Energy(blog.samaltman.com)
blog.samaltman.com
Energy
http://blog.samaltman.com/energy
286 comments
think of finance in terms of latency/bandwidth [...] reactors are high latency - they're expensive and take a long time to set up
I like this metaphor. I think what you might have implied but didn't explicitly mention was distributed vs centralized when thinking about these systems as well. Solar can be a distributed system whereas fission & fusion systems are centralized.
Even though you can make small fission systems and IIRC Skunkworks is working on a small fusion reactor (small = fits on freight truck...once the damn thing works) you still have issues with waste, heat, faults etc. so they need to remain isolated from living space. Thus they are better utilized in a centralized manner.
Sticking with the computer/internet metaphors, you could consider solar to be like a Solid State Drive while fission is very much the classic HDD, moving parts and all. The elimination of moving parts/complexity to generate electricity makes solar suitable for the home just as NAND is better for portable devices like phones.
Pros: speed vs capacity, Cons: cost vs complexity - pick one from each pile.
I like this metaphor. I think what you might have implied but didn't explicitly mention was distributed vs centralized when thinking about these systems as well. Solar can be a distributed system whereas fission & fusion systems are centralized.
Even though you can make small fission systems and IIRC Skunkworks is working on a small fusion reactor (small = fits on freight truck...once the damn thing works) you still have issues with waste, heat, faults etc. so they need to remain isolated from living space. Thus they are better utilized in a centralized manner.
Sticking with the computer/internet metaphors, you could consider solar to be like a Solid State Drive while fission is very much the classic HDD, moving parts and all. The elimination of moving parts/complexity to generate electricity makes solar suitable for the home just as NAND is better for portable devices like phones.
Pros: speed vs capacity, Cons: cost vs complexity - pick one from each pile.
Faults are not a serious issue with a fusion reactor beyond it breaking down. Neither is waste - an inert reactor is harmless unless you insist on crowbaring into the core to bathe in all those activated inner wall materials.
Faults are not a serious issue with a fusion reactor beyond it breaking down
That's what I mean in the context of centralized vs distributed - replacing a faulty solar panel is no biggie. Replacing a micro fusion reactor, while not as bad as replacing a tokamak reactor, is significant.
Neither is waste [...] unless you insist on crowbaring into the core
Reactors still need to be decommissioned at some point, though you're right - it's trivial comparatively. I will do a dance when fusion is a thing and the world will be a better place.
That's what I mean in the context of centralized vs distributed - replacing a faulty solar panel is no biggie. Replacing a micro fusion reactor, while not as bad as replacing a tokamak reactor, is significant.
Neither is waste [...] unless you insist on crowbaring into the core
Reactors still need to be decommissioned at some point, though you're right - it's trivial comparatively. I will do a dance when fusion is a thing and the world will be a better place.
Faults are not a serious issue with a fusion reactor, because energy-positive, sustaining fusion reactors don't exist.
Yet.
I'd love to see this change, but I'm not gambling humanity's future on the assumption that this is a solvable problem.
Yet.
I'd love to see this change, but I'm not gambling humanity's future on the assumption that this is a solvable problem.
crowbaring into the core
This is all Freeman's fault, isn't it.
This is all Freeman's fault, isn't it.
Faults are not a serious issue with a fusion reactor beyond it breaking down. Neither is waste - an inert reactor is harmless unless you insist on crowbaring into the core to bathe in all those activated inner wall materials.
Interesting analogy and choice of words since UPower is building a solid state reactor.
From what I can gather it's solid state in the sense that it's a passive system that doesn't require pumps but it still involves heat creating steam which in turn drives generators. The liquid changes phase from liquid to gas then cools to a liquid again, so it can remain self-contained.
Very cool, but feels kinda not as solid if you know what I mean. Don't want to downplay how neat it is though.
Very cool, but feels kinda not as solid if you know what I mean. Don't want to downplay how neat it is though.
Gigawatt-scale nuclear reactors take a long time. Ycombinator is investing in factory-produced reactors that fit in a truck. There are quite a few other companies working on small factory-produced reactors.
Solar with batteries is a lot more expensive than solar alone. Solar is doing well right now with natural gas backup, but a lot of us would like to avoid fossil entirely. Solar with nuclear backup might be a great combination, assuming demand correlates reasonably well with daylight hours.
Solar with batteries is a lot more expensive than solar alone. Solar is doing well right now with natural gas backup, but a lot of us would like to avoid fossil entirely. Solar with nuclear backup might be a great combination, assuming demand correlates reasonably well with daylight hours.
> nuclear backup
That wouldn't work with current nuclear reactors, whose startup / shutdown sequences take hours. Typically, the grid operator runs nuclear plants at nearly 100% 24/7 (so called "baseload") due to this.
I'd be curious how truck-sized reactors work and whether or not you could operate them as load-followers rather than baseload. That would make them extremely attractive for replacing natural gas peakers, especially as more wind / solar get onto the grid.
That wouldn't work with current nuclear reactors, whose startup / shutdown sequences take hours. Typically, the grid operator runs nuclear plants at nearly 100% 24/7 (so called "baseload") due to this.
I'd be curious how truck-sized reactors work and whether or not you could operate them as load-followers rather than baseload. That would make them extremely attractive for replacing natural gas peakers, especially as more wind / solar get onto the grid.
My point mainly is that if there's more demand when solar produces more energy, then you can pretty much run the nuclear plants all the time and get a decent balance.
But I suspect the small reactors will be more flexible. Molten salt reactors are supposed to load-follow automatically with a lag of thirty seconds or so. (And of course with small fusion reactors it wouldn't be a problem at all.)
But I suspect the small reactors will be more flexible. Molten salt reactors are supposed to load-follow automatically with a lag of thirty seconds or so. (And of course with small fusion reactors it wouldn't be a problem at all.)
You're right. It is also a common misconception that nuclear reactors cannot load follow, they can:
http://ansnuclearcafe.org/2013/02/14/responding-to-system-de...
One of the main limitations is the stress it puts on the fuel.
Many advanced reactors overcome these limits, and if financially incentivized, they will definitely load follow. On top of that, the UPower reactor has a thermal transport time constant nearly 10 times that of other reactors, and its fuel is immune to the shocks that bother LWRs. In fact, the same type of fuel was used in a research reactor and would be ramped in power from 5 watts to 150 billion watts in less than 50 millionths of a second. That puts a lot of stress on fuel, yet this fuel kept its stride without breaking a sweat.
This reactor is built like a tank, and is designed to be quite resilient and flexible. It can definitely load follow to support a renewable heavy grid system. In fact it's been considered for use as a grid stabilizer at substations because of these abilities.
http://ansnuclearcafe.org/2013/02/14/responding-to-system-de...
One of the main limitations is the stress it puts on the fuel.
Many advanced reactors overcome these limits, and if financially incentivized, they will definitely load follow. On top of that, the UPower reactor has a thermal transport time constant nearly 10 times that of other reactors, and its fuel is immune to the shocks that bother LWRs. In fact, the same type of fuel was used in a research reactor and would be ramped in power from 5 watts to 150 billion watts in less than 50 millionths of a second. That puts a lot of stress on fuel, yet this fuel kept its stride without breaking a sweat.
This reactor is built like a tank, and is designed to be quite resilient and flexible. It can definitely load follow to support a renewable heavy grid system. In fact it's been considered for use as a grid stabilizer at substations because of these abilities.
What kind of fuel and coolant does it use? Googling only turns up a couple fairly uninformative articles.
Solar generation is less predictable, and the grid needs an energy source that is capable of quickly adjusting to the current fluctuation in demand of consumers.
That's where the batteries come in. To continue the software metaphors, batteries provide caching, and the cache is tunable for cost and performance. This wasn't viable a decade ago, but with the advances in solar/wind cost/performance, and the advances in battery cost/performance, it's really becoming a powerful option.
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So how small a reactor? And what sort of cost, what sort of setup time, what sort of safety constraints (ie, current reactors are generally water-cooled and need access to large bodies of water)? It's possible to trim the cost of reactors from the billions to the millions, maybe, but how many millions?
Certainly, solar with batteries is a lot more expensive - but to my point, startup cost is low. Latency, or bandwidth? The long-term cost/kwh may be higher for solar, but the short-term startup expense will be much lower, unless you can get the factory-built reactors down into the thousands rather than millions of dollars.
If nuclear is cheaper than solar in a decade or two, but costs ten times as much in the short run, there's a tremendous advantage to solar, battery cost or not. Opportunity cost matters tremendously.
Certainly, solar with batteries is a lot more expensive - but to my point, startup cost is low. Latency, or bandwidth? The long-term cost/kwh may be higher for solar, but the short-term startup expense will be much lower, unless you can get the factory-built reactors down into the thousands rather than millions of dollars.
If nuclear is cheaper than solar in a decade or two, but costs ten times as much in the short run, there's a tremendous advantage to solar, battery cost or not. Opportunity cost matters tremendously.
You're exactly right, and that's what we designed for with UPower. I would have written the exact same thing when we began talking about doing something in nuclear 5 years ago.
Too many reactors are designed without the market or financing in mind.
We decided on the simplest possible reactor optimized to a size useful to a market in dire need- just MW scale.
It has no pumps, no water in the reactor, and builds upon a legacy of data so that there will be minimal fuel and materials qualification, which adds up very quickly in both time and money.
Why hasn't it been done before? The key, as you bring up, is in manufacturing, simplicity, a relatively new and hugely growing microgrid market that didn't exist much before, and a business model that doesn't require the customer to buy the unit as opposed to power purchase.
Too many reactors are designed without the market or financing in mind.
We decided on the simplest possible reactor optimized to a size useful to a market in dire need- just MW scale.
It has no pumps, no water in the reactor, and builds upon a legacy of data so that there will be minimal fuel and materials qualification, which adds up very quickly in both time and money.
Why hasn't it been done before? The key, as you bring up, is in manufacturing, simplicity, a relatively new and hugely growing microgrid market that didn't exist much before, and a business model that doesn't require the customer to buy the unit as opposed to power purchase.
It's exciting work, to be sure. Before now, the only small-scale nuclear work I'd seen were plutonium batteries (like for powering satellites), which are horrendously expensive and not something you ever want in the hands of Bad Actors.
It looks like UPower is currently targeting environments where traditional power is impractical and lots of power is needed, and plenty of budget is available - remote mines, military installations and such. Do you see a market for urban/residential power grid in the future, too? Or would that be too difficult a squeeze between distributed solar and traditional power plants?
It looks like UPower is currently targeting environments where traditional power is impractical and lots of power is needed, and plenty of budget is available - remote mines, military installations and such. Do you see a market for urban/residential power grid in the future, too? Or would that be too difficult a squeeze between distributed solar and traditional power plants?
The short answer is yes. We see this as our Tesla roadster (well designed niche product for a market willing to pay, in this case however, desperately in need for a solution that doesn't involve constant shipments of expensive and polluting diesel for loud generators) from which we will streamline and optimize to make our "model 3" so we can produce something to meet and even beat grid prices. It actually isn't a big jump between the two, we have good indication now that it will be possible without much iteration to beat grid prices in all but the cheapest markets. And as you pointed out, the financing at that stage will play a significant part. :)
The problem with anything nuclear is insurance. The only way reactors got insured was because Uncle Sam underwrote them.
Indeed. What insurer could have covered the estimated 137 billion dollar hit [1] from the Fukushima disaster? The Japanese government has had to step in, to the very real financial detriment of its people and their nation.
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-11-07/fukushima-...
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-11-07/fukushima-...
Startup cost for solar is not all that amazingly cheap per watt, and if you include batteries it's probably more than nuclear.
UPower's design doesn't require a large body of water: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/nuclear/startup-d...
For setup you deliver it with a truck and bury it. Other modular nuclear designs are a bit bigger but still in the range of small natural gas plants, which are competing quite well.
If Helion works out then fission and solar will both be mostly obsolete. They'd be 50MW plants, retailing power at four cents per kWh, with no significant safety concerns.
UPower's design doesn't require a large body of water: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/nuclear/startup-d...
For setup you deliver it with a truck and bury it. Other modular nuclear designs are a bit bigger but still in the range of small natural gas plants, which are competing quite well.
If Helion works out then fission and solar will both be mostly obsolete. They'd be 50MW plants, retailing power at four cents per kWh, with no significant safety concerns.
Solar scales MUCH more fine-grained. There isn't a convenient source for 10kw nuclear power, and there probably never will be, but it's easy to build solar at that scale.
Wouldn't trust a Silicon Valley startup to care about our properly execute for "safety." This is a pump and dump, making a quick buck.
Confused: if you have nuclear, skip the solar and save money?
Depends if nuclear includes decommissioning and clean-up costs.
Do you really want lakes full of residual waste for the next few tens of millennia?
The UK currently has no idea what to do with a lot of its waste. So it's simply left to rust and ferment in water - not a good outcome.
Sustainable intermittency turns out to be something of a myth anyway. Intermittency effects across Europe turn out to be negligible.
So instead of building nukes, you can spend the money on mixed-mode sustainables and a hugely improved distribution grid and get a cleaner and more reliable outcome overall.
You can also make sustainables distributed, and run them on a domestic scale as well as an industrial one.
PV roof installations have worked well in Germany and are starting to work well in the UK, even though neither location is known for being sunny.
You'd get much better results in the sunnier parts of the US.
Do you really want lakes full of residual waste for the next few tens of millennia?
The UK currently has no idea what to do with a lot of its waste. So it's simply left to rust and ferment in water - not a good outcome.
Sustainable intermittency turns out to be something of a myth anyway. Intermittency effects across Europe turn out to be negligible.
So instead of building nukes, you can spend the money on mixed-mode sustainables and a hugely improved distribution grid and get a cleaner and more reliable outcome overall.
You can also make sustainables distributed, and run them on a domestic scale as well as an industrial one.
PV roof installations have worked well in Germany and are starting to work well in the UK, even though neither location is known for being sunny.
You'd get much better results in the sunnier parts of the US.
Long-term waste isn't a factor for UPower or Helion.
How?
UPower is a fast reactor. 99% of nuclear waste, and almost all long-term waste, is transuranics, which fast reactors use as fuel. What remains is the fission products, which go back to the radioactivity of the original ore in a couple centuries. Encase them in glass and bury them, and you're good.
Helion is a fusion reactor. Its "waste" is helium, and it uses a reaction that produces only 6% of its energy as neutron radiation.
In both cases the reactor itself may become somewhat radioactive, but that's another short-term problem.
Helion is a fusion reactor. Its "waste" is helium, and it uses a reaction that produces only 6% of its energy as neutron radiation.
In both cases the reactor itself may become somewhat radioactive, but that's another short-term problem.
Sure, if nuclear ends up cheaper per kWh than solar without backup.
The similar thing I have heard Elon Musk saying in some interview that it's just a myth that people have to think we will never able to generate enough energy out of solar-panels compared to the nuclear reactors. He said that the amount of land one needs to build a massive nuclear plant and then other things to maintain it and considering the 10-50 miles area enveloped to plant where it is dangerous to live. If you use the same amount of land to place solar-panels then the energy produced by solar will overtake that of from nuclear plants.
This is completely false. First it is not dangerous to live in those zones, second this is a pretty accurate land comparison - http://www.thingsworsethannuclearpower.com/2012/03/using-too.... Maybe Elon should visit a nuclear plant...
Maybe we can argue that "not dangerous" is simply not true? Chernobyl, Fukushima and many other "smaller" accidents happened.
I suspect they will continue to trounce fission and fusion for a long time, at least until there is some some technical innovation in transmission and distribution.
Transmission and distributed generation accounts for half the cost of electricity. The question for our electricity future is distributed versus centralized generation, and distributed will probably win.
Transmission and distributed generation accounts for half the cost of electricity. The question for our electricity future is distributed versus centralized generation, and distributed will probably win.
So distribute fission and fusion, overcomes much of that. And distributed solar and wind needs backup which is usually fairly centralized. Unless you want to spend 3-5 times as much for your energy to buy batteries.
Fusion needs to be distributed well away from population centres. Until we've had enough contained failures of the "intrinsically safe" reactors to be convinced that it's actually true.
While I believe/hope you are right there are use cases for gigawatt energy sources that cannot be met even with pervasive PV deployments. We will not be manufacturing aluminium with solar. We won't be pumping gigga tones of C02 out of the atmosphere and seawater with solar. We won't convert the Ort cloud to habitats with solar. For that we need fusion or fission. No way around it.
Actually, aluminum manufacturing is a perfect use case for solar, because it doesn't mind intermittency. (Or put another way, manufacturing energy intensive stuff is a perfect way to provide the storage that solar needs.)
Rather than batteries, i think pumping water up a hill will be a lot cheaper. use the water to drive a generator. massive daily over production to fill the nightly (or much longer) reserve.
