LENR vs Solar/Wind, and emerging Green Technologies.

Quote from Gennadiy Tarassenko

Greater reliance on nuclear

This is an important subject given the radical shift in relations with Russia, the case of France, whose reliance on nuclear energy is stronger than ever and sends a strong message to Europe and the rest of the world, as well as the general shift in public opinion regarding nuclear energy.

I do not think they discussed the cost. Which has driven a spike through the heart of conventional nuclear power. In Georgia we will soon have the most expensive electricity in history with our two new nukes. There is no way a sane power company exec would build another nuke. If the Westinghouse people cannot construct a nuke on time without gigantic cost overruns, I doubt anyone else can. Westinghouse will never try again because this project bankrupted them.

There is simply no way nukes can compete with solar and wind when they cost $28 to $37/MWh and nuclear power costs some ungodly amount north of $300, or $400/MWh -- or who knows how much by the time they finally turn it on. On top of that, one serious accident at Fukushima bankrupted the largest power company on earth, and exiled 90,000 people from their houses, farms and towns. That is an insane level of financial risk. There is no risk at all from solar or wind installations, and either of them could produce far more energy than the human race consumes.

https://www.lazard.com/media/451905/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-150-vf.pdf

Conventional nuclear power is obsolete. It is one of these promising technologies that never panned out, and that progress has left behind. Like bubble memory, monorails, or English Channel hovercraft. Some other method of fission power might work out, such as pebble bed or thorium.

Quote from Wyttenbach

The dark side of German wind power :: It fluctuates between 35% and now 6 % only. (FAZ 1.12.2022)

That is not a problem as long as you can predict when it will happen with good weather forecasting. It means you need 96% standby power. It is much less of a problem with offshore wind. It is not a problem in an area the size of Iowa or Texas because the wind always blows somewhere in such huge areas. I do not think it fluctuates that much.

Nuclear power fluctuates between 100% and 0%. It stops suddenly and abruptly with a SCRAM event. These events cannot be predicted. They knock off the entire 1 or 2 GW plant for at least a day. So you need 100% backup power, which may be used only a few days a year. That never happens with wind. There is always some wind, somewhere, as long as the sun shines.

The nuke plant equipment failure SCRAM events are usually nothing dangerous. Typically they are plumbing problems. You can read the list of them at the NRC.

https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/2021/20211018en.html

Example:

Quote

EN Revision Text: MANUAL REACTOR TRIP AND AUTOMATIC AUXILIARY FEEDWATER ACTUATION "On October 15, 2021, at 1749 PDT with Diablo Canyon Power Plant Unit 2 operating at approximately 90 percent power, the reactor was manually tripped in accordance with plant procedures due to increasing water level in feedwater heater 2-5B. The reactor trip was uncomplicated and the Auxiliary Feedwater system started as expected. The plant is stable in Mode 3.

"Mode 3" means "hot standby." Not operating, but still hot. No danger, but the entire plant goes down. Bang! Out of the blue. It takes all day to turn back on, best case. A coal or gas fired plant typically has an array of 200 MW generators. Only one might break or need servicing. Wind farms have arrays of 1 to 4 MW turbines, so you lose only 4 MW at a time.

Coal and natural gas usually go down about 200 MW at a time, mainly for maintenance, which can be scheduled and prepared for. I do not think natural gas plants often stop abruptly the way nukes do. I have looked through the government lists of equipment failures and accidents at places like the EIA. Natural gas is very reliable in most states. The natural gas pipelines, generators and nukes in Texas failed catastrophically in 2021 because of cold weather. That could have been prevented, but such cold weather is so rare in Texas, the power companies decided it was not cost effective to weatherize their equipment. Pipelines and nukes in Minnesota or someplace like that would not be affected by the weather that caused the Texas power failure.

Wind turbines do fail catastrophically. Here is a photo of a 2 MW turbine burning up at the Androssan Wind Farm in 2011. It was caused by Hurricane Bawbag. The thing is, a burning turbine will only take out 2 MW of capacity worst case. It is not likely to hurt anyone, because most wind farms are in empty places, in mountains or fields. When one of them starts burning, people do not stand underneath. It usually takes a while before the turbine falls or the tower collapses.

No technology is perfect, or perfectly safe. I expect cold fusion reactors will occasionally fail catastrophically, over heating and causing fires, and fatalities. I hope such events are extremely rare.

