Is Solar + Storage A Net Energy Sink!?

[Eclipse Now]

Woah, woah, woah! Calm down everyone: you're sounding like me a decade ago! :surprise:

 

Nuclear has an ERoEI of 50 to 100, and breeder reactors even more given the fact that they burn nuclear "waste" (unused fuel) that has already been mined and milled and enriched. An ERoEI that high can be 'borrowed' or dropped a few points to 'charge' whatever oil replacement you want: synful, EV's, hydrogen, even boron! (James Hansen thinks powered boron could be a contender for replacing oil).
http://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/recharge/

It isn't the end yet, and as long as we get our energy and conservation acts together, I can see a bunch of new tech coming online that could turn our harmful footprints into helpful handprints.

[Eclogite]

Well if it's that offensive, I went back and changed the sentence "The science says so" to "The current state of engineering says so." But I think you're being a bit pedantic about semantics to bow out of this discussion over my use of the word 'science'. The OP is about the ERoEI of renewables with storage. If you have anything to contribute to that, I'm all ears.

Being accused of pedantry on a science forum is the highest compliment I could receive. Science requires precision, either through mathematical statements, precise measurements, or tightly constrained definitions.

 

It was the poor definition that attracted me to your thread. I lack sufficient data to have an opinion on your central point.

[ErlyRisa]

Take a look at recent history...

 

The HUMMER!!!

 

A. It's a peice of junk and impracticle in the gears of war ....BUT

 

It's SEXY.

So again, its about the BLING.

 

Or... Why didn't we use the Wankel Engine? b/c we want our vehicles too last 1 billion Km's? - hell today most people never pay off thier last vehicle anyway and just replace them too the latest.

 

I say f the lot of y'as ... turn the Hummers into Mini Transport Vans for ebay deliveries, and make everyone else live on Horseback. (Traffick in the morning is about the same speed as a horse anyway...I am sure Bang Olufsen can design Horsie stereo systems.) -Transportation rate would go up, while human Happiness would go up, therfore intelligence goes up...and whalla -_better solutions are made available.

 

BUT can you sell this system as SEXY?

 

I think Forest Gump stated it the best....f'n Walk!

Edited September 1, 2014 by ErlyRisa

[Eclipse Now]

Nuclear power should be nowhere near fault lines, coastal areas, waterbodies, above ground water, in the vicinity of people... Oh that's right, they're safe now. Safe! Are you kidding? What's man's efforts against a storm, an earthquake, volcanic or tectonic activity? A joke is what it is.  

 

 

 

Check neutron leak. When they overheat, modern fuel rods expand which causes the neutrons to leak and shuts down the reaction! Homer Simpson can't break these! Fukushima? Easy peasy... if they had been modern reactors, we wouldn't have focussed on those nukes at all and all attention would be where it was deserved: the tsunami.

[Ahmabeliever]

"Homer Simpson can't break these" - that will go down in history as one of the most naive statements ever made. 

[Eclipse Now]

"Homer Simpson can't break these" - that will go down in history as one of the most naive statements ever made. 

 

Watch this 5 minute doco where Kirk Sorenson attacks the reactors you're probably thinking about! I agree with you!

But the "Lifter" (LFTR) thorium reactor is totally different, and is truly nuclear green.

[pgrmdave]

Check neutron leak. When they overheat, modern fuel rods expand which causes the neutrons to leak and shuts down the reaction! Homer Simpson can't break these! Fukushima? Easy peasy... if they had been modern reactors, we wouldn't have focussed on those nukes at all and all attention would be where it was deserved: the tsunami.

The problem is that this will always be true - the latest and greatest will always be head and shoulders above what used to be the latest and greatest.  Now, I'm with you on nuclear energy - but we'd have to consider a system of continual upgrade rather than the current system of building and then simply maintaining that level until it's uneconomical. 

[Eclipse Now]

Hi pgrmdave,

I'm not sure how we'd do that. The whole point of these reactors is that they *are* the latest and greatest, and now that means passive safety systems that even Homer Simpson couldn't break. If we built out a worldwide fleet of these babies (especially LFTR's backed by IFR's that would eat LFTR waste), then they'd probably last 60, 80, even 100 years. By then we might have *fusion* or space based solar or even have started a Luna Ring? Who knows?

http://www.shimz.co.jp/english/theme/dream/lunaring.html

 

But building out what we've got, as fast as we can, makes more sense to me. Whatever risks there are, we can be certain that nuclear is already 4000 times safer than coal. Coal kills 7 million people a year, or more people in a week when it goes right than the whole history of nuclear going wrong.