That is the state of the art for energy storage today and basically all the sites are taken. Sure, if energy costs go up a LOT a few more will become viable, but if you look around, for example, Californa, it's hard to find another viable site.
Seawater lower basin adds considerably to site count.
There are other concerns: elevated highly variable salt water ponds and wetlands, and general nastiness of saltwater engineering: corrosion and marine life growth especially.
But generally, pumped hydro is really hard to beat.
There are other concerns: elevated highly variable salt water ponds and wetlands, and general nastiness of saltwater engineering: corrosion and marine life growth especially.
But generally, pumped hydro is really hard to beat.
I'd bet you know far more about it than i do. Assuming solar gets super super cheap, well, then we can do a lot. like suffer the losses of long distance transmission lines. Arizona supplying California might be feasible if the solar panels are cheap enough. Parent poster seems to be implying a few bucks a panel, rather than thousands or even hundreds of dollars.
>Arizona supplying California might be feasible if the solar panels are cheap enough.
For 1000 kV AC transmission line from Arizona to California, transmission losses should certainly be smaller than 5%, even less for DC. Arizona is pretty close to California when it comes to electricity transmission.
For 1000 kV AC transmission line from Arizona to California, transmission losses should certainly be smaller than 5%, even less for DC. Arizona is pretty close to California when it comes to electricity transmission.
Belgium is building an artificial island in the sea for this http://www.technologyreview.com/view/510806/a-manmade-island...
Pumped storage is hard to scale down and has a fairly fixed loss. There are a bunch of other storage technologies that are at the "almost there" stage though. I personally like the Pumped Heat storage from Isentropic as a possible mainstream contender:
http://www.isentropic.co.uk/
http://www.isentropic.co.uk/
That looks really interesting, though I wonder about the energy losses in the pumping mechanism. Are pistons particularly efficient?
As an added bonus, they're based just down the road from me!
As an added bonus, they're based just down the road from me!
Piston efficiency is basically limited by leakage round the seals and friction on the bearings. Can be in the very high 90%s. The system efficiency is limited by Carnot cycle like everything else, I think; they are claiming 75% AC-AC round trip, which is impressive if true.
I like this idea a lot the only downside is it expands the land area and possibly increases complexity - but I think for major power planets it's a great option just not for the home installations.
Solar is much cheaper and wind was already cheap, however the question, for both carbon and cost, is what is the price of the renewable intermittents with storage and backup. Batteries and storage in general have not had the step changes in cost and performance that solar has. Backup tends to be fossil plants. Ultimately energy density is a zero sum game for the environment and cost. In more detail:
On storage: Rough calculations show, if there were just enough Powerwalls to backup US peak demand for one hour it would require 10x the global annual mining production of lithium. And that's just one hour. And that doesn't include the electricity production.
On panel material required for production: It's generally estimated that US power, with good transmission, would require enough solar panels to cover the entire state of Massachusetts. Most non solar advocates think it's this square footage that's important. But of course this can largely be put on built land or in deserts so that is a relatively moot point. In fact, I want to get solar panels on my roof. However the real concern is what does this look like in terms of material mining? In immense panel production factories? (which isn't the greenest mfg process ever, likely one of the reasons it is largely done in China)
On mining and transporting material required: Mining is almost entirely powered by fossils, it has to be. And so is most transport. And so is recycling of metals. So the energy density of an energy source really is a zero sum game. If it takes a millionth the material for one source versus the other, that adds up.
On maintenance Then in maintenance, solar farms are truly "farms"- they require a lot of water to wash away dust to operate optimally. A states' worth of water is significant.
On lifetime/end of life First of all the lifetime of a panel is very optimistically 30 years/for a nuclear plant 60-80 years, and for the UPower fuel in particular can be used and recycled repeatedly for about 70+ years.
afterlife/recycling Then in recycling at end of life, and this is why I got so excited about nuclear as a somewhat hippie child growing up around oil companies in Oklahoma, solar is going to require a lot of energy (and fossil fuels or nuclear) to recycle, while nuclear can produce energy in recycling its fuel.
The main import, to me, is: what is the energy density of this energy, and if emitting, how much pollution? Coal is far more energy dense than wind, which is why humans evolved from windmills and wood to coal. But it's so polluting which is why we are all working towards better sources, and the greater energy density (nuclear on order of 2M x any other source) that's roughly 2M less trucks transporting, 2M less mining to do, 2M less recycling, etc. Thats more on the environment than pure cost like you are saying but the costs add up if the full life cycle is taken into account on both sides.
On storage: Rough calculations show, if there were just enough Powerwalls to backup US peak demand for one hour it would require 10x the global annual mining production of lithium. And that's just one hour. And that doesn't include the electricity production.
On panel material required for production: It's generally estimated that US power, with good transmission, would require enough solar panels to cover the entire state of Massachusetts. Most non solar advocates think it's this square footage that's important. But of course this can largely be put on built land or in deserts so that is a relatively moot point. In fact, I want to get solar panels on my roof. However the real concern is what does this look like in terms of material mining? In immense panel production factories? (which isn't the greenest mfg process ever, likely one of the reasons it is largely done in China)
On mining and transporting material required: Mining is almost entirely powered by fossils, it has to be. And so is most transport. And so is recycling of metals. So the energy density of an energy source really is a zero sum game. If it takes a millionth the material for one source versus the other, that adds up.
On maintenance Then in maintenance, solar farms are truly "farms"- they require a lot of water to wash away dust to operate optimally. A states' worth of water is significant.
On lifetime/end of life First of all the lifetime of a panel is very optimistically 30 years/for a nuclear plant 60-80 years, and for the UPower fuel in particular can be used and recycled repeatedly for about 70+ years.
afterlife/recycling Then in recycling at end of life, and this is why I got so excited about nuclear as a somewhat hippie child growing up around oil companies in Oklahoma, solar is going to require a lot of energy (and fossil fuels or nuclear) to recycle, while nuclear can produce energy in recycling its fuel.
The main import, to me, is: what is the energy density of this energy, and if emitting, how much pollution? Coal is far more energy dense than wind, which is why humans evolved from windmills and wood to coal. But it's so polluting which is why we are all working towards better sources, and the greater energy density (nuclear on order of 2M x any other source) that's roughly 2M less trucks transporting, 2M less mining to do, 2M less recycling, etc. Thats more on the environment than pure cost like you are saying but the costs add up if the full life cycle is taken into account on both sides.
where is nuclear in your theory?
In my theory, nuclear is mostly irrelevant. It's not a model for the third world (who can't afford or operate reactors, even if the rich nations would let them have one), it's not a model for low population densities, and it generally costs in the billions and requires the involvement of both local government and international regulatory agencies.
Sure, UPower and others are working on reactors that are small scale, cheaper, safe, and hard to weaponize. But they're still a limited solution to the problems I'm bringing up.
Fusion is a fantasy. Maybe someday it will be real, but betting the world on it is foolish.
Solar is cheap, fine-grained, clean, sustainable, and not weaponizable. It solves all my core problems. Why should I care about difficult, expensive, dangerous nuclear?
Sure, UPower and others are working on reactors that are small scale, cheaper, safe, and hard to weaponize. But they're still a limited solution to the problems I'm bringing up.
Fusion is a fantasy. Maybe someday it will be real, but betting the world on it is foolish.
Solar is cheap, fine-grained, clean, sustainable, and not weaponizable. It solves all my core problems. Why should I care about difficult, expensive, dangerous nuclear?
Solar is indirectly fusion power.
So are fossil fuels, and pretty much everything else on earth, including life itself. Carbon-based fossil fuels are simply very old plants which have stored and concentrated solar energy.
The only non-solar non-fusion energy I can think of is that which comes from the earth's core, geothermic. And even that is believed to be powered by nuclear fission.
The only non-solar non-fusion energy I can think of is that which comes from the earth's core, geothermic. And even that is believed to be powered by nuclear fission.
[deleted]
> By combining our years of experience in fusion, newly available electronics technologies, and a revolutionary design using cutting-edge physics, Helion is making a fusion engine 1,000 times smaller, over 500 times cheaper, and realizable 10 time faster than other projects.
What?!? I certainly appreciate the ambition, but humanity has spent seven decades and at least hundreds of billions of dollars on this very same project. What in the world is this tiny startup doing with a $5mm grant that is so easy and cheap that could possibly lead to that kind of breakthrough in fusion energy?
What?!? I certainly appreciate the ambition, but humanity has spent seven decades and at least hundreds of billions of dollars on this very same project. What in the world is this tiny startup doing with a $5mm grant that is so easy and cheap that could possibly lead to that kind of breakthrough in fusion energy?
> at least hundreds of billions of dollars on this very same project.
How is that a measure of doing something meaningful ? Take EADS making the Ariane rocket launchers, they have been spending billions and billions of Euros making rockets for years, yet they have no project like SpaceX and yet they will be rapidly obsolete once SpaceX works as expected.
It's not about the amount you spend, it's about experimenting in new areas not explored yet. Now, about fusion, I have no idea what they plan to do, but in principle there's always new things worth trying (even if they end up failing).
How is that a measure of doing something meaningful ? Take EADS making the Ariane rocket launchers, they have been spending billions and billions of Euros making rockets for years, yet they have no project like SpaceX and yet they will be rapidly obsolete once SpaceX works as expected.
It's not about the amount you spend, it's about experimenting in new areas not explored yet. Now, about fusion, I have no idea what they plan to do, but in principle there's always new things worth trying (even if they end up failing).
It's a measure that there's been a lot of effort going on in the past decades, so it's unlikely that a random startup with minuscule budget will suddenly crack it. SpaceX vs. Airbus Group is a bad example because Elon is only dropping costs of what is a proven technology (rockets). We don't have a break-even fusion reactor yet.
But to be honest, I think we need to encourage more effort, so I applaud the project anyway, and keep my fingers crossed.
But to be honest, I think we need to encourage more effort, so I applaud the project anyway, and keep my fingers crossed.
> SpaceX vs. Airbus Group is a bad example because Elon is only dropping costs of what is a proven technology (rockets).
I disagree on that point. SpaceX is not just making rockets cheaper, it's changing the paradigm by making rockets re-usable, which is very far from what EADS is planning to do currently. It's a game-changer and will divide the costs of launching something to space by 10 or more.
I cant comment on the Fusion startup, but we should not assume that companies operating with billions of cash are more effective at innovation than smaller ones with smaller budgets. They aren't, and that has been proven in many cases, SpaceX is just one good example coming to mind. In the pharma world, very small biotechs with minimal funding are responsible for the discovery of many new drug targets, and not the large pharma groups themselves.
I disagree on that point. SpaceX is not just making rockets cheaper, it's changing the paradigm by making rockets re-usable, which is very far from what EADS is planning to do currently. It's a game-changer and will divide the costs of launching something to space by 10 or more.
I cant comment on the Fusion startup, but we should not assume that companies operating with billions of cash are more effective at innovation than smaller ones with smaller budgets. They aren't, and that has been proven in many cases, SpaceX is just one good example coming to mind. In the pharma world, very small biotechs with minimal funding are responsible for the discovery of many new drug targets, and not the large pharma groups themselves.
Helion is investigating a different shaped magnetic containment field[0], and $5m is enough to get to them to the next prototype.
They have had previous success[1], and the torus-shaped magnetic containment fields used in most fusion research is known to be a problem.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversed_field_pinch
[1] http://www.alternative-energy-action-now.com/helion-energy.h... (yes, that domain sounds terrible, but the info seems ok)
They have had previous success[1], and the torus-shaped magnetic containment fields used in most fusion research is known to be a problem.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversed_field_pinch
[1] http://www.alternative-energy-action-now.com/helion-energy.h... (yes, that domain sounds terrible, but the info seems ok)
Helion isn't the only small fusion startup. Others include General Fusion, which has investment from Jeff Bezos, and Tri-Alpha, which has over $150 million, including from Paul Allen and Goldman Sachs.
Fusion advanced exponentially from 1970 to 2000, at about the pace of Moore's Law. Then governments decided to put most of their fusion money into a giant, poorly-managed construction project in France. But we're not that far off, and in those seven decades we've learned a lot about plasma physics, gotten much better computers for plasma simulations, and developed all sorts of other enabling technologies.
Fusion advanced exponentially from 1970 to 2000, at about the pace of Moore's Law. Then governments decided to put most of their fusion money into a giant, poorly-managed construction project in France. But we're not that far off, and in those seven decades we've learned a lot about plasma physics, gotten much better computers for plasma simulations, and developed all sorts of other enabling technologies.
For what it's worth, this is the kind of comment that looks hilarious in retrospect after every major breakthrough.
YC has demonstrated they aren't just throwing darts here, so vague pessimism is not the best default.
YC has demonstrated they aren't just throwing darts here, so vague pessimism is not the best default.
The reason those kinds of comments look ridiculous is because no one bothered to look up the thousands of other comments that people posted about similarly ridiculous sounding things that never panned out.
I am literally asking "what?" Because I don't know of any common idea that is even in the realm of this. I'm hoping someone knew something about the process they're pursuing that is not commonly known among cargo cult physicists like myself.
> The Helion reactor will fire a steady stream of plasmoids from each side into a chamber, where the fuel is crushed by magnetic fields until fusion begins. Within one second, the fusion products are channelled away just as the next pair of plasmoids hurtles in. “The analogy we like to make is to a diesel engine,” says the company's chief executive, David Kirtley. “On each stroke you inject the fuel, compress it with the piston it until it ignites without needing a spark, and the explosion pushes back on the piston.”
http://www.nature.com/news/plasma-physics-the-fusion-upstart...
EDIT: This admittedly isn't very much information, but it's more than I could find on their official site.
http://www.nature.com/news/plasma-physics-the-fusion-upstart...
EDIT: This admittedly isn't very much information, but it's more than I could find on their official site.
[deleted]
Cargo Cult physicists, Nobel winning physicists...
You're describing it like its the Yankees vs the Cleveland Indians, but it's not pure competition like that. The $5m startup is building on top of the $100b effort. Lots of science has been published, materials have been developed, dead ends have been discovered. The field of engineers gained much experience in those precious efforts. That doesn't decrease the probability of success, it increases it.
Sometimes it's not the size of the investment that dictates success. Often you need a good reset, with a smaller, better aligned team.
Everything that ever happened spent a long time not happening first. One must be super careful extrapolating inactivity.
Sometimes it's not the size of the investment that dictates success. Often you need a good reset, with a smaller, better aligned team.
Everything that ever happened spent a long time not happening first. One must be super careful extrapolating inactivity.
Probably nothing? But since they're funded anyway, it's pretty cheap to cross our fingers.
Isn't decommissioning nuclear power plants still basically a huge bill underwritten by the tax payer? I'm not really sure about creating radioactive waste that has such huge half lives...
From Wikipedia:
From Wikipedia:
Of particular concern in nuclear waste management are two long-lived fission
products, Tc-99 (half-life 220,000 years) and I-129 (half-life 15.7 million
years), which dominate spent fuel radioactivity after a few thousand years.
The most troublesome transuranic elements in spent fuel are Np-237 (half-life
two million years) and Pu-239 (half-life 24,000 years).[39] Nuclear waste
requires sophisticated treatment and management to successfully isolate it
from interacting with the biosphere. This usually necessitates treatment,
followed by a long-term management strategy involving storage, disposal or
transformation of the waste into a non-toxic form.[40] Governments around the
world are considering a range of waste management and disposal options, though
there has been limited progress toward long-term waste management
solutions.[41]
I am one of the UPower founders. There are two big stories here that most people don't know yet:
1) that a fast reactor can be waste-negative, I.e. transform existing waste to energy.
2) a fast reactor destroys the long lived waste- instead of trying to store waste for a hundred thousand years it's on the order of a hundred.
Both of these are critically important for existing waste but also having an emission free energy source with a closed fuel cycle. No other energy source is better than a hundred thousandth as energy dense and no other energy source could produce clean energy for its own recycling.
It's obviously just a cool technology but more than that it's amazing what that could mean for the environment and remote communities. Even for solar and wind materials mining, these remote mines generally have to burn tons and tons of diesel. That's what we are trying to fight.
Both of these are critically important for existing waste but also having an emission free energy source with a closed fuel cycle. No other energy source is better than a hundred thousandth as energy dense and no other energy source could produce clean energy for its own recycling.
It's obviously just a cool technology but more than that it's amazing what that could mean for the environment and remote communities. Even for solar and wind materials mining, these remote mines generally have to burn tons and tons of diesel. That's what we are trying to fight.
What about transport of the waste? Isn't (nearly?) all waste in the US stored on-site?
Good question, and believe it or not there have been small reactor concepts that failed for not considering that exact point.
Ours is designed to live in essentially a spent fuel cask. These things have been designed and tested to withstand being dropped from a thousand feet, being hit by missiles or airplanes. Seriously check out youtube there are crazy videos like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBp1FNceTTA
So from the time the reactor leaves our factory, to when it's put underground, till a decade later when it's taken out and shipped back for refueling, the fuel is locked in the reactor which is locked in this uber robust "cask".