Hurricane Bawbag?! For real? Hilarious… that’s Scottish for ‘Testicles’

I wondered what it meant! That's what they called it, for real.

Hurricane Bawbag: Remembering the storm that Scotland named

Ten years since a storm Scotland will never forget - but not just for the destruction it caused.

news.stv.tv

Well ‘scrotum’, technically

I tried to analyse how much energy extra need to be produced in order to stabilize electricity production in Sweden with storage. The fun thing in Sweden are that there is statistics for electricity production and consumption in hourly data and this should be the wet dream of any data analyst to chew on. I did write a python script to do something better than what everybody is doing in the more open pages of the internet. I have not found any serious approach to answer this question from real data. Any link from a professional is most welcomed. I did an honest try and found out that in Sweden you need to tax wind power with about 10%-20% of its power generation and produce hydrogen for energy storage. This assuming losses of the order of 0.33 for the storage (normally 0.25 is used but in Sweden we can take advantage of the heat produced in the process). Now the answer I got when asking this question was that people assumed 50% needed to be stored. My analysis below indicates that with a good approach with an intelligent control algorithm, the total amount of energy needed to be stored is much lesser than 50%. Interestingly the system of how we organize the production of the energy via a market will probably mean that there is not a strong incitement to invest unless the wind energy is taxed. It do not need to be taxed much, I think, much less than what I though from reading internet sources. A rate of 10-20% might be enough to produce a stable source of energy from wind. Of cause we have a lot of hydro so we can control with that, but we are connected to Europe ... and energy consumption will increase and there is not much more hydro dams that we can make. Anyhow see the link below, it contains the information for you ta investigate this question as well, find bugs, find improvements etc. Enjoy!

Simple Analysis

Quote from JedRothwell

Years ago, there were schemes to rapidly replace the entire battery pack in an EV. That would be as quick as filling a gasoline tank. That would speed up recharging, but it does nothing to extend range. It would mean you do not own the battery pack. You leave it behind at the gas station, where it is recharged and loaded into some other car. That sounds like a can of worms. Battery packs are complicated and have different lifespans. I do not think anyone is working on that approach. The fast chargers from Tesla are probably beginning to approach the speed of refilling with gasoline or changing out a battery pack.

'Better Place' an Israeli company tried this. They have been staggering in and out of Chapter 11 for almost a decade. This rather long piece describes the problems,

BETTER PLACE EV ISRAELI BATTERY SWAP ELECTRIC AUTOMATED CHANGING CHARGING STATIONS SHAI AGASSI BATTERIES

@Jed

Or maybe helium based fission. Do you ever read what is posted in this forum?

World’s first test run of a hydrogen jet engine a success

World’s first test run of a hydrogen jet engine a success

Hydrogen-powered planes might eliminate emissions, if they can get off the ground.

www.theverge.com

Rolls-Royce and European airline easyJet announced that they’ve successfully tested a hydrogen jet engine — technology the companies hope might eventually help erase aviation’s greenhouse gas emissions. The ground test marks “the world’s first run of a modern aero engine on hydrogen,” Rolls-Royce said in a press release yesterday.

Aviation is considered one of the most difficult industries to clean up because it’s much harder to make electric planes than electric vehicles. Batteries charged with renewable solar and wind energy are still too bulky for long flights. So airlines and plane manufacturers are working to develop planes that can run on cleaner fuels like hydrogen, which produces water vapor instead of carbon dioxide when burned.

At the latter end of 2021, GMG announced that its pilot production and testing plant for its graphene aluminum-ion batteries is now operational, with the first coin cells being manufactured.

According to GMG, laboratory testing and experiments have shown so far that the graphene-aluminum-ion battery energy storage technology has high energy densities and higher power densities compared to current leading marketplace lithium-ion battery technology.

Specifications detailed by the company include a power density of up to 7,000 watts per kilogram, with testing confirming a cycle rate with minimal reduction over a 3,000-cycle experiment period – which included charging up to full charge and discharging down to near full discharge – at variable charging rates.

The company also said these results showed a very high cycling rate for the duration, with negligible reduction in performance and at a very high charging rate of up to 66 coulombs (amperes per second), which is comparable to lithium-ion batteries between 600 to 1,000 cycles at much lower charging rates of one-fifth coulombs, where performance typically reduces to 60% of original capacity. In layman, this means a much longer battery charge, immensely shorter recharge time, and a significantly longer life span.

