wind CAN be predicted in advance, and most wind turbines have a flat output curve over a broad range of wind speeds (such as 12 to 25 m/s). (the exact shape is a matter of economic design, most generators are smaller than max capacity of the blades. Smaller generators allow for lighter towers, it is just economics).
There are many places in the world where one can predict that a wide geographic range will see wind speeds between 12 & 25 m/s for a dozen hours in advance. And if there are, say twelve wind farms in a row behind an advancing front; one can see changes in the leading farm and predict the timing and results for the eleven behind with some confidence once operating history has been developed.
BTW, large fossil fuel plants (such as 500 MW) "trip" fairly frequently, yet the grid adapts and rarely crashes. How can 1.5 MW WTs (with high rotating inertia) slow down a bit in their output and yet the grid just cannot deal with this !?
If a few handfuls of WTs go offline due to excessive winds, NO BIG DEAL ! Your thunderstorm example was "stuff & nonsense" for a widespread grid. Just a triviality.
New Zealand says that they can take 35% wind without further study or grid modification. The only requirement is a minimum of geographic diversification.
At least 20 % wind should be possible without extensive grid modification. Just look at Denmark. Of course, it's located next to about 50,000 MW's of hydro power and lots of German gas plants, but still.
Down Under - "Nuclear is in my opinion the best way forward for base power."
Great - so in a county like ours with unlimited land area for wind and solar you think a nuclear is the best option. What do you do with the waste? Bury it in the outback where you can forget about it?
"Wind cannot be predicted in advance and never will."
Really? What about predicting the weather? I am sure that the BOM would disagree. There are now highly accurate models and forecasting techniques that do work:
"To address these needs, 3TIER Environmental Forecast Group develops, maintains and operates a comprehensive environmental forecast system to provide forecast information for its clients. We have found that recent advances in computer power, coupled with advances in environmental simulation models and improvements to global and local observational systems allow us to predict the weather and the state of the environment accurately for a specific site and a specific resource."
http://www.djc.com/news/en/11146933.html
"You didn't address the technical issues I raised because I suspect you don't understand them"
That is partly true as I am not an engineer however I can address some of them.
"I won't go into too much techncial detail here but there are something like 100,000 large AC generators in the US grid system. That power has to be provided within 1% tolerance for voltages across the system and most importantly a necessary amount of reactive power must be produced by generators to supplement those that can't provide it."
Yes that is true however storage options for renewable power is becoming increasingly cost effective. Several options are now in use in Australia. Modern wind turbines are now variable speed meaning that all frequency stabilisation is done with power electronics rather than controlling the speed of the turbine. Even a small reserve of ultracaps makes wind power stable frequency wise and able to cope with large swings in wind strength without upsetting the frequency. Furthermore even small amounts of storage within the renewable power electronics can help stabilise the grid as the frequency and phase of the power controllers can be varied easily and quickly to bring the grid back into sync.
"Lines of thunderstorms with hail, lightening and extreme turbulence will wreck any of these types of systems if the cell passes overhead. On any day there are 50,000 active thunderstorms around the world with 20 to 30 million associated lightening strikes."
Wind turbines are all lightning protected and have survival wind speeds of up to 240km/hr. In these sort of conditions the blades are automatically feathered, locked down and do not spin. This is no more a valid argument that objecting to a NP plant because of the same objections.
Perhaps you could answer a few of my objections to NP and perhaps comment on V2G cars if you understand them. How is nuclear power going to help with Peak Oil without electric cars, and if we have all these electric cars then NP is unnecessary because in Australia at least we have sufficient renewable power coupled with storage in electric cars to power our needs 24X7.
How is nuclear power going to help with Peak Oil without electric cars...
See the trams of Melbourne :-)
Best Hopes,
Alan
Or process heat for thermochemical hydrogen production. You can burn the hydrogen directly (unlikely IMHO) or run it with CO2 or CO for synfuel production.
For example: thermo-chemo-nuclear hydrogen -> methanol -> DME.
And DME (di-methyl ether) is a most excellent fuel.
NNadir has written about this at DailyKos.
I'm not sure what exactly the worry is with reactive power. Yes, system power factor should be close to unity but capacitor banks are the usual technical fix.
Plus, any tornado that took out a wind turbine would take out a nuke plant.