This design is a fast reactor which means it can recycle fuel. So beyond its first decade installation we can recycle the fuel approximately 6 cycles before there is any amount of leftover that must be removed. That would be about 70 years, and the volume would be about the size of a basketball (fully glassified) and the lifetime would be on the order of a hundred years. That could be stored at our central facility or another facility, as it would not be weaponizable.
Ours is designed to live in essentially a spent fuel cask. These things have been designed and tested to withstand being dropped from a thousand feet, being hit by missiles or airplanes. Seriously check out youtube there are crazy videos like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBp1FNceTTA
So from the time the reactor leaves our factory, to when it's put underground, till a decade later when it's taken out and shipped back for refueling, the fuel is locked in the reactor which is locked in this uber robust "cask".
This design is a fast reactor which means it can recycle fuel. So beyond its first decade installation we can recycle the fuel approximately 6 cycles before there is any amount of leftover that must be removed. That would be about 70 years, and the volume would be about the size of a basketball (fully glassified) and the lifetime would be on the order of a hundred years. That could be stored at our central facility or another facility, as it would not be weaponizable.
on twitter, you asked about what people want to see on your website: THIS! especially with more detail and explanations
Power plants fund their own decommissioning [1]. And they also (in a way) already pay for disposal - a 1 mill per kWh fee on all energy generated payed to the federal govermnent in exchange for the feds taking responsibility for disposal [2]. This fee has been paid for decades - the industry has no problem supporting that level of disposal cost (and could even afford a higher fee if necessary). There has been an enormous amount of research into ways for dealing with the waste all kinds of disposal, treatments, recycling, etc. The only real blocker has been a lack of political/public will to make any decisions and move forward.
[1] http://www.nrc.gov/waste/decommissioning/finan-assur.html
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Policy_Act
[1] http://www.nrc.gov/waste/decommissioning/finan-assur.html
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Policy_Act
> Power plants fund their own decommissioning
They are supposed to. But here in germany the energy company lobbists basically said - in response to a few new proposed fees levied on coal plants - that anything threatening their revenues would cut into future revenue needed for decommissioning fees. And that's despite being required to have funds set aside for decommissioning.
I suspect some creative accounting going on, moving expected future profits into those funds or whatever.
So if their business models fail - e.g. due to renewables - it might turn out that in practice there never was any money set aside for decommissioning.
There are even talks about splitting off coal and fission plants into some sort of "bad bank" companies.
So I would be very wary of any such promises of things being priced in.
Corporations have again and again proven to be very good at privatizing profits while externalizing costs.
They are supposed to. But here in germany the energy company lobbists basically said - in response to a few new proposed fees levied on coal plants - that anything threatening their revenues would cut into future revenue needed for decommissioning fees. And that's despite being required to have funds set aside for decommissioning.
I suspect some creative accounting going on, moving expected future profits into those funds or whatever.
So if their business models fail - e.g. due to renewables - it might turn out that in practice there never was any money set aside for decommissioning.
There are even talks about splitting off coal and fission plants into some sort of "bad bank" companies.
So I would be very wary of any such promises of things being priced in.
Corporations have again and again proven to be very good at privatizing profits while externalizing costs.
I'll counter your wikipedia links with the issues and costs associated with decommissioning in the UK:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Decommissioning_Author...
Current estimates for one Nuclear Power Plant Site (Sellafield): £114bn which seems A LOT!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Decommissioning_Author...
Current estimates for one Nuclear Power Plant Site (Sellafield): £114bn which seems A LOT!
Sellafield isn't an ordinary nuclear power station. It was part of the UK's nuclear weapons program and contained some of the UK's earliest (maybe the earliest) nuclear reactors.
It's not going to be representative of the decommissioning costs of modern generation II or generation III reactors.
It's not going to be representative of the decommissioning costs of modern generation II or generation III reactors.
It's also the site of one of the most ridiculous nuclear accidents in history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire
Regardless of how much one is for or against nuclear power, i think we can all come together and agree strongly that building an air cooled nuclear reactor that uses a flammable substance as a moderator and blows exhaust out a chimney is a catastrophically bad idea.
And I don't imagine that kind of activity results in easy cleanup.
Regardless of how much one is for or against nuclear power, i think we can all come together and agree strongly that building an air cooled nuclear reactor that uses a flammable substance as a moderator and blows exhaust out a chimney is a catastrophically bad idea.
And I don't imagine that kind of activity results in easy cleanup.
Also, AGR fuel needs to be condensed or reprocessed shortly after discharge. It's great in a gas reactor, not so much in a spent fuel pool. That means much of the UK's discharged fuel as been consolidated at Sellafield. But all that plutonium is a great fuel resource. Jealous of whoever gets to fuel their reactor with that goldmine.
Sellafield is a large site consisting of many facilities [1]. These include Magnox reactors [2] which were historically used to create weapons grade Plutonium and are much "messier" than typical commercial power reactors. The Sellafield site has been and is still home to a very large spent fuel reprocessing plant that handles spent fuel from numerous UK reactors. Reprocessing plants are an entirely different beast. And a lot of the activity at the Sellafield site is generally from older, messier technologies as well.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnox
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnox
Also the somewhat wide range is disturbing!
The NRC estimates costs for decommissioning a nuclear power plant
range from $280-$612 million.The cost will vary significantly from plant to plant - this range is likely due to plant-to-plant variation - not uncertainty in the cost for any single plant. Do you have a citation/reference for that?
Yeah, sure, it's linked above which is why I didn't reference it:
http://www.nrc.gov/waste/decommissioning/finan-assur.html
Cost does seem quite high right?
http://www.nrc.gov/waste/decommissioning/finan-assur.html
Cost does seem quite high right?
Since it costs several billion to build a plant, that decommissioning cost is somewhere around 10-20% of the construction cost, which doesn't seem too bad.
Like I mentioned above - that cost is not uncertainty in single plant decommissioning cost. It is a range of much-lower uncertainty decommissioning costs for several different plant. The decommissioning cost is estimated by NRC and plant operators before the plant becomes operational and is periodically revisited. And decommissioning costs don't look nearly so big compared to the several billon $ for construction.
Nuclear power plants in the U.S. pay a fee for waste disposal. Those fees have accumulated in a fund, currently amounting to over $30 billion. The money was going to go to Yucca Mountain, until that project was shut down.
The long-lived fission products are a very small portion of the total waste, and if we only had fission products to worry about, the total waste would go back to the radioactivity of the original ore within three centuries or so, since most fission products are relatively short-lived. It's pretty easy to contain them for that long.
The great majority of the total waste, and almost all the long-lived waste, is transuranics. Those can also be considered unspent fuel, and fissioned for energy in fast reactors or with neutrons from D-T fusion reactors. The Russians have a couple fast reactors in commercial operation, one of which has provided 560MWe to their power grid since 1980. They're working now on using them to process transuranic waste.
The long-lived fission products are a very small portion of the total waste, and if we only had fission products to worry about, the total waste would go back to the radioactivity of the original ore within three centuries or so, since most fission products are relatively short-lived. It's pretty easy to contain them for that long.
The great majority of the total waste, and almost all the long-lived waste, is transuranics. Those can also be considered unspent fuel, and fissioned for energy in fast reactors or with neutrons from D-T fusion reactors. The Russians have a couple fast reactors in commercial operation, one of which has provided 560MWe to their power grid since 1980. They're working now on using them to process transuranic waste.
I really hope it's more than £30bn. No-one seems to know how much it costs to decommission one, but a link above says "range from $280-$612 million." Ouch.
I'm talking about the fund for long-term waste storage. Operators pay for decommissioning themselves in most countries, and about 90 commercial nuclear plants plus various other reactors have been shut down, with 15 fully dismantled. Once the fuel is removed, the remaining radioactivity has a short half-life. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Nuclear-Fuel-Cycle/Nuclear...
The half life of the immense amount of chemical toxic waste produced by industry each year is essentially infinite. And yet somehow we're mostly content with chucking it in a landfill (albeit ones regulated and built to safely handle it) and calling it good. Drop the dangerous period from "infinity" to "some millions of years" and suddenly people get more worried?
Well, the difference between chemical toxic waste is that there are accessible methods for making it non-toxic. It's just a matter of cost. For example, toxic organic and inorganic compounds can be thermally decomposed. For organics, you create elemental carbon. For inorganics (containing metal ions), you can reform the metal and collect it. Acid/base waste can be neutralized. You can't really do that for radioactive material except trying to accelerate the decay. And while chemical waste can often be handled with standard safety measures, radioactive waste is just too dangerous to work with.
I see your point. I think one needs to consider both the danger of the waste and the amount of it generated. Then try to find a good balance.
I see your point. I think one needs to consider both the danger of the waste and the amount of it generated. Then try to find a good balance.
What about elemental toxins like mercury and arsenic?
Just collect and store. They can be purified and have commercial use. Otherwise, since they came from the earth in the first place, storing it back in the earth doesn't change the amount of toxins we have in the ground.
So why is "collect and store" OK for this stuff, which lasts forever, but not OK for nuclear waste, which "only" lasts some thousands of years?
Because this stuff already existed in the ground (just not as concentrated), is not as toxic as radioactive waste, and can be recovered and reused. Nuclear waste generates new highly toxic substances that are extremely dangerous. And even after the waste has "decayed", the products are still toxic (just not radioactive) and last forever.
It suddenly becomes a solvable problem.
If something is infinite, meh, it's infinite, what you gonna do. But if it's a few million years ... whoa, we can reason about that!
If something is infinite, meh, it's infinite, what you gonna do. But if it's a few million years ... whoa, we can reason about that!
Who says I'm not worried about all the "bad" things(tm)?
To be honest I'm just asking the question that while we can all say "isn't it great how safe nuclear is" we still haven't 100% figured out the waste issue. Fusion... well I'll believe it when it's powering my DeLorean.
To be honest I'm just asking the question that while we can all say "isn't it great how safe nuclear is" we still haven't 100% figured out the waste issue. Fusion... well I'll believe it when it's powering my DeLorean.
I'm not saying you're not worried, or trying to pull one of those "but this is worse, so you must only worry about it!" things. I'm just saying that you don't need to "solve" the problem, as demonstrated by how we deal with other toxic waste. Yeah, chucking it in a landfill and calling it good isn't ideal, but it's not terrible if your landfill is reasonably well designed. Nuclear waste is a problem, but not a big one, and not big enough that the continued use of nuclear power should be gated on some sort of definitive solution.
How do I answer people who say that kind of thinking is what led to the fucking mess that is Sellafield?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31725365
Behind schedule and over budget is totally normal of UK big projects. But still, £58bn is a lot of money to fix something that's not a big problem.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31725365
Behind schedule and over budget is totally normal of UK big projects. But still, £58bn is a lot of money to fix something that's not a big problem.
Much of that high cost is because the waste is treated so delicately, while equally deadly non-nuclear waste is treated with much less care.
I imagine there have been a lot of places in your country (as with any industrialized country) that have been horribly contaminated with non-nuclear pollution, then cleaned up. While these events can certainly be used as an argument for taking more care, they're almost never used as an argument to give up on the whole idea of industry.
Nuclear waste is bad, but it doesn't seem to be on the level of "we must lock this up so securely that God Himself cannot access it" as people seem to try for.
I imagine there have been a lot of places in your country (as with any industrialized country) that have been horribly contaminated with non-nuclear pollution, then cleaned up. While these events can certainly be used as an argument for taking more care, they're almost never used as an argument to give up on the whole idea of industry.
Nuclear waste is bad, but it doesn't seem to be on the level of "we must lock this up so securely that God Himself cannot access it" as people seem to try for.
"Infinite half-life" basically means an isotope is stable. Half life is only one piece of the radioactivity story. Knowing how isotopes decay is also important - alpha, beta decay, spontaneous fission, etc - these differences matter a great deal w.r.t. how to safely handle and store spent fuel. And we don't just "chuck it in a landfill" - here is a good place to start to learn a bit more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository.
I think you misunderstand my point. I'm saying that modern industry produces a vast amount of poisons with an infinite half life, because they're chemical poisons rather than radioactive poisons. And despite the fact that they last essentially forever, we don't worry about things like deep geological repositories, we just construct reasonably contained landfills and toss the stuff in.
"Poisons" is subjective. Practially all the stable bi-products are naturally occuring in nature and many of them have all sorts of uses [1] [2]. The chemical toxicity of spent nuclear fuel (excluding radioactivity issues) is not worse than many other industrial processes in general. Spent nuclear fuel definitely needs to be treated/handled carefully, but what you say is not a "nuclear" problem - rather it is a 21 century high-tech, industrialized society problem in general.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krypton
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zirconium
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krypton
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zirconium
That's more or less my point. Nuclear waste is similar to other toxic waste in terms of the danger and long-term storage problems. Yet with one we just say "Let's be real careful about how we dispose of this" while with the other we say, "We cannot proceed with any more of this activity until we come up with an absolutely foolproof disposal method that will last longer than civilization itself."
> Isn't decommissioning nuclear power plants still basically a huge bill underwritten by the tax payer?
That's an important question, but climate change is a far larger bill underwritten by the tax payer (and millions or billions more who can't afford taxes), so I don't think the question is a deal-breaker.
That's an important question, but climate change is a far larger bill underwritten by the tax payer (and millions or billions more who can't afford taxes), so I don't think the question is a deal-breaker.
Yes it surely is. We need to take everything into the equation on where to go.
- grey energy invested
- full lifetime costs from start of construction until fully recovered land
- inclusive recycling costs
- inclusive environmental impacts
- grey energy invested
- full lifetime costs from start of construction until fully recovered land
- inclusive recycling costs
- inclusive environmental impacts
This is one of the great challenges nuclear has to overcome on paper. Most of these costs are based on absurd standards that have consistently been proven wrong. Fukushima's cleanup would be orders of magnitude less if they didn't have to treat nearby soil as waste when its radioactive signature is far lower than the soil found at the ski slopes in CO, and even less than beach sand in Brazil. We treat low level radiation as dangerous, it really isn't. Nobody at Fukushima was exposed to high level radiation, and no one will die early due to the exposures they had. And if everybody moved back to the town and land that was evacuated, they could live their whole lives out and be fine! Why waste money on cleaning up things that are not dangerous, just lied about? Changing the standards to actually reflect science would eliminate so many of these "nebulous" costs and perceived indirect costs of nuclear power.
Why do you think those standards are absurd?
Low level radion is dangerous. http://www.ianfairlie.org/news/recent-evidence-on-the-risks-...
"However the latest study, (Zablotska et al, 2013) is very large (over 110,000 workers) and succeeded in finding statistically significant leukemia increases, even at the relatively low doses experienced by most of these adult workers (average dose = 92 mSv)."
Low level radion is dangerous. http://www.ianfairlie.org/news/recent-evidence-on-the-risks-...
"However the latest study, (Zablotska et al, 2013) is very large (over 110,000 workers) and succeeded in finding statistically significant leukemia increases, even at the relatively low doses experienced by most of these adult workers (average dose = 92 mSv)."
This reactor eats some of the waste, but UPower can eat all of the waste, including this reactor's waste.
I'm surprised people are so worried about nuclear waste. It's literally the best type of waste imaginable - you can easily grab it, put it in barrels and store for possible future use as fuel source, and even if not, left alone this waste turns harmless with time, without reacting with anything.
Compare that to waste generated from burning dead dinosaurs - its storage is not a problem only because it's dumped into the atmosphere to poison everyone. You can say that nuclear plants have one less externality here.
Compare that to waste generated from burning dead dinosaurs - its storage is not a problem only because it's dumped into the atmosphere to poison everyone. You can say that nuclear plants have one less externality here.
Yes, multiple decomissioning projects are showing the true costs these days.
Germany:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greifswald_Nuclear_Power_Plant Decomissioned: 1990
Destruction started: 1995
Ongoing as of today....
Germany:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greifswald_Nuclear_Power_Plant Decomissioned: 1990
Destruction started: 1995
Ongoing as of today....
Yeah, I see from Wikipedia "In France, decommissioning of Brennilis Nuclear Power Plant, a fairly small 70 MW power plant, already cost €480 million (20x the estimate costs) and is still pending after 20 years." Plus it leaked into the lake nearby.
The 20th century was the century of carbon-based energy. I am confident the 22nd century is going to be the century of atomic energy (i.e. terrestrial atomic generation and energy from sun’s fusion).
It's silly to describe solar as atomic energy from sun’s fusion as a distinct category from carbon-based energy, because of course carbon-based energy was formed by capturing solar energy from the sun's fusion.
It's silly to describe solar as atomic energy from sun’s fusion as a distinct category from carbon-based energy, because of course carbon-based energy was formed by capturing solar energy from the sun's fusion.