"Testing showed rechargeable graphene aluminium-ion batteries had a battery life of up to three times that of current leading lithium-ion batteries, and higher power density meant they charged up to 70 times faster," said University of Queensland AIBN Director Alan Rowan. "The batteries are rechargeable for a larger number of cycles without deteriorating performance and are easier to recycle, reducing potential for harmful metals to leak into the environment."

With the possibilities that graphene presents, aluminum may see a monumental jump in its critical status, and according to GMG CEO Craig Nicol, "It is the technology the industry has been waiting for."

Wind Power: U.K. Blown Off Course Again | National Review

"Over the last 40 hours, the UK wind power industry has swung from producing 16.4 GW to generating 0.4 GW

The drop in electricity production is equal to, give or take, switching off 14 nuclear power stations. That’s the reason why UK power markets are tight today."

At the moment we are back at 9 GW. See https://gridwatch.co.uk/

We know wind fluctuates. NR is just anti-wind power.

Quote from Shane D.

Wind Power: U.K. Blown Off Course Again | National Review

"Over the last 40 hours, the UK wind power industry has swung from producing 16.4 GW to generating 0.4 GW

The drop in electricity production is equal to, give or take, switching off 14 nuclear power stations. That’s the reason why UK power markets are tight today."

Quote from Alan Smith

From Benchmark Mineral Intelligence Newsletter...

LG Chem said this week it will spend $3.2 billion to build a cathode production facility in Tennessee. The company is targeting 120,000 tonnes of cathode production a year by 2027. If it succeeds, this would more than double the potential cathode production of North America. The announcement is the latest direct foreign investment in Tennessee's history and further cements the state's growing position as a key battery hub in the US.

It comes following two years of rising cathode prices. Benchmark's Cathode Price Index has risen a third this year and is over double what it was in January 2021. In part, this is due to rising lithium carbonate prices which have risen by over 120% this year in China and are still trading at record high levels. To make things worse, some cathode plants are failing to receive the lithium they ordered in long-term contracts forcing them to buy material in spot markets.

Elsewhere, the three largest non-Chinese lithium producers are all continuing to invest in China, despite growing geopolitical risks. In a data-rich story this week, Benchmark Source looks at the quantities of lithium produced by Albermarle, Livent and SQM in China, North America, and Free Trade Agreement countries.

Batteries are more than just lithium, however. One often overlooked mineral in NCM cathodes is manganese. Although there is ample manganese ore, the capacity to refine it into the high-purity manganese sulphate required for batteries is almost entirely in China. Only two facilities outside of China are currently operational. In an article this week, Benchmark Source looks at the options outside of China.

On the other side of the battery is the anode, typically made from either natural or synthetic graphite. Although synthetic graphite has higher emissions, natural graphite isn't without its own set of woes. Violence in Mozambique and climate change are amongst the factors making its supply chain more fragile than that of synthetic graphite.

benchmarkminerals.com

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Here's an interesting example of what a Company in Australia has achieved to change the recycling ideas of many Australians.

A wholly owned subsidiary of ASX-listed Lithium Australia Ltd (ASX: LIT), VSPC Pty Ltd (VSPC) has spent more than 20 years and around $35 million researching, developing and patenting processes for the cost-effective manufacture of high-purity, nano-scale materials, now primarily for next-generation lithium-ion batteries.

VSPC’s core technology enables efficient production of high-performance cathode powders – lithium ferro phosphate (LFP) in particular, as well as lithium manganese ferro phosphate (LMFP) – with a strong focus on safety, cost and sustainability.

Home - Lithium Australia

https://www.google.com/search?…AoAECoAEB&sclient=gws-wiz В гугле быть на первой странице здорово, а ума у многих не хватает...

Realizing a Century-Old Dream to Make Electricity From Air | RealClearScience

The technique involves harvesting the tiny charges of static electricity contained in gaseous water molecules, which are ubiquitous in the atmosphere. The process is known as hygroelectricity or humidity electricity.

In the early 1900s, Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla dreamed of harnessing energy from the air. He ran a series of experiments trying to capture electrical charges from the atmosphere and transform them into an electric current.

