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U.S. Pledge To Triple Global Nuclear Energy By 2050 (www.huffpost.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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When I first read the titile, I thought that the US is going to have to build A LOT to triple global production. Then it occured to me that the author means the US is pledging to make deals and agreements which enable other countries to build their own. Sometimes I think the US thinks too much of itself and that's also very much part of American branding.

Where are my renewable bros at? Tell me this is bad.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I mean, you don't answer the billion dollar question here. Let's not call it a dam, but a container, and let's not mention the need to pump anything. The amount of (potential) energy you can store is a function of the volume of the above container, isn't it? Then, could you estimate the amount of water this container would need to be able to retain in a scenario where the grid relies primarily on intermittent energy sources? And can you propose an engineering solution to contain this much amount of water?

The intuition here is that you are re-inventing dams, without the room to build more.

I don't agree nor disagree with the rest of what you say, I just can't get beyond the "energy storage is a solved problem" point yet.

[+] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The potential energy is determined by elevation difference and mass.

That's correct, those are Joules in SI. Now if you turn this mass into mass per second by introducing the flow of water through the dam, you get the power (Watts) produced through the release.

But here we are talking about energy storage (Watt.hours), which is, for how long will you be able to sustain emptying your container while delivering the desired power. And obviously this is a function of how large the container is because eventually you will run out of water no matter the elevation difference.

So, now that we are back 3 messages up thread

could you estimate the amount of water this container would need to be able to retain in a scenario where the grid relies primarily on intermittent energy sources?

To help you out with the scale, again, your example from earlier (Bath county) has a storage capacity of only 24GWh, annual hydro production of the USA is 256TWh. Bath county has a reservoir of 34•10⁶m³, Oahe dam has 29•10⁹m³.

Anyway, this is a good tool to keep an eye on this "solved problem", and relate to how the world is dealing with it, independently from the regulatory dissatisfaction you mentioned: https://sandia.gov/ess-ssl/gesdb/public/

And this paper goes neatly through the variables at play and why oversimplifications are not helpful: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2023.1076830/full

[+] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I really don’t understand the obsession here in comparing energy storage to energy production.

The storage of electricity doesn’t have to meet energy consumption

why, in your opinion, is this more an obsession than "pulling power cables" and "tugging floating wind turbines"? This is very much part of the grid transitioning towards more intermittent (and renewable) energy sources. We can't just keep putting wind and sun without offsetting the intermittence (since we are also removing carbon-heavy sources), which means either adding low CO₂ base-load (nuclear), but we are not going there fast enough, or adding more storage (and neither there do we have a solution).

The first comment I posted shows how if you had 100 the size of the bath county plant you could run the entire US for hours. In just 100 of them. For the cost of the F35 it could be 300 or more but I am accounting for nothing but problems.

It's funny, because my link https://sandia.gov/ess-ssl/gesdb/public/ shows that there are 1693 such projects in the world, with 739 by the USA. China, with a more important landmass and not bothered by F35s (or whatever) doesn't even cross the 100 threshold. So the onus of the proof is on you to demonstrate that we can actually build hundred more pumped storages in the USA for it to make a difference.

From the perspectives of the grid operator, renewables represent risk that destabilizes power delivery. Although weather forecasts are steadily improving and provide more leeway to prepare for sudden changes in the power supplies, the degree to which grid operators can turn on alternative power sources or alert customers to adjust their power demand is limited. In a truly “fossil fuel-free” energy system that relies exclusively on various renewable energy sources, the only viable means of addressing intermittency is to deploy energy storage.

Your source even agrees with me.

This isn't even contentious. What is, is that you believe that we have this silver bullet of pumped hydro to cover our upcoming energy storage needs. And that's not nearly the case.

Once paired and optimized for cost, the model returned 11,769 sites in the contiguous United States, as well as an additional 3,077 sites in Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico, where closed-loop PSH technology can be best deployed in the future. https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/articles/wpto-studies-find-big-opportunities-expand-pumped-storage-hydropower

Which was my point all along

It is a solved problem. The solution is just extremely difficult and expensive.

I don't want to argue about semantics. If the solution is too costly to be implemented, then it's not a solution. I don't think there's more to be said here.

[+] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

That’s been your argument this entire time. You kicked around all this time till now saying really weird things like how batteries are inefficient or that green hydrogen is from hydrolysis but then tell me what your point is all along when your point has been wrong from the start.

Let's keep this simple. It all started with your affirmation that energy storage is a solved problem. When I asked how you would go about implementing the solution, you brought-up pumped hydro. And we ended-up with enough data pointing towards this problem being all but solved (cost is one aspect that you are quick to dismiss, but engineering/practicality is a major one).

In all, we agree, we are in the same boat, we want more budget being allocated for the energy transition. But where we diverge I that I don't see how turning a complex problem into a caricature (bordering a conspiracy theory) helps anyone. The physical world we live in doesn't care about opinions, and isn't affected by digital money. You don't have to believe a random stranger on the internet (who happens to work in this field), if this is your crusade, there should be people near you, academics, scientists, engineers, who would be pleased to educate you on the subject. This is pedant, I don't see where's the belligerence.