I disagree with this statement. By their natures, a wind generator is exposed to wind and can't hide from a tornado, while a nuclear plant is fairly squat, with massive concrete and steel. Also, with hundreds of Megawatt wind generators spread across the landscape, some of those generators are more likely to be hit than the single nuclear plant that provides equivalent capacity.
Nuclear plants have been hit by tornadoes, and while they were knocked off line, the damage was fixable. A wind generator would have to be rebuilt.
OTOH, a tornado would not take out all the turbines in a wind farm. As a matter of fact, what's most vulnerable in both plants is the electrical end, the transformers and wiring. Followed by the cooling towers that are required for a nuke (or coal) plant.
Cooling towers are not needed.
A US nuke plant was hit by a tornado, in the 80's I believe. The switchyard went to kingdom come, but the reactor building is after all made out of reinforced concrete and didn't even get a scratch.
It is highly unlikely that a tornado will take out an entire large windfarm which is inherently spread over large areas. Some will go down certainly but not all. That is doubly so for a windfarm large enough to approach nuke generation levels. That is the beauty of modularization and redundancy. Unless the tornado took out the transformer station or disrupted connecting power links it is highly likely that the plant could restart production soon after while the damaged turbines are repaired/replaced over time.
"The E.on Netz report had nothing to do with coal companies as it is an electric utility"
So, let's make sure I understand this....an electric utility puts out a report that says it is impossible for anyone to produce power reliably except an electric utility......why does this not amaze me? :-)
(We have E.on power in our area of Central Kentucky by the way, through LG&E, and KY utilities....why am I not amazed that the only solution they can imagine is coal?)
On the technical issues, as you said, they are very involved and too long to handle in a board post of this type, however, I would like to point out two big factor of interest that cause me to slightly doubt that renewables are impossible on an impactful scale due to variability in a grid based system:
1. The world has a few thousand firms of various sizes in nations all over the world working on grid connected renewable. Now, they do NOT have engineers working and money being dispersed on say, time machine research. Why do you think that is?
Because the first (time machines) are considered technologically not real as a practical area of work and research, and the other (renewable energy including energy from variable power) is considered technologically viable.
This by the ways is true in several industries that often dismissed as rubbish or totally impossible. Many nations are researching renewable production of hydrogen, for example, and have some of the best talent in the world on research projects at a cost of millions. Yet, there are those who swear it is completely impossible. Fascinating difference of opinion, we will see, but think of the many inventions and developments in technical history that were declared impossible before they were designed and built (just about all of them in fact!)
2. On the issue of wind "changing by the minute", this is of course true and obvious. What is also changing by the minute are the precision and sophistication of the control and monitoring devices used in energy production, management and distribution.
I would only ask that you go to the magazine and website:
www.distributedenergy.com/de.html
Please take a look at the devices and control systems advertized, at the projects already working, at the giant industrial firms who are already getting a share of the Destributed Energy business.
(by the way, you can register for the magazine, it is free, and a great read, again, the adverts alone are fascinating :-)
Distributed electrical generation, back-up and emergency electrical supply, peak hour energy production and consumption control, devices for control of variability at the mili-second level, power storage on both small/fast and large/long scales, and all ranges between...
When folks say that America has run out of new industries to invent, I simply send them to this website! People most often (including people like me who try to stay abreast of these developments) come away surprised, stunned, at how fast the energy, distributed energy and renewable industry are moving.
It is a fascinating time, and the game is just now getting underway.
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
Dear me, the knives are out, emotion's high, and the logic is underwhelming.
While you might wish it:
It just ain't so, Ender, me old china plate. Coal will almost certainly be growing as a primary energy source for generations.
The debate on energy has been overtaken by emotional diatribe about 'unnatural' things like fossil fuels and the fact that burning coal and oil will kill us all because of the CO2 pollution.
I have two problems with that, first: fossil fuels are natural - they came out of the air via biological forces that took them from the environment where they rightly belonged.
Second, the planet functioned brilliantly for billions of years with all this 'unnatural' CO2 swishing around the atmosphere while life evolved and developed into our ancestors.
There's something, IMO, wrong with the whole CO2 doomsday scenario. All the world's CO2 predates us, it never caused life's extinction before it became locked away in organic fossils.
Why would it do so this time?
Ian Down Under - "have two problems with that, first: fossil fuels are natural - they came out of the air via biological forces that took them from the environment where they rightly belonged.
Second, the planet functioned brilliantly for billions of years with all this 'unnatural' CO2 swishing around the atmosphere while life evolved and developed into our ancestors."