Perhaps we should call it all Big Bang energy.
I agree this is silly. Harnessing the radiant energy of the sun is categorically different from converting wind or carbon into usable energy. Trying to group these into one category seems out of touch with the reality of developing the t technlogies.
I agree this is silly. Harnessing the radiant energy of the sun is categorically different from converting wind or carbon into usable energy. Trying to group these into one category seems out of touch with the reality of developing the t technlogies.
It's silly to describe solar as atomic energy from sun’s fusion as a distinct category from carbon-based energy, because of course carbon-based energy was formed by capturing solar energy from the sun's fusion.
Fine, call it a 'carbon-cycle' energy system. Which may make it more clear that we're doing a great job on the 'burning' part of the cycle, but not so good on the 'capturing' part of the cycle.
Fine, call it a 'carbon-cycle' energy system. Which may make it more clear that we're doing a great job on the 'burning' part of the cycle, but not so good on the 'capturing' part of the cycle.
You could get super pedantic and say it's all gravity based energy, but it stops being a useful way to classify things long before that.
Distinguishing between carbon and atomic is a pretty useful and meaningful distinction, although ultimately not perfectly correct.
Distinguishing between carbon and atomic is a pretty useful and meaningful distinction, although ultimately not perfectly correct.
How is this anything but useless pedantry?
I think the OP is illustrating the pedantry of "well technically solar energy is atomic energy" by pointing out that, by that standard, so is coal and oil. In other words, I don't think you disagree with the OP.
[deleted]
There's certainly a lot less latency from atomic reaction to harvested energy though :D
Not meant to be snarky, but why does Mr Altman assume folks care what he's confident about regarding things outside his expertise in software and startups? I genuinely wonder.
It's great to see you invest your time and money in nuclear power Sam. We already have the nuclear technology to solve our energy emissions problem, we just lack the political will to make the shift away from coal/oil/gas. Great leaps in the efficiency and safety of nuclear power systems will hopefully make the shift politically achievable.
I thought the biggest hurdle with nuclear energy was waste management? As in, we've nowhere to put the toxic dump that's produced that will radiate a few tens of thousands of years? Unless that's been solved, in which case consumer education would be a next step
Much of the waste problem can be solved by using reactors designed to use the waste as fuel. This isn't currently done, but there's no big technical reason it couldn't be.
For what remains after that, well, there's nothing particularly wrong with sticking it in some extremely sturdy armored containers, sticking the containers in a shed, surrounding the shed with a razor-wire fence, and stationing a couple of guards at the gate.
The paranoia over nuclear waste is weird. What if civilization collapses and people in the far future discover the stuff and don't know it's dangerous? It lasts tens of thousands of years, after all! OK, but we leave dangerous stuff all over the place. There are tons of barrels of toxic chemicals, ponds full of poison, and heaps of awful stuff just sitting around, and more being produced all the time. Nuclear waste is bad because it lasts tens of thousands of years? How about arsenic or mercury, which lasts forever? And sure, precautions are taken with those toxins, but not on the "this must be placed in a geologically stable area, packaged to survive the fall of civilization, and signposted so that all future intelligence will know to avoid it" level of precaution.
For what remains after that, well, there's nothing particularly wrong with sticking it in some extremely sturdy armored containers, sticking the containers in a shed, surrounding the shed with a razor-wire fence, and stationing a couple of guards at the gate.
The paranoia over nuclear waste is weird. What if civilization collapses and people in the far future discover the stuff and don't know it's dangerous? It lasts tens of thousands of years, after all! OK, but we leave dangerous stuff all over the place. There are tons of barrels of toxic chemicals, ponds full of poison, and heaps of awful stuff just sitting around, and more being produced all the time. Nuclear waste is bad because it lasts tens of thousands of years? How about arsenic or mercury, which lasts forever? And sure, precautions are taken with those toxins, but not on the "this must be placed in a geologically stable area, packaged to survive the fall of civilization, and signposted so that all future intelligence will know to avoid it" level of precaution.
> using reactors designed to use the waste as fuel
What do you mean? The waste is full of nuclear poisons (a technical term, isotopes that stop fission by neutron capture). Reusing it means reprocessing to extract the Plutonium, which is burnable in a reactor (particularly as MOX). The chemistry required for this is pretty messy, and the radioactive environment (fuel from a power station is very 'hot' radioactively speaking) so horrific that you need a fully robotic plant.
This hasn't gone great for the UK, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_Oxide_Reprocessing_Pla...
But we do now have 112 tonnes of Plutonium as a result of our half a century of reprocessing. Which no one knows what to do with, and is an enormous liability.
What do you mean? The waste is full of nuclear poisons (a technical term, isotopes that stop fission by neutron capture). Reusing it means reprocessing to extract the Plutonium, which is burnable in a reactor (particularly as MOX). The chemistry required for this is pretty messy, and the radioactive environment (fuel from a power station is very 'hot' radioactively speaking) so horrific that you need a fully robotic plant.
This hasn't gone great for the UK, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_Oxide_Reprocessing_Pla...
But we do now have 112 tonnes of Plutonium as a result of our half a century of reprocessing. Which no one knows what to do with, and is an enormous liability.
The main problem with reprocessing is fears of weapons proliferation, which is an odd fear when it happens in countries that already have large piles of nuclear weapons, but there we are. The waste is mostly still full of fuel. Advanced designs like the Waste Annihilating Molten Salt Reactor could make this simpler and cheaper.
What to do with the UK's plutonium seems obvious to me: use it as nuclear fuel. If this isn't being done it's presumably because of political opposition, not technical problems.
What to do with the UK's plutonium seems obvious to me: use it as nuclear fuel. If this isn't being done it's presumably because of political opposition, not technical problems.
Hardly an odd fear when adding new systematic components to the material supply chain massively increases the chance of some of that supply leaking.
Not doing that route makes you less exposed to risk.
In an extremely complex world where risk needs to be minimized as much as possible, it's totally reasonable for society to decide not to extract plutonium at mass scale in a free market way.
Sure if the military controlled the whole thing (as they do via their own supply chain) that could perhaps feel more secure... but who controls outflows of waste between governments, etc?
Not doing that route makes you less exposed to risk.
In an extremely complex world where risk needs to be minimized as much as possible, it's totally reasonable for society to decide not to extract plutonium at mass scale in a free market way.
Sure if the military controlled the whole thing (as they do via their own supply chain) that could perhaps feel more secure... but who controls outflows of waste between governments, etc?
Hardly an odd fear when adding new systematic components to the material supply chain massively increases the chance of some of that supply leaking.
Not doing that route makes you less exposed to risk.
In an extremely complex world where risk needs to be minimized as much as possible, it's totally reasonable for society to decide not to extract plutonium at mass scale in a free market way.
Sure if the military controlled the whole thing (as they do via their own supply chain) that could perhaps feel more secure... but who controls outflows of waste between governments, etc?
Oh and the mind-boggling cost. Who pays?
Nuclear is one of the most expensive forms of energy when you cost in the full price of making it safe, including dealing with waste and ensuring absolutely no proliferation of weapons.
Not doing that route makes you less exposed to risk.
In an extremely complex world where risk needs to be minimized as much as possible, it's totally reasonable for society to decide not to extract plutonium at mass scale in a free market way.
Sure if the military controlled the whole thing (as they do via their own supply chain) that could perhaps feel more secure... but who controls outflows of waste between governments, etc?
Oh and the mind-boggling cost. Who pays?
Nuclear is one of the most expensive forms of energy when you cost in the full price of making it safe, including dealing with waste and ensuring absolutely no proliferation of weapons.
There are various reactor design proposals (such as molten-salt), which can be used to burn a variety of fissionable materials. There hasn't been nearly enough investment to put that sort of thing into production yet.
There's a lot of energy in those 112 tonnes, but you really need a fast reactor to burn it. Plutonium is a lot easier to tackle in a fast reactor than a thermal reactor.
Also, UPower can use the waste without putting it through a chemical separations process. In fact you can just take the SNF grind it up, and dump it into the UPower reactor alongside the rest of the fuel. It actually makes a pretty good fuel that way.
Also, UPower can use the waste without putting it through a chemical separations process. In fact you can just take the SNF grind it up, and dump it into the UPower reactor alongside the rest of the fuel. It actually makes a pretty good fuel that way.
It's not paranoia, it's a real issue with that waste.
We have no working waste solution as of today.
We have no working long term storage solution as of today.
We have not priced the cost of long term storage/plant decomissioning etc at the full cost into the price of nuclear power - that is for most countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/dealing-with-ass...
We have no working waste solution as of today.
We have no working long term storage solution as of today.
We have not priced the cost of long term storage/plant decomissioning etc at the full cost into the price of nuclear power - that is for most countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/dealing-with-ass...
What's wrong with copying the solution used for all the other toxic waste modern industry produces?
We have no working long term solution for storing arsenic, but people mostly seem fine with "just dispose of it in a way where it doesn't leech into the groundwater" and not the crazy restrictions everyone wants to put on nuclear waste storage.
We have no working long term solution for storing arsenic, but people mostly seem fine with "just dispose of it in a way where it doesn't leech into the groundwater" and not the crazy restrictions everyone wants to put on nuclear waste storage.
I am not a tox/haz/nuclear waste engineer (someone?) but I assume that groundwater threatening waste is being regarded differently than highly radioactive substances.
Can't you protect yourself and go cleanup an arsenic spill "easily" compared to how you would cleanup a radioactive spent fuel rod container which tore open?
IIRC the latter is a real issue currently at Asse in Germany.
Can't you protect yourself and go cleanup an arsenic spill "easily" compared to how you would cleanup a radioactive spent fuel rod container which tore open?
IIRC the latter is a real issue currently at Asse in Germany.
Sry, that is a terrible argument. You are saying that we do not have to worry about nuclear waste, because we currently do not worry about other waste.
I'm saying that nuclear waste is treated with far more paranoia than it deserves, as illustrated by how we dispose of other waste much less carefully, even though it's just as dangerous. And mostly successfully, too. That doesn't mean that it's something to be ignored, or that current methods of waste disposal are perfect, but if we aren't shutting down the entire chemical industry (for example) over this problem then why should we require that nuclear waste and only nuclear waste be solved for all time before nuclear power can be used?
Exactly. Nuclear waste is one of the best types of toxic waste we've ever seen. It's relatively compact, still able to be used as fuel in the future, there isn't much of it, and it makes itself harmless with just passage of time; no need to treat it with anything.
"Lot's of time".
Much less than waiting for protons to decay, which you need for the waste 'mikeash was talking about that we're so casual about storing safely.
Because nuclear waste is a recent problem, and chemical waste is an old problem. Same reason we have driver's licenses; same reason we have the TSA.
Most choices don't get made on the basis of "what would be a better idea?".
Most choices don't get made on the basis of "what would be a better idea?".
I've been convinced for a while that the reason this problem is not solved is that everybody is sure that the problem is not solved, and therefore nuclear is really hard, and therefore we shouldn't do research on nuclear, and therefore we shouldn't do any engineering on the topic of how to solve our waste issues. In other words, ultimately the reason is circular logic.
It's 2015, and we remain essentially stuck on 1950s B-Movie era stereotypes on how nuclear works, what it is, and how dangerous it is.
It's 2015, and we remain essentially stuck on 1950s B-Movie era stereotypes on how nuclear works, what it is, and how dangerous it is.
I worked on renewable energy projects a few years back, and while the idea of a large disruptive technology development sounds awesome, the reality is that there are already a plethora of renewable energy turbines and designs that would greatly improve the world... But the engineers and inventors running around with these ideas have no idea how to go from a small scale proof of concept into a fully built out manufacturing and implementation process.
Even if they do figure out how to get engineering and manufacturing in place, then there are regulatory barriers to figure out. There will be politics involved, and legal challenges. And of course, you need to actually operate the sites on an ongoing basis.
All of these challenges can be overcome... but most people who know how to do so already work in the energy industry. What is really needed is a group of people who can bridge those gaps to take an innovate design from an engineers drawing board, and jump through all the hoops to make it a live production site. If such a group were to be built, real change could happen very quickly.
Even if they do figure out how to get engineering and manufacturing in place, then there are regulatory barriers to figure out. There will be politics involved, and legal challenges. And of course, you need to actually operate the sites on an ongoing basis.
All of these challenges can be overcome... but most people who know how to do so already work in the energy industry. What is really needed is a group of people who can bridge those gaps to take an innovate design from an engineers drawing board, and jump through all the hoops to make it a live production site. If such a group were to be built, real change could happen very quickly.
There is also a very large amount of snake oil in the renewable energy field and a ton of ideas that keep being recycled that have long ago been invalidated.
There is some of that. There are also very valid projects out there. I am running under the assumption that people can tell the difference.
Frankly, most of the sketchy folk that I ran into during my projects were the investors, not the engineers.
Frankly, most of the sketchy folk that I ran into during my projects were the investors, not the engineers.
> Frankly, most of the sketchy folk that I ran into during my projects were the investors, not the engineers.
I've seen a couple of both, but for the most part the engineers when they are wrong are deluding themselves as well, the investors that are sketchy seem to be more cynical and aware of what they are doing.
I've seen a couple of both, but for the most part the engineers when they are wrong are deluding themselves as well, the investors that are sketchy seem to be more cynical and aware of what they are doing.
Surely there's a country hungry for energy somewhere without all the red tape?
I always wondered why more energy wasn't generated from nuclear. On paper it seems like a great energy source.
Kudos to Sam for putting not just his money, but his time where his mouth is. If only the rest of the internet could do the same!
Kudos to Sam for putting not just his money, but his time where his mouth is. If only the rest of the internet could do the same!
> If only the rest of the internet could do the same!
Sam is in a fairly unique position to be able to do that...
Sam is in a fairly unique position to be able to do that...
> On paper it seems like a great energy source.
On paper the waste issue is still not solved. And the risks are still large (yes I know, coal, gas and oil has it's drawbacks too).
On paper the waste issue is still not solved. And the risks are still large (yes I know, coal, gas and oil has it's drawbacks too).
Waste isn't a significant issue for either of the ycombinator projects. One is mostly-aneutronic fusion, the other is a fast reactor. Fast reactors produce about 1% as much waste and it goes back to the radioactivity of the original ore in a couple centuries.
Fusion has no significant risk. With fission it depends on the design; I don't know much about UPower, but the IFR, another small fast reactor, demonstrated very impressive safety.
Fusion has no significant risk. With fission it depends on the design; I don't know much about UPower, but the IFR, another small fast reactor, demonstrated very impressive safety.
Not sure about waste, can someone else here speak to that? Also deaths per unit energy are incredibly low relative to other sources.
The UPower design is waste negative so it can convert the entire planet's spent nuclear fuel and depleted uranium stockpiles into enough energy to power the globe for about 500 years. All while leaving behind a waste stream that decays to be less radioactive than the ground beneath your feet in a few hundred years. If we buried it in Paul Revere's basement when it was built, people could see it and touch it today without any exposure above background. Not to mention it is also fuel agnostic so it can run on thorium as well.
It's also important to highlight that the UPower design can consume the entire actinide vector because it uses fast neutrons. A lot of the longer lived actinides cannot be fissioned or transmuted effectively by thermal neutrons so they just build up.
We like to say we are the ultimate disposal, and can take anything, including the waste from other waste consumers.
It's also important to highlight that the UPower design can consume the entire actinide vector because it uses fast neutrons. A lot of the longer lived actinides cannot be fissioned or transmuted effectively by thermal neutrons so they just build up.
We like to say we are the ultimate disposal, and can take anything, including the waste from other waste consumers.
Recently watched Cosmos Episode 6 where Neil deGrasse Tyson speaks of photosynthesis and how all our energy problems would be solved if we were able to learn the 'trade secrets' of how plants do it.
This makes a lot of sense.
Can anyone point out current research on this field? I don't seem to hear much about it.
Edit: Just found this after searching #photosynthesis in Twitter: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/20/artificial-photosyn...
This makes a lot of sense.
Can anyone point out current research on this field? I don't seem to hear much about it.
Edit: Just found this after searching #photosynthesis in Twitter: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/20/artificial-photosyn...
There are neat ways to make sunlight into fuel, but it's about what form that energy takes. If it is a fuel that needs to be burned - in the case of sugars from photosynthesis - we already do this by burning wood.