Since Tesla’s time, scientists have learned more about how electricity is formed and released in the atmosphere and discovered that water vapour can carry an electrical charge.

The know-how could be a boost for the EU, which gets about 22% of its energy from renewables. It is on track to tighten an end-of-decade target for such sources, which also include hydropower, to as high as 45%.

Quote

“We will drastically increase the efficiency and the possibilities of the green-energy transition.
Andriy Lyubchyk, CATCHER and SSHARE

But, for Europe to become climate-neutral by 2050, renewables will have to play an even bigger role and hygroelectricity would give the EU more options as it seeks to abandon oil, natural gas and coal.

New technology

Funded by the European Innovation Council's Pathfinder programme, CATCHER brings together eight partners from six countries in Europe to explore the possibility.

While the general idea might be the same, the particular technology used by CATCHER is very different to Tesla’s. The project uses panel-like cells made from zirconium oxide – a hard crystalline material – to capture energy from atmospheric humidity.

Zirconium oxide is a ceramic material widely used for such things as dental implants, advanced glass-like materials, electronics and cladding for nuclear fuel rods.

When exploring the properties of nanomaterials made from zirconium oxide seven years ago, researchers started to see evidence of hygroelectricity, according to Svitlana Lyubchik, who coordinates CATCHER and is the mother of Andriy Lyubchyk.

Like him, she is a chemical engineer at Lusophone University. They undertook various initiatives to try to exploit this potential.

The researchers are now at the point where an 8-by-5-centimetre plate of their material can generate around 0.9 volt in a laboratory with a humidity of around 50%. This is comparable to the power output of half an AA battery.

A good way to supply air conditioners in Everglades

Quote from Shane D.

Realizing a Century-Old Dream to Make Electricity From Air | RealClearScience

The technique involves harvesting the tiny charges of static electricity contained in gaseous water molecules, which are ubiquitous in the atmosphere. The process is known as hygroelectricity or humidity electricity.

In the early 1900s, Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla dreamed of harnessing energy from the air. He ran a series of experiments trying to capture electrical charges from the atmosphere and transform them into an electric current.

Since Tesla’s time, scientists have learned more about how electricity is formed and released in the atmosphere and discovered that water vapour can carry an electrical charge.

The know-how could be a boost for the EU, which gets about 22% of its energy from renewables. It is on track to tighten an end-of-decade target for such sources, which also include hydropower, to as high as 45%.

But, for Europe to become climate-neutral by 2050, renewables will have to play an even bigger role and hygroelectricity would give the EU more options as it seeks to abandon oil, natural gas and coal.

New technology

Funded by the European Innovation Council's Pathfinder programme, CATCHER brings together eight partners from six countries in Europe to explore the possibility.

While the general idea might be the same, the particular technology used by CATCHER is very different to Tesla’s. The project uses panel-like cells made from zirconium oxide – a hard crystalline material – to capture energy from atmospheric humidity.

Zirconium oxide is a ceramic material widely used for such things as dental implants, advanced glass-like materials, electronics and cladding for nuclear fuel rods.

When exploring the properties of nanomaterials made from zirconium oxide seven years ago, researchers started to see evidence of hygroelectricity, according to Svitlana Lyubchik, who coordinates CATCHER and is the mother of Andriy Lyubchyk.

Like him, she is a chemical engineer at Lusophone University. They undertook various initiatives to try to exploit this potential.

The researchers are now at the point where an 8-by-5-centimetre plate of their material can generate around 0.9 volt in a laboratory with a humidity of around 50%. This is comparable to the power output of half an AA battery.

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...

Quote from Shane D.

They undertook various initiatives to try to exploit this potential.

The researchers are now at the point where an 8-by-5-centimetre plate of their material can generate around 0.9 volt in a laboratory with a humidity of around 50%. This is comparable to the power output of half an AA battery.

This is only talking about voltage - not power.

More sensible details from the EU Cordis website:

Quote

Project is targeted on advancement, optimization and scalability of a previously developed technology that converts atmospheric humidity into electrical current [up to date value of 3.6 mW/g or 1.82 mW/cm2], with an expected output power density of ~36 mW/g or [15 - 20 mW/cm2], which will be ready for scaling up, thus could be prepared for further integration with existed EU electrical system for general energy use.

So an 8 by 5 cm plate can actually generate 0.13 watts (or 131 mW) at present - given the right atmospheric conditions.