[CraigD]

If we built out a worldwide fleet of these babies (especially LFTR's backed by IFR's that would eat LFTR waste), then they'd probably last 60, 80, even 100 years.

It seems reasonable to me that MSR breeder reactors like a LFTR would last 60+ years, because the oldest still-operating non-breeder LWR in the world, NJ’s 650 MWe Oyster Creek, a PWR, is 45 years old, and has a planned life of 60 years (though, for financial reasons, it’ll be decommissioned in 2019, not its planned 2029).

 

Because its coolant is more radioactive, a LFTR may embrittle its piping more than a LWR, but because a LFTR is at near 1 atmosphere pressure, rather than the 75 - 160 amt of LWRs, so it doesn’t need to be as strong. My inexpert guess would be that the core vessels and primary cooling of LFTRs will last longer than LWRs.

 

On the negative side, while a few MSRs have been built, and few breeder reactors, no MSR breeder reactor has actually yet been built. When the first ones are, there may be some unwelcome surprises.

 

By then we might have *fusion* or space based solar or even have started a Luna Ring? Who knows?

...

http://www.shimz.co.jp/english/theme/dream/lunaring.html

The Luna Ring is very cool, but it’s a project to install more photovoltaic panels than have ever been made, and do it on the Moon, ideally, with all or most of the manufacturing done there. The system must then beam power to receivers on Earth – while no easy challenge, IMHO the easiest, as the best present day Earth-to-Moon optical lasers, such those used for the Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment, such as the 115 mJ/pulse APOLLO laser, spread to an initial aperture of about 0.07 size of about 6500 m, not an unreasonable size for a Earth-based power receiver.

 

Altogether, the Luna Ring strikes me as next generation (30+ years in the future) at best. A constellation of geostationary or lower Earth orbiting beamed solar power, though lower power, is more feasible this generation.

 

But building out what we've got, as fast as we can, makes more sense to me. Whatever risks there are, we can be certain that nuclear is already 4000 times safer than coal. Coal kills 7 million people a year, or more people in a week when it goes right than the whole history of nuclear going wrong.

Though I think it’s a very good idea to foster an understanding that “traditional” fuels thought of as safe have premature death-causing effects, “coal kills 7 million people a year” is either hyperbole or simply inaccurate.

 

I suspect the 7000000 deaths/year comes from reports such as the WHO new release 7 million premature deaths annually linked to air pollution, which report studies showing that air pollution result in people dying sooner than they would without it. About half of these premature deaths are due to indoor (household) air pollution, about half due to outdoor (ambient). HAP is attributed largely to poorly made or maintained coal and wood stoves, the majority of which occurs in Africa, Asia, and Pacifica. In short, the way it’s burned is more to blame than what fuel is burned. For both HAP and AAP, the main heath-impacting agent are particulates from burning. Although not included in the WHO article or the study summary to which it links, I know that lower energy density fuels like wood and other biomasses produce more particulates than higher density ones like coal, oil, and methane.

 

The social impact of premature deaths due to air pollution is less than that of catastrophic mass deaths such as that associated with a catastrophic attack or accident involving radioactive material, because air pollution causes premature death predominantly old and or sick people with less expected future productivity, while catastrophes kill more indiscriminately, including young and healthy people with more expected future productivity.

 

Properly engineered and managed, both technically and governmentally, nuclear power should be among the safest and least polluting. Poorly engineered and managed, it can be among the least safe and most polluting, and its pollution much longer-lasting than that of other fuels. Breeder reactors produce extraordinarily hazardous waste with disposal requirements like non-breeder reactors, and can be engineered and tuned to produce nuclear weapon material. Nuclear weapons can, of course, be among the most danger artificial things there are. Mismanaged, functioning exactly as intended, they are capable of killing many hundreds of millions of people, of all ages and healths.

 

When considering the long term safety of nuclear power, I think its narrow-sighted to consider just its engineering, and overly optimistic to assume that it will necessarily be managed safely. Though in my final analysis I disagree with them, I’m sympathetic to people who conclude that it’s simply not something that human kind should have much of, because our governments and individuals simply can’t be trusted with it.

[Eclipse Now]

It seems reasonable to me that MSR breeder reactors like a LFTR would last 60+ years, because the oldest still-operating non-breeder LWR in the world, NJ’s 650 MWe Oyster Creek, a PWR, is 45 years old, and has a planned life of 60 years (though, for financial reasons, it’ll be decommissioned in 2019, not its planned 2029).