I think Cosmos missed a really important lesson which is that the fuels at our disposal are all a function of time and distance. The longer a fuel source has been building, and the less distance it has to travel to be useful to us, the more valuable it may be. The sun is a result of billions of years of the shape-shifting games between mass and energy, all driven by gravity. The fusion energy produced in the sun then has to travel 93 million miles to us to be useful. The food chain harnesses this energy and accumulates it over time, and after hundreds of millions of years much of that energy has been sequestered into fossil fuels. While there is a tremendous amount of power emanating from the sun, it has to go a long way or accumulate for a long time to be useful to us. Nuclear fuel sources on the other hand bring the billions of years of nucleus building that previous generations of stars did for us to our door step. The parent stars of our sun produced heavy actinides like uranium or thorium, as well as the abundant light elements like deuterium, helium, and boron, and then scattering them across the cosmos along with leftover hydrogen in brilliant novae and supernovae. In our case, many of these elements were in the stardust that formed earth, and are here beneath our feet and above our heads.
Solar, wind, and nuclear will dominate the 22nd century, but we need both, and they do and can play well together. They just need to be treated and respected equally.
I think Cosmos missed a really important lesson which is that the fuels at our disposal are all a function of time and distance. The longer a fuel source has been building, and the less distance it has to travel to be useful to us, the more valuable it may be. The sun is a result of billions of years of the shape-shifting games between mass and energy, all driven by gravity. The fusion energy produced in the sun then has to travel 93 million miles to us to be useful. The food chain harnesses this energy and accumulates it over time, and after hundreds of millions of years much of that energy has been sequestered into fossil fuels. While there is a tremendous amount of power emanating from the sun, it has to go a long way or accumulate for a long time to be useful to us. Nuclear fuel sources on the other hand bring the billions of years of nucleus building that previous generations of stars did for us to our door step. The parent stars of our sun produced heavy actinides like uranium or thorium, as well as the abundant light elements like deuterium, helium, and boron, and then scattering them across the cosmos along with leftover hydrogen in brilliant novae and supernovae. In our case, many of these elements were in the stardust that formed earth, and are here beneath our feet and above our heads.
Solar, wind, and nuclear will dominate the 22nd century, but we need both, and they do and can play well together. They just need to be treated and respected equally.
Heavy elements that allow for Fission are products of supernova which are really more a question of minutes than years. With the vast majority being created in under 2 minutes after the reaction starts.
PS: https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/
Which of the following would be brighter, in terms of the amount of energy delivered to your retina: A supernova, seen from as far away as the Sun is from the Earth, or The detonation of a hydrogen bomb pressed against your eyeball?
A: Applying the physicist rule of thumb suggests that the supernova is brighter. And indeed, it is ... by nine orders of magnitude.
PS: https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/
Which of the following would be brighter, in terms of the amount of energy delivered to your retina: A supernova, seen from as far away as the Sun is from the Earth, or The detonation of a hydrogen bomb pressed against your eyeball?
A: Applying the physicist rule of thumb suggests that the supernova is brighter. And indeed, it is ... by nine orders of magnitude.
Janine Benyus talks about this in her TED talk Biomimicry in action: http://www.ted.com/talks/janine_benyus_biomimicry_in_action.
We should look to nature before designing things since it may have already solved the problem for us. Future technology should also be designed to gracefully degrade like nature, otherwise we're just replacing one problem with another.
We should look to nature before designing things since it may have already solved the problem for us. Future technology should also be designed to gracefully degrade like nature, otherwise we're just replacing one problem with another.
There's a more efficient way to do that.
Use TCP/IP to synchronize the consumption of power with its production. Solar and wind are pretty awesome if you can schedule around them. And most of our power consumption is amenable to it.
Use TCP/IP to synchronize the consumption of power with its production. Solar and wind are pretty awesome if you can schedule around them. And most of our power consumption is amenable to it.
P.S. I'm not an expert, but this has been in news media in India for a long time.
The reason that China and India are the only countries going after fission is because of a singular element - Thorium. Both India and China have huge reserves of thorium that can be unlocked with molten salt reactors that are unviable anywhere else in the world (including the US, which gave up on this a long time ago[1]). Australia does have large reserves of thorium, but its projected energy needs are dwarfed by India and China's.
China is way ahead than India on this front with more than a billion dollars managed by Jiang Mianheng to conduct research into these new reactors. And which is why India is bending over backwards to sign the India-US Civil Nuclear Energy treaty.
Interestingly, a US company, Thorcon [2], has built a "hackable" MSR - though I dont know if it is any good.
[1] http://fortune.com/2015/02/02/doe-china-molten-salt-nuclear-... [2] http://fukushimaupdate.com/thorium-molten-salt-reactors-to-g...
The reason that China and India are the only countries going after fission is because of a singular element - Thorium. Both India and China have huge reserves of thorium that can be unlocked with molten salt reactors that are unviable anywhere else in the world (including the US, which gave up on this a long time ago[1]). Australia does have large reserves of thorium, but its projected energy needs are dwarfed by India and China's.
China is way ahead than India on this front with more than a billion dollars managed by Jiang Mianheng to conduct research into these new reactors. And which is why India is bending over backwards to sign the India-US Civil Nuclear Energy treaty.
Interestingly, a US company, Thorcon [2], has built a "hackable" MSR - though I dont know if it is any good.
[1] http://fortune.com/2015/02/02/doe-china-molten-salt-nuclear-... [2] http://fukushimaupdate.com/thorium-molten-salt-reactors-to-g...
This is fantastic. Nuclear fission suffers from a hindenberg-type PR problem, where incidents from early design mistakes and poor choices color the opinions of people even though modern reactor designs are safe, efficient, and essentially clean other than small amounts of waste.
I would love to work on a project like this.
I would love to work on a project like this.
It's not just a PR problem, though. It's a cost structure problem, and a grid problem. On the cost front, they're tremendously expensive. New tech and manufacturing processes might get the cost from the billions to the millions, but it's still very expensive.
On the grid front, nuclear is good for baseline, but not peak load. Most nuclear reactors can't just be flipped on and off with a switch, or even scale power quickly... they're more or less constant. So you still need a peak load system, which currently consists of gas plants - very expensive, since they're intermittent and offline most of the time.
On the grid front, nuclear is good for baseline, but not peak load. Most nuclear reactors can't just be flipped on and off with a switch, or even scale power quickly... they're more or less constant. So you still need a peak load system, which currently consists of gas plants - very expensive, since they're intermittent and offline most of the time.
> A lot of problems—economic, environmental, war, poverty, food and water availability, bad side effects of globalization, etc.—are deeply related to the energy problem.
It's worth pointing out that the problems enumerated above are partly the consequence of energy becoming cheap and available during the last century (coal, oil, etc) not lack of it. But the main reasons are the dominating philosophical and ethical standards of humanity during the energy boom. Cheap energy + wrong philosophy = bad application of energy = problems enumerated above.
So if you want to tackle any of those problems, you have to work on both variables in that equation, just increasing the availability of energy without raising awareness of how to apply it, will lead to unsatisfactory results in the long term.
It's worth pointing out that the problems enumerated above are partly the consequence of energy becoming cheap and available during the last century (coal, oil, etc) not lack of it. But the main reasons are the dominating philosophical and ethical standards of humanity during the energy boom. Cheap energy + wrong philosophy = bad application of energy = problems enumerated above.
So if you want to tackle any of those problems, you have to work on both variables in that equation, just increasing the availability of energy without raising awareness of how to apply it, will lead to unsatisfactory results in the long term.
Indeed. Technology is a multiplier. If we as humans keep repeating some errors we'll shoot our foot (with bigger guns)
A huge part of the problem is not investment or technology, but the legislative structure which still favors fossil fuels. The lobbying interests and influence are immense. Once this starts to change there will be a rapid shift towards clean energy.
> terrestrial-based atomic energy... has major advantages when it comes to cost
Are we talking public cost? Because that's all that matters. So far the public cost of nuclear power has been extraordinary, due to accidents and waste.
I understand that some of these startups aim to process existing waste in relatively small distributed reactors but what is the public cost of spreading a bunch of "mini" toxic waste sites around the world that remain hazardous for 100 years, instead of centrally storing it?
Plus I've read that although these mini reactors are not directly producing material that could be used in a dirty bomb, that they could be converted to do so if they fell into the wrong hands. I may be oversimplifying here, but the question again is what is the public risk of distributing atomic fuels and reactors in a manner that makes them much less secure? Would this make them more susceptible to "war hacking" and could this be the mini-reactor equivalent of a nuclear disaster?
Nuclear costs have always been about the long term public costs, not the short term $/kWh.
This is before we even consider the taxpayer cost that's gone into nuclear tech development. I wonder if there will be more public money needed to take this tech to market, even if the test reactors bear fruit.
Are we talking public cost? Because that's all that matters. So far the public cost of nuclear power has been extraordinary, due to accidents and waste.
I understand that some of these startups aim to process existing waste in relatively small distributed reactors but what is the public cost of spreading a bunch of "mini" toxic waste sites around the world that remain hazardous for 100 years, instead of centrally storing it?
Plus I've read that although these mini reactors are not directly producing material that could be used in a dirty bomb, that they could be converted to do so if they fell into the wrong hands. I may be oversimplifying here, but the question again is what is the public risk of distributing atomic fuels and reactors in a manner that makes them much less secure? Would this make them more susceptible to "war hacking" and could this be the mini-reactor equivalent of a nuclear disaster?
Nuclear costs have always been about the long term public costs, not the short term $/kWh.
This is before we even consider the taxpayer cost that's gone into nuclear tech development. I wonder if there will be more public money needed to take this tech to market, even if the test reactors bear fruit.
First, the reactors are consuming the fuel while deployed, but no waste is stored at the sites. It is stored centrally so there are a few centralized sites that hold the waste for a few hundred years. After which you could make things out of the material and use them around your home without issue.
The reactors cannot be deviated for nefarious purposes. And the materials are not less secure. The materials are being consumed by the reactor, and they are not dangerous as they are. In fact these reactors could destroy weapons grade material that is slated to be destroyed for fractions of the cost of programs the US is pursuing. Plus the reactors are secured when deployed. They are also buried and completely cooled by natural forces so they always stay cool. No fuel overheating.
The reactors cannot be hacked, and if a bad actor commandeered one, all they could do is turn it off safely. Even if they tried to make it hotter it would just turn off and cool down. There just isn't enough fuel in the core to do anything else.
The reactors cannot be deviated for nefarious purposes. And the materials are not less secure. The materials are being consumed by the reactor, and they are not dangerous as they are. In fact these reactors could destroy weapons grade material that is slated to be destroyed for fractions of the cost of programs the US is pursuing. Plus the reactors are secured when deployed. They are also buried and completely cooled by natural forces so they always stay cool. No fuel overheating.
The reactors cannot be hacked, and if a bad actor commandeered one, all they could do is turn it off safely. Even if they tried to make it hotter it would just turn off and cool down. There just isn't enough fuel in the core to do anything else.
To store it centrally, wouldn't you be transporting nuclear waste that is still toxic for hundreds of years all over the place? What if there's an accident during transportation? More reactors = more transportation = more nuclear waste accidents on the highway. Right?
> The reactors cannot be deviated for nefarious purposes.
I'm no nuclear expert but a quick search on Thorium reactors brings up some controversy over its potential for weaponization:
Thorium, when being irradiated for use in reactors, will make uranium-232, which is very dangerous due to the gamma rays it emits. This irradiation process may be able to be altered slightly by removing protactinium-233. The irradiation would then make uranium-233 in lieu of uranium-232, which can be used in nuclear weapons to make thorium into a dual purpose fuel. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power#Po... which cites http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a11907/is-the... which cites Nature
> The reactors cannot be deviated for nefarious purposes.
I'm no nuclear expert but a quick search on Thorium reactors brings up some controversy over its potential for weaponization:
Thorium, when being irradiated for use in reactors, will make uranium-232, which is very dangerous due to the gamma rays it emits. This irradiation process may be able to be altered slightly by removing protactinium-233. The irradiation would then make uranium-233 in lieu of uranium-232, which can be used in nuclear weapons to make thorium into a dual purpose fuel. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power#Po... which cites http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a11907/is-the... which cites Nature
All your statements seems to good to be true. Can you back them up with some facts?
It's a 1MW reactor. That's a thousand times smaller than conventional nuclear reactors. It doesn't seem unlikely that it could be passively cooled.
For the rest, a great source is the book Plentiful Energy, by the chief scientists of another small fast-reactor project at Argonne. For that reactor, the fuel is a mix of plutonium isotopes which can't be used for bombs and are much more difficult to purify than natural uranium ore. The waste goes back to the radioactivity of the original ore in a couple centuries.
http://www.amazon.com/Plentiful-Energy-technology-scientific...
For the rest, a great source is the book Plentiful Energy, by the chief scientists of another small fast-reactor project at Argonne. For that reactor, the fuel is a mix of plutonium isotopes which can't be used for bombs and are much more difficult to purify than natural uranium ore. The waste goes back to the radioactivity of the original ore in a couple centuries.
http://www.amazon.com/Plentiful-Energy-technology-scientific...
I agree with this entirely. I think too many self-declared science-minded people buy into the argument that "nuclear is a good solution" without looking at the numbers or risks. Whilst I understand the costs of fossil fuel use, I think that the distribution of risks associated with nuclear power makes cost estimation a lot more difficult that proponents assume (ie, safe almost always, very rare disasters that cause huge disruption).
However, my understanding is that Thorium-based fission reactors[1] reduce the risks somewhat. I haven't looked into this enough myself to decide either way, but I do have an open mind.
Fusion, OTOH is a totally different story. Maybe, one day we'll get that to work reliably and cheaply. I find it difficult to imagine a more significant change to the world we know.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
However, my understanding is that Thorium-based fission reactors[1] reduce the risks somewhat. I haven't looked into this enough myself to decide either way, but I do have an open mind.
Fusion, OTOH is a totally different story. Maybe, one day we'll get that to work reliably and cheaply. I find it difficult to imagine a more significant change to the world we know.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
That's why the reactor can use thorium! There are big benefits. But frankly all advanced reactors are cooled by natural forces so are immune to fuel overheating. The challenge is more that the consequences of accidents are way overestimated. Nobody died from radiation at Fukushima, and no one is going to. The land is not uninhabitable, some bureaucrat who sets limits non-scientifically just says it is. If people actually paid attention to data and not just assume things based on what pop culture or some bureaucrat has falsely led them to believe, people would realize the consequences of catastrophic meltdowns just aren't that bad. They shouldn't happen, but we shouldn't speculate wildly about indirect costs that are generally made up and use that as a basis for their thoughts on nuclear power. Your comments are right on in that people need to investigate nuclear. I find most people who do, find it to be a great option, while it is generally those who are opposed that didn't like it at the onset without knowing much about it and then refused to learn about it. That is why the opponents are the significant minority in the US. So your advice is good, but it's directed at the wrong crowd.
It might be worth noting that you are one of the founders of UPower.
WHO estimates the increased cancer risk of people living inside the Fukushima Prefecture as being up to 70% higher (thyroid cancer for girls exposed as infants)[1]. Numerous other studies indicate increased cancer risk[2].
During the Fukushima meltdown, radiation levels of 3–170 μSv/h (= 17 mrem/hour) were measured within 30 km of the reactor[2]. Safe levels are 5000 mrem/year[3].
As I understand it, many argue that these of cancer risk estimates are high. I'll be happy to change my mind once medical scientist working in the field change theirs.
[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/28/us-japan-nuclear-c...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_effects_from_the_Fuk...
[3] http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/health-effects/info.h...
WHO estimates the increased cancer risk of people living inside the Fukushima Prefecture as being up to 70% higher (thyroid cancer for girls exposed as infants)[1]. Numerous other studies indicate increased cancer risk[2].
During the Fukushima meltdown, radiation levels of 3–170 μSv/h (= 17 mrem/hour) were measured within 30 km of the reactor[2]. Safe levels are 5000 mrem/year[3].
As I understand it, many argue that these of cancer risk estimates are high. I'll be happy to change my mind once medical scientist working in the field change theirs.
[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/28/us-japan-nuclear-c...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_effects_from_the_Fuk...
[3] http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/health-effects/info.h...
To some degree, thorium is snake oil. They have some interesting properties and there are designs proposed that feature passive safety systems, but they remain largely unproven and they aren't the magic that people seem to often claim.
When it comes down to it, power generation is always risky. Reasonable efficiency demands that any power plant tries to maximize energy density, which is fundamentally in conflict with safety. Even solar and wind have risks, though obviously they are smaller than nuclear, coal or natural gas (though wind and solar are a different class of power generation and don't necessarily compete with those).
The main risks in nuclear power are loss of coolant, containment breach or a prompt criticality event. Thorium reactors are vulnerable to all of the above, but of course designs exploit various properties to mitigate the risk. The most famous thorium design is the liquid salt design, which is not as susceptible to loss of coolant flow accidents due to a reactivity feedback mechanism (it's subcritical if the liquid fuel stops being circulated), but it isn't inherently superior to other modern passively safe designs.
The real reason to be interested in thorium is that it has reduced proliferation concern and also thorium is available in places where uranium is rare (India). But it isn't fundamentally safer.