Yeah right!!. First while fossil fuels are natural they are the Earths sequestration mechanism that prevents huge buildups of carbon. We take this safely sequested carbon and burn it out of the natural carbon cycle making it anything but natural. The MEASURED CO2 level is now 380 ppm and rising.
Secondly the planet functioned perfectly well by naturally sequestering the bloody stuff under the ground and out of the atmosphere.
"All the world's CO2 predates us, it never caused life's extinction before it became locked away in organic fossils."
Again yeah right!!! Have a look at the Permian Eocene Thermal Event - 95% of Earths species were wiped out. Earths history has been punctuated with mass extinctions - some of them possibly caused by greenhouse gases.
G'Day Ender,
Carbon isn't 'built-up' - it was there from the beginning, and, as I wrote, it appears that most carbon was available during most of the epochs of life. And life thrived. It seems the planet is currently running under a carbon deficit.
I am asking a serious question about CO2 in the atmosphere based on undeniable data - CO2 has, for the major part of life's history, been in far higher abundance than it is now.
Your reply is about a vague, unknowable, unprovable (at this time) 'possibility'.
Why need it be different this time?
" CO2 has, for the major part of life's history, been in far higher abundance than it is now. "
Ian, putting most of the coal carbon back into the atmosphere will result in a return of the conditions that caused its deposition: anaerobic conditions in eutrified shallow bodies of water covering a large proportion of the planet's "land" mass. Think shallow seas coving Florida, the entire Mississippi river valley, all of Bangladesh, etc.
We're headed that way already.
That is, perhaps, because your response to the article discussing a study by the UK's electricity grid body - an article linked to in the main post - was not so much "underwhelming" as "nonexistant".
In particular, your bald claim that "Wind power can never provide significant power into a main AC grid because of it's intermittency" rather directly contradicts the conclusions of that study, namely that "the expected intermittency of the national wind portfolio would not appear to pose a technical ceiling on the amount of wind generation that may be accommodated".
Moreover, speaking of underwhelming logic...
Straw Man fallacy - nobody here's said anything of the sort.
Non Sequitur fallacy - the question is not whether life will be at risk, but whether human life will be at risk.
The reason you're seeing nonsense in the debate is (in part) because you're injecting (some of) it yourself.
Hi There Mr The Elder,
My response was perfectly apt because it replied to a comment on the unsuitability of coal as an energy source based on the foregoing debate.
There's nothing like that in my post???
Utterly sequitur! It is impossible to separate the multi-threaded debates of PO, GW, Nuclear, Wind, CO2, life-as-we-know-it. To question one is to question all.
MY query remains unanswered, and it relates directly to the main topic of this debate: Why do we need wind, nuclear, or other alternative energy when all we are doing when we burn fossil fuels is return to natural use what has been lost for aeons? Are we not simply re-dressing the CO2 deficit the planet has been suffering?
Why should it be a problem this time?
Good thinking! And while we are it, we should surely re-dress the SO2, CO, S2, Cl2, N2, H2, NH3 and CH4 deficits!
Cute response, Tarz Mate,
Doesn't work, those originals gaseous compounds were in abundance in the atmosphere prior to oxygen-using life (ie humans et al). Most were broken down into their elements and recombined into organic compounds then became fossilised; and yes, they are also liberated with fossil fuel use.
N2 is of course still most abundant in the atmosphere, the only toxic element in your list is Sulphur, and pretty easy to remove from oils etc.
I still really would like an answer to the question that everyone wants to avoid.
Why will it be different this time?
Life loves CO2! Ask a cabbage what it eats.
Indeed, some of that carbon has been locked up for half a billion years or more!
This has had other consequences. In that half-billion years, all kinds of life has evolved to suit the changed conditions. We ought to do something about that too! And the energy balance of the Earth won't be the same because the Sun has brightened with age, so we'll have to reduce its mass and cut its output back to what it used to be.
You ready? Let's get cracking!
"I still really would like an answer to the question that everyone wants to avoid.
Why will it be different this time?
Life loves CO2! Ask a cabbage what it eats."
Ian, I answered your question upthread: the problem with coal is that it WON'T be different this time. Putting coal carbon back into the atmosphere will indeed favor some life forms, humans not among them. Your (swamp) cabbage, mangroves, and crabs will indeed love CO2 over 500ppmv. While I'm not a big human chauvanist, I do like the world the way it was 50 years ago.