 

Because its coolant is more radioactive, a LFTR may embrittle its piping more than a LWR, but because a LFTR is at near 1 atmosphere pressure, rather than the 75 - 160 amt of LWRs, so it doesn’t need to be as strong. My inexpert guess would be that the core vessels and primary cooling of LFTRs will last longer than LWRs.

Love it! Good point.

 

On the negative side, while a few MSRs have been built, and few breeder reactors, no MSR breeder reactor has actually yet been built. When the first ones are, there may be some unwelcome surprises.

Do you think they already found some breeder-like behaviours in the following decommissioning description on Wikipedia? I have a humanities background, and am trying to break this down into English. Would love your help.

 

 

After shutdown the salt was believed to be in long-term safe storage. At low temperatures, radiolysis can free fluorine from the salt. As a countermeasure the salt was annually reheated to about 150°C, until 1989.[20] But beginning in the mid-1980s, there was concern that radioactivity was migrating through the system. Sampling in 1994 revealed concentrations of uranium that created a potential for a nuclear criticality accident, as well as a potentially dangerous build-up of fluorine gas — the environment above the solidified salt was approximately one atmosphere of fluorine. The ensuing decontamination and decommissioning project was called "the most technically challenging" activity assigned to Bechtel Jacobs under its environmental management contract with the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge Operations organization. In 2003, the MSRE cleanup project was estimated at about $130 million, with decommissioning expected to be completed in 2009.[21] Removal of uranium from the salt was finally complete in March 2008, however still leaving the salt with the fission products in the tanks.[22]

Much of the high cost was caused by the unpleasant surprise of fluorine and uranium hexafluoride evolution from cold fuel salt in storage that ORNL did not defuel and store correctly, but this has now been taken into consideration in MSR design.[23]

A potential decommissioning processes has been described;[24] uranium is to be removed from the fuel as the hexafluoride by adding excess fluorine, and plutonium as the plutonium dioxide by adding sodium carbonate.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment#cite_note-20

[CraigD]

On the negative side, while a few MSRs have been built, and few breeder reactors, no MSR breeder reactor has actually yet been built. When the first ones are, there may be some unwelcome surprises.

Do you think they already found some breeder-like behaviours in the following decommissioning description on Wikipedia? I have a humanities background, and am trying to break this down into English. Would love your help.

As ORNL’s 1965 to 1969 Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment was intended primarily as a test of the use of liquid fluorine salt as a reactor coolant/fuel, not fertile-to-fissile “breeding”, the fissile material put into this liquid salt was fissile uranium (²³⁵U), not thorium. A small amount of fertile ²³⁸U was added, and samples of the liquid measured to show that some of it was “bred” into ²³⁵U as expected. It’s decommissioning was valuable mostly to learn about what issues would be encountered in the long-run operation and decommissioning of large LFS reactors, such as a LFTR, not as a demonstration of breeding.

 

All nuclear fission reactors “breed” some fertile material into fissile. A reactor is considered a “true breeder” if it converts fertile to fissile at a great enough rate that, once it is started with a “seed” of fissile material, it can run for the rest of its life with the addition only of fertile material, such as ²³²T (thorium).

 

I don’t think there are any very difficult barriers to building and running a large LFTR. The major barrier now, I think, is economic. Improvements in methane gas extraction technology has greatly increased obtainable reserves and lowered cost, so for some time – 10+ years – gas will be the economical fuel of choice. Only when other fuels become more costly than nuclear, I think, will there be great interest and financing of large nuclear reactors. When this happens, I expect breeders, likely the LFTR, will be most attractive, because they are most fuel efficient, so will have the lowest operating cost.

[Eclipse Now]

My understanding is that normal LWR's can't be put up on the production line because there are only a few places in the world that can cast the single-cast Flange reactor core. It's huge, one of the largest things we try to cast in a single go. But the only reason we do it is all because water reactors run at such a high pressures. If at normal pressure, just one atmosphere, we can break down the reactor core into multiple parts that we then assembly together. This lets IFR's and LFTR's go up on the assembly line, crashing costs. Some are claiming LFTR's could be built like Boeing jets, with one 100MW reactor coming off the line every day. In that case, they're talking about the cost dropping 60%, or below the cost of coal. 10 reactors for $2 billion = 1GW. That's cheap!

 

Then the thorium is everywhere, and is currently considered a hazardous waste product when mining rare-earths. Disposing of that 'waste' makes American rare-earths uncompetitive. But if there was a market for thorium, America could get her rare-earth's industry up and running again.