When it comes down to it, power generation is always risky. Reasonable efficiency demands that any power plant tries to maximize energy density, which is fundamentally in conflict with safety. Even solar and wind have risks, though obviously they are smaller than nuclear, coal or natural gas (though wind and solar are a different class of power generation and don't necessarily compete with those).
The main risks in nuclear power are loss of coolant, containment breach or a prompt criticality event. Thorium reactors are vulnerable to all of the above, but of course designs exploit various properties to mitigate the risk. The most famous thorium design is the liquid salt design, which is not as susceptible to loss of coolant flow accidents due to a reactivity feedback mechanism (it's subcritical if the liquid fuel stops being circulated), but it isn't inherently superior to other modern passively safe designs.
The real reason to be interested in thorium is that it has reduced proliferation concern and also thorium is available in places where uranium is rare (India). But it isn't fundamentally safer.
Anyone thinking about this needs to watch "Into Eternity", a movie about the Finnish nuclear waste repository: http://www.intoeternitythemovie.com/
"In Finland the world’s first permanent repository is being hewn out of solid rock - a huge system of underground tunnels - that must last 100,000 years as this is how long the waste remains hazardous."
It was eye opening.
"In Finland the world’s first permanent repository is being hewn out of solid rock - a huge system of underground tunnels - that must last 100,000 years as this is how long the waste remains hazardous."
It was eye opening.
That's just nonsense. Forth generation breeder reactors burn their own waste to something close to irrelevant. Existing "Waste" should be continually burned and the energy used to sequester C02 from the atmosphere, for example, not uselessly stored in a bunker. There is no reason for that facility to exist.
There are plenty of reasons for that facility to exist.
Fourth generation reactors (and thorium reactors) do improve the situation considerably (eg, 2 orders of magnitude less waste than a conventional reactor, and the waste stays around hundreds of years instead of tens of thousands[1]).
However there is an existing set of reactors that will be in use for decades, and their waste needs storage. There are also existing "temporary" storage facilities that need better long-term solutions.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power#Po...
Fourth generation reactors (and thorium reactors) do improve the situation considerably (eg, 2 orders of magnitude less waste than a conventional reactor, and the waste stays around hundreds of years instead of tens of thousands[1]).
However there is an existing set of reactors that will be in use for decades, and their waste needs storage. There are also existing "temporary" storage facilities that need better long-term solutions.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power#Po...
On a positive note: While I have major questions/concerns about distributing poorly secured fast reactors and toxic waste sites all over the planet, if this tech really does turn out to be a practical way to reduce the half life of waste...
Why not just turn the waste storage sites into reactor farms?
That would sidestep the problems stemming from decentralization and probably achieve some economies of scale too. Maybe smelt some aluminum with the energy. But even if you essentially threw the energy away, it might be useful as purely a waste cleanup solution.
Why not just turn the waste storage sites into reactor farms?
That would sidestep the problems stemming from decentralization and probably achieve some economies of scale too. Maybe smelt some aluminum with the energy. But even if you essentially threw the energy away, it might be useful as purely a waste cleanup solution.
They are not poorly secured, and the material is not weaponizable. Not to mention they are not toxic sites, the waste is put into a block of metal that is completely passively cooled so it can't melt. It is buried, and it is secured. And they would generally be deployed in multi unit farms. Plus, no need to throw away the energy, especially if it's cheaper than energy from gas or coal.
How are they secured in theory then?
Buried, sealed, and guarded with armed former spec ops folks.
You're going the secure 1MW reactors with armed special ops ex soldiers? Even if it's a 10MW farm on average, doesn't that explode the cost?
And isn't the fact that they'd be "spec ops" caliber guards reflect that there is in fact a security risk with these materials getting into the wrong hands? If so it seems like a committed enemy could attack one of the thousands of these sites successfully. The distributed model seems problematic.
And isn't the fact that they'd be "spec ops" caliber guards reflect that there is in fact a security risk with these materials getting into the wrong hands? If so it seems like a committed enemy could attack one of the thousands of these sites successfully. The distributed model seems problematic.
For each and every client worldwide?
I'm very happy to see independent fusion efforts raising money, given that government R&D has decided to put nearly all its eggs in the tokamak basket.
I am convinced LFTRs are the way to go, they fit in with distributed generation model very well. For what it is worth 21st if it takes Nuclear turn will be clearly fission, actually fission is good enough. But if we were to ascend into space and beyond fusion gives us bigger wings.
Years ago, the story I understood was that renewables couldn't scale up fast enough to sufficiently mitigate climate change, and nuclear was the only answer. Recently, I've read that renewables have scaled up much faster than expected.
Does anyone know the current story? Can renewables scale up fast enough? Also, does the availability problem (i.e., renewables not being available when the sun/wind are not) prevent them from having a sufficient impact? I could imagine that, even if renewables weren't always available, their use still could reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to mitigate climate change sufficiently.
Does anyone know the current story? Can renewables scale up fast enough? Also, does the availability problem (i.e., renewables not being available when the sun/wind are not) prevent them from having a sufficient impact? I could imagine that, even if renewables weren't always available, their use still could reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to mitigate climate change sufficiently.
Renewables still aren't fast enough by themselves, even with the most optimistic projections, according to engineers from Google's big renewables project: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/what-it-would-rea...
Availability is a problem. Right now we're mainly backing up renewables with fossil plants.
Most people really aren't getting what climate scientists are saying these days, which is that we have to cut emissions drastically in the very near future to avoid disaster. If we exceed +2C, or possibly even +1.5C, positive feedbacks will take the planet several degrees further even with no more emissions from us. Right now we're at +0.8C. Every ton of CO2 we emit takes 30 years to have its full effect on the temperature, considering direct effects alone, so we've got another 30 years of warming locked in already.
+4C or so might not sound like much but judging by geological history, the effects would include an enormous reduction in the amount of food we're able to produce.
Availability is a problem. Right now we're mainly backing up renewables with fossil plants.
Most people really aren't getting what climate scientists are saying these days, which is that we have to cut emissions drastically in the very near future to avoid disaster. If we exceed +2C, or possibly even +1.5C, positive feedbacks will take the planet several degrees further even with no more emissions from us. Right now we're at +0.8C. Every ton of CO2 we emit takes 30 years to have its full effect on the temperature, considering direct effects alone, so we've got another 30 years of warming locked in already.
+4C or so might not sound like much but judging by geological history, the effects would include an enormous reduction in the amount of food we're able to produce.
Solar photovoltaic has dropped in cost significantly which is awesome for many applications. The problem for an individual or the grid for renewable intermittents is the consistency: the true cost is the cost not just of generation but generation plus storage (or backup).
Batteries have not had the step change in cost vs deliverable, and the question of effective and not carbon intensive recycling of batteries and most e waste remains. If solar is x cents a kWh, must add cost of storage or fossil backup generation to make sense in both terms of cost as well as carbon.
For instance, the expected cost per kWh of the Powerwall is about 35c/kWh which must be added to cost of generation and the maximum amount of time for delivering that power back at peak discharge is only a few hours. Leaves some development still to do for power in the morning after the night, or even for a cloudy day. Solar thermal has run into similar reliability problems as solar photovoltaic.
Batteries have not had the step change in cost vs deliverable, and the question of effective and not carbon intensive recycling of batteries and most e waste remains. If solar is x cents a kWh, must add cost of storage or fossil backup generation to make sense in both terms of cost as well as carbon.
For instance, the expected cost per kWh of the Powerwall is about 35c/kWh which must be added to cost of generation and the maximum amount of time for delivering that power back at peak discharge is only a few hours. Leaves some development still to do for power in the morning after the night, or even for a cloudy day. Solar thermal has run into similar reliability problems as solar photovoltaic.
[deleted]
> The big government projects, like NIF and ITER, unfortunately have the feel of peacetime big government projects.
Not sure what 'sama means by this, but I guess it's what I feel - government projects tend to go slow unless there's an actual, real security reason for them to go faster, in which case - like with Manhattan project - you get crazy amount of productivity and progress.
Not sure what 'sama means by this, but I guess it's what I feel - government projects tend to go slow unless there's an actual, real security reason for them to go faster, in which case - like with Manhattan project - you get crazy amount of productivity and progress.
A focus on excessive procedure at the expense of real progress, unless there's a pressing need (like war), would be my guess too.
One important thing that nobody thinks about when discussing nuclear fission/fusion as energy source of the future, is that it is not climate neutral at all. Popular science tends to forget about that. In fact, nearly all of the energy budget on earth comes from the sun. There is natural fission and energy emission on earth, but you can see that as a background constant and the climate system on earth has adapted to it.
Fossil energies are just a very large chemical sink for the energy of the sun, and we just burnt it away at once in geological scales. If humanity now starts to deploy nuclear fission or fusion, it will heat the earth even more. Because that energy was basically trapped inside the atomic core, where it didn't play a significant role for the global climate. With more and more atomic energy usage, the energy will finally end as heat somewhere and increase global temperatures even more (not in the way that fossil energies do with emitted greenhouse gases, but still).
Yes, there will be waste heat and that will add to the Earth's energy budget. But that's a tiny fraction of the heat trapped by excess greenhouse gases.
Deploying a bunch of black solar panels will also increase the Earth's energy budget, by absorbing more sunlight. But that's another insignificant effect.
Deploying a bunch of black solar panels will also increase the Earth's energy budget, by absorbing more sunlight. But that's another insignificant effect.
" It doesn't require giant corporations, government sponsorship, complex regulations, or exotic engineering skills to implement." Oh, Come on! With similar government subsidies and Mandates, Donkey wheels could deliver a similar power density. With such subsidies and mandates, donkey wheels would double, double and redouble again, and one could therefore project donkey wheels to exceed all power generation.
Ironically enough, a donkey is 1/3 horsepower, which is 748 watts of power. A donkey at about 250 watts is therefore is roughly equivalent to a solar panel the same size. The donkey has the advantage over solar, in that it's dispatchable, while solar is not.
I wish we considered donkeys instead of Solar as a replacement for fossil fules, since the shortcomings might be more obvious to the innumerate.I'm sorry I missed this earlier because I wish Sam could see this comment.
Nuclear energy is inherently centralized and difficult to decentralize. This creates all sorts of political and economic dynamics, some of which you (Sam, and YC) may benefit from, but some of which may be damaging to societies in various ways (think corruption, control, monopolies, etc.)
Obviously this isn't necessarily true for all possible as-yet-unimagined implementations of nuclear technology. But it's something to think about when comparing energy technologies.
Solar, on the other hand, while not necessarily inherently decentralized, is extremely decentralizable, leading to very different dynamics.
I'm not saying Nuclear is bad. I'm just saying this stuff should be factored in.
Nuclear energy is inherently centralized and difficult to decentralize. This creates all sorts of political and economic dynamics, some of which you (Sam, and YC) may benefit from, but some of which may be damaging to societies in various ways (think corruption, control, monopolies, etc.)
Obviously this isn't necessarily true for all possible as-yet-unimagined implementations of nuclear technology. But it's something to think about when comparing energy technologies.
Solar, on the other hand, while not necessarily inherently decentralized, is extremely decentralizable, leading to very different dynamics.
I'm not saying Nuclear is bad. I'm just saying this stuff should be factored in.
One problem I see with nuclear power is that it goes the very inefficient way over heat.
The prices in the building industry are rising so much that it already is unprofitable to build nuclear power in the west today. (When Hinkley Point C will start producing energy it will have a higher feed in tariff than photovoltaics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...)
I don't see any future for nuclear if it doesn't fundamentally change the way it harvests the energy and when it solves the nuclear waste problem economically
I don't see any future for nuclear if it doesn't fundamentally change the way it harvests the energy and when it solves the nuclear waste problem economically
Then you'll like Helion, which produces high-energy charged particles and doesn't use a thermal cycle.
Neither of the ycombinator companies produces long-term waste.
Neither of the ycombinator companies produces long-term waste.
The killer app for these modular reactors is to scale with the same footprint: If you have the infrastructure to house one of these boxcars, for the town's first factory, why not 10 boxcars on the same site once the town grows in population.
That's what you can't do with solar - with solar you already have a big footprint to power that first factory, and your footprint increases proportional to power use. 21 century calls for scaling roughly 20x = 2x (population growth) * 10x (rise in developing worlds livining standards). I don't want 20x solar footprint.
That's what you can't do with solar - with solar you already have a big footprint to power that first factory, and your footprint increases proportional to power use. 21 century calls for scaling roughly 20x = 2x (population growth) * 10x (rise in developing worlds livining standards). I don't want 20x solar footprint.
Former fusion startup founder here (Fiat Lux Research, funded by DFJ 1995-2000).
I couldn't agree more with Sam about the importance of energy for our civilization. Kudos to him for putting his efforts towards important stuff.
I have mixed, but mostly positive feelings about venture capital and energy startups. The fact is, it's a tough space. Large capital requirements, prototyping cycles often measured in years, and a low success rate. Everyone is still waiting for the energy unicorn to put Google, Uber, Yahoo, et al. to shame. And energy startups don't benefit from many of the things in SV that infotech startups do, such as ecosystem synergies and being co-located with all the new cool stuff in your industry. This is especially true with regards to one of SV's great strengths, the freedom to fail.
Where SV shines is in the short times from idea to testing. In most of the nuclear energy industry, going from idea to tested prototype can take decades. I think we all know the importance of short debugging and feedback cycles. Hirsch harped on this a few years back, and it's still a good point. Look at ITER, which were were talking about back in 1995. ITERative, it is not.
Some observations:
1) The teams and funding are a bit larger than they used to be. This is probably a good thing. The design turnaround time is a bit better, but not by much though. It's necessary to tweak a design once you have built it to learn from it and see what its ultimate performance can be. But it's all-too-easy to spend a year or two doing that. Do that a few times and then you're out (of money, time, your mind, what-have-you).
2) Location. There is no advantage to locating an energy company in SV except for proximity to funding (and Stanford, I suppose). We located by the NHMFL in Tallahassee. It's cheaper, and the magnet guys would moonlight for us. However, working with Tim over 3 time-zones had its challenges. I don't think we got the benefit of having a great VC as much as some of his other portfolio companies did (no complaints about him, just the distance). Some things are just hard to explain over the phone. But SV still isn't the right place. I think that there is a big opportunity for VCs to improve how they provide the value-added stuff that they do (beyond providing money) remotely, and energy is the space that needs it most. I don't know the VC job well enough to provide good suggestions, I just know there is an unmet need here.
3) Because the failure rate for startups is so high, it's important to have a decent failure path for the people involved. For software devs, SV jobs often provide a soft landing. Energy guys don't have that easily transferable skill set. So, fusion largely consists of old hands who are willing to spend 20 years ramming a single design through, and a bunch of young redshirts who are sure that they can beat the odds. When every design failure becomes a career failure, people aren't incentived to radically iterate designs quickly. Luckily for me, I learned radiation measurement and protection on-the-job (hey we have neutrons! How many neutrons? Woo hoo! Wait, oh shit!) so that skill transfered over into medical physics quite readily. But imagine what SV would look like if almost every software startup founder who failed once had left the software industry.
I wish good luck to Helion, UPower, and all the other teams fighting the good fight.
I couldn't agree more with Sam about the importance of energy for our civilization. Kudos to him for putting his efforts towards important stuff.
I have mixed, but mostly positive feelings about venture capital and energy startups. The fact is, it's a tough space. Large capital requirements, prototyping cycles often measured in years, and a low success rate. Everyone is still waiting for the energy unicorn to put Google, Uber, Yahoo, et al. to shame. And energy startups don't benefit from many of the things in SV that infotech startups do, such as ecosystem synergies and being co-located with all the new cool stuff in your industry. This is especially true with regards to one of SV's great strengths, the freedom to fail.
Where SV shines is in the short times from idea to testing. In most of the nuclear energy industry, going from idea to tested prototype can take decades. I think we all know the importance of short debugging and feedback cycles. Hirsch harped on this a few years back, and it's still a good point. Look at ITER, which were were talking about back in 1995. ITERative, it is not.
Some observations:
1) The teams and funding are a bit larger than they used to be. This is probably a good thing. The design turnaround time is a bit better, but not by much though. It's necessary to tweak a design once you have built it to learn from it and see what its ultimate performance can be. But it's all-too-easy to spend a year or two doing that. Do that a few times and then you're out (of money, time, your mind, what-have-you).
2) Location. There is no advantage to locating an energy company in SV except for proximity to funding (and Stanford, I suppose). We located by the NHMFL in Tallahassee. It's cheaper, and the magnet guys would moonlight for us. However, working with Tim over 3 time-zones had its challenges. I don't think we got the benefit of having a great VC as much as some of his other portfolio companies did (no complaints about him, just the distance). Some things are just hard to explain over the phone. But SV still isn't the right place. I think that there is a big opportunity for VCs to improve how they provide the value-added stuff that they do (beyond providing money) remotely, and energy is the space that needs it most. I don't know the VC job well enough to provide good suggestions, I just know there is an unmet need here.
3) Because the failure rate for startups is so high, it's important to have a decent failure path for the people involved. For software devs, SV jobs often provide a soft landing. Energy guys don't have that easily transferable skill set. So, fusion largely consists of old hands who are willing to spend 20 years ramming a single design through, and a bunch of young redshirts who are sure that they can beat the odds. When every design failure becomes a career failure, people aren't incentived to radically iterate designs quickly. Luckily for me, I learned radiation measurement and protection on-the-job (hey we have neutrons! How many neutrons? Woo hoo! Wait, oh shit!) so that skill transfered over into medical physics quite readily. But imagine what SV would look like if almost every software startup founder who failed once had left the software industry.
I wish good luck to Helion, UPower, and all the other teams fighting the good fight.
Thanks FiatLuxDave, I think you are exactly right. Prototype/design cycle time is a huge issue with fusion, fission, and many other energy technologies. No matter how good your idea may be, you have to be able to build, test, iterate, prove, and commercialize it quickly (and ideally, cheaply, but I would argue quickly is even more important). In energy, the physics make everything work better at large scale so it is easy to fall into the "build it bigger" trap.
Why are we so focused on having only one solution for energy? I would understand the cost would decrease when you put all your eggs in one basket but can we really find one type of energy source that has no disadvantages? Wouldn't we be better served with diversity of energy production (more than we have now)?
I find it strange there is no mention about batteries. From what I understand (and it isn't much, I'm way out of my field) getting energy is easy, saving it is hard.
You can either collect and store energy where it's abundant but intermittent (solar, wind), or generate it reasonably close to the consumers.
The problem is that the sources like solar have both power density and availability problems in higher latitudes, and power density required to e.g. power a major factory may be a problem even in a sunny place.
I'm also not sure about price per kW of installed generating power; it looks like solar power is still way behind atomic power in this regard.
In general, everyone would love breakthroughs both in electricity generation, transmission, and accumulation. Looking at the amounts of coal still mined for burning, generation should not be overlooked.
The problem is that the sources like solar have both power density and availability problems in higher latitudes, and power density required to e.g. power a major factory may be a problem even in a sunny place.
I'm also not sure about price per kW of installed generating power; it looks like solar power is still way behind atomic power in this regard.
In general, everyone would love breakthroughs both in electricity generation, transmission, and accumulation. Looking at the amounts of coal still mined for burning, generation should not be overlooked.
Fusion and Fission systems tend to run 24/7, unlike Wind and Solar. There is far less need to store energy when using the former types of generation.
Fission: Nuclear power stations have relatively low capacity factors (a measurement of how much of time they're actually connected to the grid and producing power). This is typically 70% over the last few decades for Western countries (i.e. a third of the time, a nuclear power station is not producing anything). As well as unintended maintenance shut down periods, most reactor designs require a multi-month shut down to refuel.
In recent years some countries have managed closer to 90%.
Fusion: By '24/7' you mean the 0.5 s sustained burn at JET in the 90s. Humanity has not yet managed to sustain fusion for a full second on the Earth, let alone get any useful power out of it. ITER (the next generation Tokamak test reactor) isn't built yet. The intent is for it to achieve 1000 s of fusion burn time. Its over budget and behind time, and they've just had a management reshuffle to try and deal with this.
* Edited & extended to try and incorporate nbouscal's feedback from below
Fusion: By '24/7' you mean the 0.5 s sustained burn at JET in the 90s. Humanity has not yet managed to sustain fusion for a full second on the Earth, let alone get any useful power out of it. ITER (the next generation Tokamak test reactor) isn't built yet. The intent is for it to achieve 1000 s of fusion burn time. Its over budget and behind time, and they've just had a management reshuffle to try and deal with this.
* Edited & extended to try and incorporate nbouscal's feedback from below
Do you mean to include the entire U.S. as one of those states? Wikipedia lists nuclear's capacity factor as 90.3% in the U.S. in 2009, and 88.7% averaged over 2006-2012, according to the DOE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor#United_States
The Helion design which Ycombinator funds is pulsed, so sustained burn time isn't applicable. It's also much smaller and cheaper than mainstream tokamaks.
The Helion design which Ycombinator funds is pulsed, so sustained burn time isn't applicable. It's also much smaller and cheaper than mainstream tokamaks.
I think you would like to know that your comment is completely impenetrable to an average intelligent layperson. All the words are reasonably understandable, but I have no idea how they translate into a response to the parent comment. My guess is that you're falling prey to the illusion of transparency [1], though I suppose it's possible that you were only intending your comment to be meaningful to people familiar with the industry jargon.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_transparency
Edit: +1, much clearer what you mean now.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_transparency
Edit: +1, much clearer what you mean now.
For over ten years the US nuclear fleet has maintained an average capacity factor of about 90%, and that is nearly 1/4 of the world's nuclear plants - http://www.nei.org/Knowledge-Center/Nuclear-Statistics/US-Nu.... It's not "some countries" it's most plants at around 90%.
If you can generate on demand then you don't need batteries.
Batteries are great when you need a relatively compact and lightweight source without moving parts and noise. That is, cars, helicopter drones, phones, etc. Batteries still lack the high energy density of fuels like kerosene; you cannot fly a jet plane or rocket on batteries.
Electric power can probably be used to synthesize traditional fuels from carbon dioxide and water, to stay carbon-neutral. Plants can do that but in a quite inefficient manner. A (bio)chemistry breakthrough is badly wanted on this front.
Electric power can probably be used to synthesize traditional fuels from carbon dioxide and water, to stay carbon-neutral. Plants can do that but in a quite inefficient manner. A (bio)chemistry breakthrough is badly wanted on this front.
Indeed. The essay mentions "predictability" as a problem with solar, but that becomes moot with good enough storage & transmission.
Precisely! The issue is storage.
There are many ways to create energy: solar, wind, water, nuclear (thorium!)...but storage is still unsolved. And Lithium is NOT the answer, not at the scale we need.
The storage problem is almost solved. Batteries/Supercaps with double the capacity, charge rate and lifespan of current Lithium-ions should be on the market soon.
That doesn't even close to solve the problem!
Lithium-ion batteries are still at least $100/kWh (probably more like $300/kWh) and assuming a useful life of 1000 charge/discharge cycles, you're talking between $0.10 and $0.30/kWh just for the STORAGE! That doesn't even take into account the cost of generating the energy to begin with, nor the losses that come with charging and discharging the battery, nor the capital cost on the inverter that absolutely isn't free and definitely doesn't last forever.
Until storage can be had for a few cents per kWh storage is an unsolved problem.
I suspect that it will continue to be an unsolved problem for quite some time. Not because it's impossibly hard, but because getting oil or gas or coal out of the ground is so easy and has such large energy gain (output energy / input energy) that you have to be very clever to beat it.
Lithium-ion batteries are still at least $100/kWh (probably more like $300/kWh) and assuming a useful life of 1000 charge/discharge cycles, you're talking between $0.10 and $0.30/kWh just for the STORAGE! That doesn't even take into account the cost of generating the energy to begin with, nor the losses that come with charging and discharging the battery, nor the capital cost on the inverter that absolutely isn't free and definitely doesn't last forever.
Until storage can be had for a few cents per kWh storage is an unsolved problem.
I suspect that it will continue to be an unsolved problem for quite some time. Not because it's impossibly hard, but because getting oil or gas or coal out of the ground is so easy and has such large energy gain (output energy / input energy) that you have to be very clever to beat it.
I wonder what environmental impact truly large-scale solar energy will have. In that it is moving energy away from where it would usually fall on the ground/plants, thus reducing heat, less rising air, less photosynthesis etc. Perhaps additionally aid global cooling? Though that energy will mostly end up as heat anyway.
(Of course it's far better for the environment than present coal/petrol/gas/wood, and their energy initially came from the sun anyway, but it will still have some environmental impact.)
(Of course it's far better for the environment than present coal/petrol/gas/wood, and their energy initially came from the sun anyway, but it will still have some environmental impact.)
As a sanity check, the earth gets ~1366 W/m2 * (6,371 km) ^2 * pi = 1.7e17 watts * 24h/day * 365.2425day/year ~= 1.5e21Wh/year ~= 1,500,000,000 terawatt hours/year. Humans use 155,505 terawatt-hour / year or ~ 1/10,000th of that much energy. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption)
Further, it's all (99.99%) going to get released so net impact is going to be very local.
PS: In the end the real change would simply be changing the albino of the planet slightly. But, buildings and roads already cover far more land than solar is expected to anytime soon with minimal impact.
Further, it's all (99.99%) going to get released so net impact is going to be very local.
PS: In the end the real change would simply be changing the albino of the planet slightly. But, buildings and roads already cover far more land than solar is expected to anytime soon with minimal impact.
Hurricanes also produce Terawatts of energy. The question is the way the energy is turned into electricity, and how it's stored or backed up because an economy requires reliable electricity
I'm a supporter of solar, and trying to get it on my house.
But I also did some back of the envelope calculations that showed, just if we had enough Powerwalls to backup US peak demand for one hour it would require 10x the global annual mining production of lithium. And that's just one hour. And that doesn't include the electricity production.
It's generally estimated that US power, with good transmission, would require enough solar panels to cover the entire state of Massachusetts. I think you're right that it isn't the land cover that would have much effect, after all buildings and roads already cover a lot of land. I think it's sheer material production.
Mining is almost entirely powered by fossils, it has to be. And so is most transport. And so is recycling of metals. So the energy density of an energy source really is a zero sum game. If it takes a millionth the material for one source versus the other, that adds up.
Then in maintenance, solar farms are truly "farms"- they require a lot of water to wash away dust to operate optimally. A states' worth of water is significant.
Then in recycling at end of life, and this is why I got so excited about nuclear as a somewhat hippie child growing up around oil companies in Oklahoma, solar is going to require a lot of energy to recycle, while nuclear can produce energy in recycling its fuel.
The main reality check, to me, is: what is the energy density of this energy, and if emitting, how much pollution? Coal is far more energy dense than wind, which is why humans evolved from windmills and wood to coal. But it's so polluting which is why we are all working towards better sources.
I'm a supporter of solar, and trying to get it on my house.
But I also did some back of the envelope calculations that showed, just if we had enough Powerwalls to backup US peak demand for one hour it would require 10x the global annual mining production of lithium. And that's just one hour. And that doesn't include the electricity production.
It's generally estimated that US power, with good transmission, would require enough solar panels to cover the entire state of Massachusetts. I think you're right that it isn't the land cover that would have much effect, after all buildings and roads already cover a lot of land. I think it's sheer material production.
Mining is almost entirely powered by fossils, it has to be. And so is most transport. And so is recycling of metals. So the energy density of an energy source really is a zero sum game. If it takes a millionth the material for one source versus the other, that adds up.
Then in maintenance, solar farms are truly "farms"- they require a lot of water to wash away dust to operate optimally. A states' worth of water is significant.
Then in recycling at end of life, and this is why I got so excited about nuclear as a somewhat hippie child growing up around oil companies in Oklahoma, solar is going to require a lot of energy to recycle, while nuclear can produce energy in recycling its fuel.
The main reality check, to me, is: what is the energy density of this energy, and if emitting, how much pollution? Coal is far more energy dense than wind, which is why humans evolved from windmills and wood to coal. But it's so polluting which is why we are all working towards better sources.
20,000km2 sounds huge but:
The US currently uses 40% of the 84 million acres or 340,000km2 crop for ethanol production which is arguably pointless. So, if we swapped just corn ethanol for solar cells we would have 6 times more land area than the entire state of Massachusetts covered in solar cells (135,000km2). And if we feel ethanol is really necessary we only need 8% of the total corn crop leaving 32% for corn ethanol.
If this still seems like a huge issue the soybean crop is far larger. http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/ag101/cropmajor.html
PS: As to storage, we don't need 100% solar wind and hydro can make a huge difference. Pumped storage is also far cheaper at scale; it's just impractical when scaled down to home use.
The US currently uses 40% of the 84 million acres or 340,000km2 crop for ethanol production which is arguably pointless. So, if we swapped just corn ethanol for solar cells we would have 6 times more land area than the entire state of Massachusetts covered in solar cells (135,000km2). And if we feel ethanol is really necessary we only need 8% of the total corn crop leaving 32% for corn ethanol.
If this still seems like a huge issue the soybean crop is far larger. http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/ag101/cropmajor.html
PS: As to storage, we don't need 100% solar wind and hydro can make a huge difference. Pumped storage is also far cheaper at scale; it's just impractical when scaled down to home use.
The problem here is that someone once did some cocktail napkin math with regards to dumping farm waste into the Chesapeake Bay and determined that the ocean is so enormous it was stupid to think some agro-waste would change much about it.
I can't find a source at the moment, my apologies. But suffice to say humans have a knack for considering their needs insignificant when in reality our Spaceship Earth looks ever more fragile the more we learn about it.
I can't find a source at the moment, my apologies. But suffice to say humans have a knack for considering their needs insignificant when in reality our Spaceship Earth looks ever more fragile the more we learn about it.
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These are the sorts of deep questions that often go unasked as we humans look for ever greater efficiencies. I had to attend a seminar on geothermal wells presented by a group of ageing hippies. When I asked if any long term studies had been done on the affect of mass-geothermal well drilling and pumping cool water out of the ground and cycling warmer water back in, no one could even parse my question properly.
My impression was that the vast majority of sunlight Earth receives is wasted, and that solar panels just gobble up the waste (so long as they're built in, say, deserts or other places where they're not blocking out a whole lot of flora/fauna).
Wind and hydroelectric, on the other hand, could very well have significant environmental impacts if deployed on a sufficiently-large scale, despite being technically "clean" energy (aside from the non-clean energy and materials used in their construction).
Wind and hydroelectric, on the other hand, could very well have significant environmental impacts if deployed on a sufficiently-large scale, despite being technically "clean" energy (aside from the non-clean energy and materials used in their construction).
Apparently the crust of the earth is floating on huge nuclear energy generator. I guess it's a materials problem to tap into that?
There already is a very well working fusion reactor - the sun - and it's free. We just need better battery tech.
There is actually a lot we could do in terms of promoting passive solar -- i.e. a lifestyle and design-based approach that uses less energy to get the same results. In a finite world, I really wish passive solar got a lot more attention than it does. There are serious costs involved in burning ever more energy. Passive solar brilliantly sidesteps that inconvenient physics-based fact.
While I totally agree with you on principal, that's the energy argument equivalent of saying that if there's a coal power plant being built in your backyard you should move rather than complain about it.
There is a huge infrastructure cost involved in upgrading, building new or knocking down and rebuilding non-passive solar structures. Now, giving tax breaks to new construction that is passive would be great, but it wont put a dent in the energy consumption issue.
I say I agree with you, because I think that saying "cheap energy is the future" would have been 100% as valid a statement in 1965 as it is in 2015. Fifty years and a HUGE series of energy improvements later and we're still chasing the cheap energy dream. Guess what? Oil is cheap. And relative to cutting down wood to heat your house with a fireplace (a la most of human history) current solar is absurdly cheap.
What we need, and Musk knows this better than anyone, is better batteries to store energy when we're not using it more efficiently. Batteries will revolutionize the world, and Sam would do well to pay attention to what Musk is doing.
There is a huge infrastructure cost involved in upgrading, building new or knocking down and rebuilding non-passive solar structures. Now, giving tax breaks to new construction that is passive would be great, but it wont put a dent in the energy consumption issue.
I say I agree with you, because I think that saying "cheap energy is the future" would have been 100% as valid a statement in 1965 as it is in 2015. Fifty years and a HUGE series of energy improvements later and we're still chasing the cheap energy dream. Guess what? Oil is cheap. And relative to cutting down wood to heat your house with a fireplace (a la most of human history) current solar is absurdly cheap.
What we need, and Musk knows this better than anyone, is better batteries to store energy when we're not using it more efficiently. Batteries will revolutionize the world, and Sam would do well to pay attention to what Musk is doing.
Least we forget: Tidal energy & Geothermal energy...
Tidal offers little potential at tremendous cost and impacts. Outside a very small number of modest sites, it's not likely to see much application.
Wave power is even worse.
Geothermal from high-flux sites does work and works well, though its limited to a relatively small number of regions worldwide. Many of those have already developed much of the available potential. Iceland, Indinesia, Japan, Kenya, New Zealand, the Philippines, and the United States most notably. Kenya's Rift Valley is probably the biggest greenfield opportunity with significant impact opportunity (Kenya's existing electrical infrastructure is minuscule). In the US, resources generally exclude both the Yellowstone Caldera and Cascade range.
Wave power is even worse.
Geothermal from high-flux sites does work and works well, though its limited to a relatively small number of regions worldwide. Many of those have already developed much of the available potential. Iceland, Indinesia, Japan, Kenya, New Zealand, the Philippines, and the United States most notably. Kenya's Rift Valley is probably the biggest greenfield opportunity with significant impact opportunity (Kenya's existing electrical infrastructure is minuscule). In the US, resources generally exclude both the Yellowstone Caldera and Cascade range.
Hmm, major reversals of conflict-of-interest policy? (ie. now chairman of two YC companies and personally investing in them)
Large claims with no hard data comparisons? (eg. atomic power has major cost, density, and predictability advantages)
This(?):
>There will only be one cheapest source of energy
Really? There can't be two sources at or near equilibrium?
These systems are not deployed in isolated, designer environments, but instead are deployed in complex environments. Transportation and project logistics will prefer some sources over others.
The lack of any real metric for cost or "cheapness" is a red flag. Is cost being measured in nominal dollars? Will such a thing even exist in the 22nd century?
Large claims with no hard data comparisons? (eg. atomic power has major cost, density, and predictability advantages)
This(?):
>There will only be one cheapest source of energy
Really? There can't be two sources at or near equilibrium?
These systems are not deployed in isolated, designer environments, but instead are deployed in complex environments. Transportation and project logistics will prefer some sources over others.
The lack of any real metric for cost or "cheapness" is a red flag. Is cost being measured in nominal dollars? Will such a thing even exist in the 22nd century?
The hard data has been around for years, and is fairly easy to find. Not every blog post needs to have an accompanying statistical analysis.
So easy to find that it can't even be linked to on the web by two people that claim it exists?
I still think there are huge issues with nuclear that need to be solved but nothing Sam said was controversial;
Cost: http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/electricity_generation.cfm -- on an LCOE basis, Advanced Nuclear is cheaper than everything but natural gas and that's entirely due to CapEx costs to build new plants -- which are what the modular nuclear companies that Sam's joining are working on fixing.
Density: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Energy_densitie...
Predictability: Can be assessed by the capacity factor of plants that are running, the EIA publishes monthly data; http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=14611
Cost: http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/electricity_generation.cfm -- on an LCOE basis, Advanced Nuclear is cheaper than everything but natural gas and that's entirely due to CapEx costs to build new plants -- which are what the modular nuclear companies that Sam's joining are working on fixing.
Density: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Energy_densitie...
Predictability: Can be assessed by the capacity factor of plants that are running, the EIA publishes monthly data; http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=14611
So, comparing the report in your link for cost, Solar PV capital cost is a bit more expensive than "Advanced Nuclear" capital cost. However, the ongoing maintenance costs for solar PV are less than 50% of the ongoing maintenance costs for Advanced Nuclear. In fact, the additional (over Solar PV), annual maintenance costs for Advanced Nuclear are about 17% of the entire capital costs. After just a few years, Solar PV will be saving massive amounts of cost over Advanced Nuclear, just in maintenance.
This seems to at least be partially taken into account in the "Total LCOE" numbers (sorry, but this report doesn't seem to have much as far as exactly how these numbers are calculated). Without subsidies, Solar PV is about 30% higher. However, when you look more closely at the actual ranges behind the averages that are the primarily cited data, you'll find that the Total LCOE estimate ranges for Advanced Nuclear and Solar PV actually overlap. The "minimum" Solar PV estimate is 97.8 and the Advanced Nuclear "maximum" is 101.0.
The claim that atomic energy has major advantages over solar is not borne out in this EIA report. In fact, the report seems to show that solar is highly competitive with almost every generation source and actually has a huge advantage in ongoing maintenance costs, being practically at the bottom.
I haven't investigated the other links yet, since the first one didn't seem to pan out.
This seems to at least be partially taken into account in the "Total LCOE" numbers (sorry, but this report doesn't seem to have much as far as exactly how these numbers are calculated). Without subsidies, Solar PV is about 30% higher. However, when you look more closely at the actual ranges behind the averages that are the primarily cited data, you'll find that the Total LCOE estimate ranges for Advanced Nuclear and Solar PV actually overlap. The "minimum" Solar PV estimate is 97.8 and the Advanced Nuclear "maximum" is 101.0.
The claim that atomic energy has major advantages over solar is not borne out in this EIA report. In fact, the report seems to show that solar is highly competitive with almost every generation source and actually has a huge advantage in ongoing maintenance costs, being practically at the bottom.
I haven't investigated the other links yet, since the first one didn't seem to pan out.
That makes sense given those numbers tabulated, but the real question is cost of solar plus backup or storage. One means nothing without the other in terms of both cost and carbon.
Above I illustrated my calculations on just one hour of battery backup for US grid with lithium ion- would require 10x annual global production of lithium. Generally cost of battery backup looks like 35c/kWh and has limitations on duration so it must come back to fossils.
Solar makes a lot of sense if backup/storage/smoothing weren't needed since pv has gone down in cost. It still makes a lot of sense in many off grid applications, and for instance in my home we have solar concentrator lights and I would love to have solar water pre-heaters in the summer. But for on grid the capital requirements are much more complicated than generally illustrated, and ultimately the environmental impacts are greater than apparent at first glance.
Above I illustrated my calculations on just one hour of battery backup for US grid with lithium ion- would require 10x annual global production of lithium. Generally cost of battery backup looks like 35c/kWh and has limitations on duration so it must come back to fossils.
Solar makes a lot of sense if backup/storage/smoothing weren't needed since pv has gone down in cost. It still makes a lot of sense in many off grid applications, and for instance in my home we have solar concentrator lights and I would love to have solar water pre-heaters in the summer. But for on grid the capital requirements are much more complicated than generally illustrated, and ultimately the environmental impacts are greater than apparent at first glance.
Lithium ion makes no sense for storage.
Something like large-scale flywheels would probably be much better. Using gravity for storage is even more sustainable. Flywheels for night use and stored water for long term use (storms, fog, prolonged winter at poles [would need to keep from freezing]) all powered by solar or other low-ongoing-input sources should provide a pretty nice environment.
Flywheels have proved extremely expensive with massive engineering challenges. When you have to account for precession due to Earth's rotation, things get tough.
For short term very high flux power conditioning they've got uses. For long-term storage not so much.
Seconds to minutes is likely their effective range. Not hours to days.
For short term very high flux power conditioning they've got uses. For long-term storage not so much.
Seconds to minutes is likely their effective range. Not hours to days.
Yes but solar doesn't last as long as nuclear plants. The current nuclear generation, like the AP-1000, are certified for 60 years with an option to extend for another 60.
Solar has the advantage of trivial decommissioning, but a huge disadvantage in requiring things like storage, overproduction, long distance transmission, and smart grids, all of which raise its effective cost if you're not putting it on top of a fossil or nuclear-based power grid.
Solar has the advantage of trivial decommissioning, but a huge disadvantage in requiring things like storage, overproduction, long distance transmission, and smart grids, all of which raise its effective cost if you're not putting it on top of a fossil or nuclear-based power grid.
Distributed generation is where we should invest. Energy independence for the individual.
Individual solar panels and batteries, personal windmills, personal reactors, etc.
Imagine all the savings in infrastructure for energy transportation and reinvestment in other sectors. Imagine all the possibilities if people could switch their energy generation model as simple as buying a new product and installing it at home.
Individual energy independence, even if it will never be possible, that's where our dreams should be.
Then water, then food. That's disruption at seismic level. Post-scarcity world.
Individual solar panels and batteries, personal windmills, personal reactors, etc.
Imagine all the savings in infrastructure for energy transportation and reinvestment in other sectors. Imagine all the possibilities if people could switch their energy generation model as simple as buying a new product and installing it at home.
Individual energy independence, even if it will never be possible, that's where our dreams should be.
Then water, then food. That's disruption at seismic level. Post-scarcity world.
Decentralization solves a lot of other problems as well - it's less vulnerable to accidental or intentional failure, it requires much less skill and expense to implement and operate, etc.
Solar has the advantage that it cannot be weaponized even in nonsense theory, greatly relaxing export regulation. This makes it a viable solution for developing countries and remote areas, not just the handful of nations with the wealth and sophistication to manage a reactor.
Solar has the advantage that it cannot be weaponized even in nonsense theory, greatly relaxing export regulation. This makes it a viable solution for developing countries and remote areas, not just the handful of nations with the wealth and sophistication to manage a reactor.
> Decentralization [...] requires much less skill and expense to implement and operate, etc.
This isn't true because decentralization is easier, it's true because technologies which this isn't true of (require large capital expenditures or high degrees of expertise) can't be given to everyone and their mother.
By saying we're doing decentralized X we're moving the problem of requisite operating skill to the designers who must make their systems simple enough for laypeople. Likewise factories and engineers must find economies of scale in production of units which are distinct from the efficiencies we currently realize building relative few, much larger generators.
In short, while decentralization solves some of these problems, it also presupposes the solution of others. It may be a worthy goal, but there are challenges to get there.
This isn't true because decentralization is easier, it's true because technologies which this isn't true of (require large capital expenditures or high degrees of expertise) can't be given to everyone and their mother.
By saying we're doing decentralized X we're moving the problem of requisite operating skill to the designers who must make their systems simple enough for laypeople. Likewise factories and engineers must find economies of scale in production of units which are distinct from the efficiencies we currently realize building relative few, much larger generators.
In short, while decentralization solves some of these problems, it also presupposes the solution of others. It may be a worthy goal, but there are challenges to get there.
I believe the most important unobserved benefit from decentralized solutions is the wave of innovation it would spark.
Private moneys would compete for a slice of the pie bringing to market millions of ideas putting the pedal of progress to the metal.
Private moneys would compete for a slice of the pie bringing to market millions of ideas putting the pedal of progress to the metal.
Solar may have been weaponized as early as 214 BCE.
You bring solar weaponry into a modern military battle and see how that works out for you.
Photovoltaics can't really be weaponized, and we can't stop bad actors from getting access to large mirrors.
PVs can't be weaponized because they suck as an energy source compared to burning fuels. Any power source with enough energy density to be interesting is a weapon, just like any engine with enough power to give you reasonable interplanetary travel times is a weapon of mass destruction.
Humanity needs to find a way to deal with high-energy technology if we're to move forward as a species.
Humanity needs to find a way to deal with high-energy technology if we're to move forward as a species.
True energy independence goes both ways, which very few people are willing to accept.
People will install solar panels and enjoy not writing a check to the utility every month. But if their home battery breaks during a heat wave, they're not going to sit in an un-air-conditioned house and and think, "well at least I'm independent." No, they're going to expect the grid to send them power when they need it.
So while independent generation is a good idea, it's not likely to result in infrastructure savings. In fact the kind of smart grid that would be needed to deal with such widely varying local loads would almost certainly be more expensive than just maintaining what we've got.
It's worth remembering that electric generation started out as a very local and independent thing. Central generation won because it was cheaper and more reliable--despite the seemingly obvious losses and expenses of such a huge network.
People will install solar panels and enjoy not writing a check to the utility every month. But if their home battery breaks during a heat wave, they're not going to sit in an un-air-conditioned house and and think, "well at least I'm independent." No, they're going to expect the grid to send them power when they need it.
So while independent generation is a good idea, it's not likely to result in infrastructure savings. In fact the kind of smart grid that would be needed to deal with such widely varying local loads would almost certainly be more expensive than just maintaining what we've got.
It's worth remembering that electric generation started out as a very local and independent thing. Central generation won because it was cheaper and more reliable--despite the seemingly obvious losses and expenses of such a huge network.
They'll go to Walmart to buy a replacement the same day just like they would replace any home appliance.
By that time, I bet batteries would sell for less than a thousand, much less.
By that time, I bet batteries would sell for less than a thousand, much less.
So true. That's exactly why this is so exciting. With a UPower generator, small communities or neighborhoods could have always on, emission free power for a decade.
and then, as you indicated, with enough clean power, individuals can create desalinated water or even extract water from air. They could cleanly power greenhouses even in the arctic. We could remove carbon from the air.
and then, as you indicated, with enough clean power, individuals can create desalinated water or even extract water from air. They could cleanly power greenhouses even in the arctic. We could remove carbon from the air.
They could power all of those things on different planets.
>Imagine all the savings in infrastructure for energy transportation and reinvestment in other sectors.
The decentralization of production usually leads to a greater cost per unit due to economies of scale. This may not be true for solar, but it certainly is for nuclear, hydro, geothermal and probably wind. There are regions in our planet that don't get many hours of sunlight, how should they produce energy there?
The decentralization of production usually leads to a greater cost per unit due to economies of scale. This may not be true for solar, but it certainly is for nuclear, hydro, geothermal and probably wind. There are regions in our planet that don't get many hours of sunlight, how should they produce energy there?
No it is also a problem for solar. A distributed grid is non-trivial to build.
Unless you live in Spain, where solar energy generation by individuals is taxed in a way that it is a lot cheaper to just buy energy from the grid. Investment in solar energy generation in Spain is one order of magnitude smaller than 10 years ago.
Your post-scarcity world will surely not include Spain.
Your post-scarcity world will surely not include Spain.
Decentralization to the community level is almost as good and works for people who live in apartments and such. Both ycombinator projects would qualify; Helion's reactor would be 50MW and fit in a shipping container, and produce very little neutron radiation.
This is close to happening. http://www.rmi.org/electricity_grid_defection
Use TCP/IP to coordinate consumption and production, and your storage needs go down considerably.
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Slightly off-topic, but going to UPower's site shows nothing but a somewhat sparse wintery forest. Perhaps I've too much sci-fi on the brain, but it made me think of a nuclear winter.
Haha, wow. :) Thanks for the comment. It was meant to signify the communities in the far north or arctic that currently are reliant on very expensive and dirty diesel... Our webpage is under construction probably to be put up in about a week. You can definitely feel free to ask any questions and would appreciate your thoughts on the new one.
cool of you to respond!
Obnoxiously self important attitude.
There are other technologies. Nuclear isomers for example have a lot of potential, but the fossil fuel hegemony really keeps alternatives from flourishing. We can be very thankful that photovoltaics was invented pre-WII, otherwise I doubt we'd be seeing it today either.
That's not really how it works. Technologies are either commercially viable or they are not. The thing that enabled windpower and solar power to take off is economic parity with other means of generating power. Photovoltaics and windpower being 'invented' (as if it isn't blatantly obvious that there is energy in wind and solar and that this energy can be captured in a myriad of ways) before a certain date has nothing to do with whether or not we see them today.
Tons of money and effort has been sunk in attempts to create more sources for energy and some of those have paid off and others are still under review. The 'fossil fuel hegemony' is actually quite a large investor in more than a few projects, their product is energy, not a particular kind of energy.
Tons of money and effort has been sunk in attempts to create more sources for energy and some of those have paid off and others are still under review. The 'fossil fuel hegemony' is actually quite a large investor in more than a few projects, their product is energy, not a particular kind of energy.
Who on earth told you that? Hafnium doesn't work - DOE and DOD moved mountains in the nineties trying to get it to work and a number of people lost their careers and sanity in the process. But you go ahead and tell yourself that it's the "fossil-fuel hegemony"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafnium_controversy
(I'm sure you think muon-catalyzed fusion is right around the corner too)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafnium_controversy
(I'm sure you think muon-catalyzed fusion is right around the corner too)
The first practical high efficiency (6%) cell was made in Bell Laboratories in 1954. It was the first PN junction silicon solar cell, the technology that still powers 90% of solar cell modules on the market.
http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200904/physicshistor...
http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200904/physicshistor...
The article ignores the elephant in the room: the problems he discusses are all more directly a result of too many humans for the closed system planet. Period.
Probably not. Energy isn't really what is holding the poor back - a lack of stability and security are. If I had to chose one technological improvement to help most people on the planet it would probably be benevolent AI, which could refocus many of our challenges to what is important. Getting people out of poverty and war.
Energy is a tiny component of modern civilization.
Energy is a tiny component of modern civilization.
Energy is the sole basis of modern civilization.
We are Hydrocarbon Man.
We are Hydrocarbon Man.
Por que no los dos?
Yes, abundant energy is behind virtually all past development. What seems to be holding back the next 5 billion, however, is access to what that energy has made available.
Though the question of just how many billions can be provided for ought also be raised.
Yes, abundant energy is behind virtually all past development. What seems to be holding back the next 5 billion, however, is access to what that energy has made available.
Though the question of just how many billions can be provided for ought also be raised.
Energy isn't why there are poor people though. The poor have plenty of energy in the form of sun and coal and wind. $50 worth of energy can get you from New York to Toronto. Energy isn't the problem. The problem is security and education.
Meanwhile, solar/wind is heading toward dirt cheap and trivial to set up. Environmental impact is minimal, too. It doesn't require giant corporations, government sponsorship, complex regulations, or exotic engineering skills to implement. With those incredible advantages, it doesn't need to be cheaper than nuclear - it just needs to be adequately cheap.