Quote from Wyttenbach

the free Mason's. These Guys historically are famous to burn churches (like Notre Dame) to get new labor.

Brand in historischem Gebäude – Fassade der abgebrannten Börse in Kopenhagen eingestürzt

Die Einsatzkräfte hatten noch versucht, die Mauern des bei einem Brand zerstörten historischen Gebäudes zu retten. Verletzt wurde niemand.

www.tagesanzeiger.ch

Usually they are burning during renovations. DK 400 year old stock exchange. Whenever a church did burn down in Switzerland it was during renovation...

Quote from Shane D.

Maybe nuclear is not the lost cause she thinks?

4th biggest lobbying budget after oil/auto, tobacco and pharma/healthcare. That kind of budget buys you a lot of comments.

former nuclear scientists do try to be influential

'edging' is an optimistic take

"As political interest in the technology grows and private investments ramp up, fusion energy is seeing “remarkable progress”, said Elena Righi Steele, head of unit at the European Commission’s research and development department. Righi Steele, a former fusion scientist, told a Euractiv event on 18 March, that fusion is “edging towards [its] realisation.”"

Quote from Shane D.

Maybe nuclear is not the lost cause she thinks?

I think it is a lost cause. It is obsolete, and too expensive. It is also dangerous, whereas there is no danger from wind and solar, which are presently the only kind of new generators the power companies want.

Solar and battery storage to make up 81% of new U.S. electric-generating capacity in 2024 - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

I am not saying nuclear power cannot be fixed no matter what. It can probably be improved. It could be made safer and cheaper. But I think it is too late for that. Once a technology falls behind the competition, it can rarely be improved enough to compete again. Because the rival technologies are also improving, and they are getting more money. You see that pattern often, especially in big ticket technology such as railroads, ships, generators and so on. When steam locomotives were losing to Diesels in the 1930s and even up to the 1950s, some people made steam turbine locomotives. It was a last ditch effort to keep external combustion locomotive technology alive. Steam turbines were well developed for ships and generators. But this effort failed.

Pebble bed nuclear reactors and other radical new designs might be competitive. I cannot judge.

WaPost:

Rooftop solar panels are flooding California’s grid. That’s a problem.

As electricity prices go negative, the Golden State is struggling to offload a glut of solar power

Here is a shared link:

https://wapo.st/3U3zAyg

QUOTE:

In sunny California, solar panels are everywhere. They sit in dry, desert landscapes in the Central Valley and are scattered over rooftops in Los Angeles’s urban center. By last count, the state had nearly 47 gigawatts of solar power installed — enough to power 13.9 million homes and provide over a quarter of the Golden State’s electricity.

But now, the state and its grid operator are grappling with a strange reality: There is so much solar on the grid that, on sunny spring days when there’s not as much demand, electricity prices go negative. Gigawatts of solar are “curtailed” — essentially, thrown away.

In response, California has cut back incentives for rooftop solar and slowed the pace of installing panels. But the diminishing economic returns may slow the development of solar in a state that has tried to move to renewable energy. And as other states build more and more solar plants of their own, they may soon face the same problems. . . .

EIA graph in article:

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=56880

Quote from JedRothwell

WaPost:

Rooftop solar panels are flooding California’s grid. That’s a problem.

As electricity prices go negative, the Golden State is struggling to offload a glut of solar power

Here is a shared link:

https://wapo.st/3U3zAyg

QUOTE:

In sunny California, solar panels are everywhere. They sit in dry, desert landscapes in the Central Valley and are scattered over rooftops in Los Angeles’s urban center. By last count, the state had nearly 47 gigawatts of solar power installed — enough to power 13.9 million homes and provide over a quarter of the Golden State’s electricity.

But now, the state and its grid operator are grappling with a strange reality: There is so much solar on the grid that, on sunny spring days when there’s not as much demand, electricity prices go negative. Gigawatts of solar are “curtailed” — essentially, thrown away.

In response, California has cut back incentives for rooftop solar and slowed the pace of installing panels. But the diminishing economic returns may slow the development of solar in a state that has tried to move to renewable energy. And as other states build more and more solar plants of their own, they may soon face the same problems. . . .

EIA graph in article:

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=56880

Display More

no mention of battery storage

Quote from Fm1

no mention of battery storage

Good point. They should have mentioned it. California and other states are rapidly increasing battery storage. See:

Solar and battery storage to make up 81% of new U.S. electric-generating capacity in 2024 - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

Battery storage. We also expect battery storage to set a record for annual capacity additions in 2024. We expect U.S. battery storage capacity to nearly double in 2024 as developers report plans to add 14.3 GW of battery storage to the existing 15.5 GW this year. In 2023, 6.4 GW of new battery storage capacity was added to the U.S. grid, a 70% annual increase.

Texas, with an expected 6.4 GW, and California, with an expected 5.2 GW, will account for 82% of the new U.S. battery storage capacity.

Where they say "1 GW of battery storage" they mean batteries that last 2, 4 or in rare case 8 hours. In other words, typically 4 GWh of storage. See:

Duration of utility-scale batteries depends on how they’re used

Nuclear’s next generation: thorium reactors promise to consume waste to produce power

CHEMISTRY WORLD | 11 MINUTE READ

Nuclear power isn’t popular. First the Chernobyl disaster then the Fukushima accident has put many people off and the dream of ‘power too cheap to meter’ has died. But what if there was a new type of reactor that was inherently safe, consumes nuclear waste and couldn’t be misused to make weapons? Too good to be true? Well, that’s the promise of thorium-powered nuclear reactors. The idea for a reactor fuelled by thorium has been around since the 1960s but events conspired against it and countries, wary of new nuclear technologies, avoided taking the idea further. But now several start-ups are pushing ahead with the idea and new reactors are in development. The question now is can the technology be made to work and will it be cheap enough for countries to put their money where their mouth is?

Quote from Alan Smith

Nuclear power isn’t popular.

Nuclear waste isn't popular... Nuclear radiation isn't popular...Unluckily a Th reactor does not change this equation. Radiation leads to steel embrittlement and now to a shut down of about 1/3 of the old Westinghouse reactors. The Swiss one only had minors scarves but some are fully gone like the Fukushima number 2 that crumbled during the quake already.

But e.g. in UK building isolation is also not popular and thus UK houses heat the sky. Energy consumption reduces by isolation * COP heat pump or up to 25x!

In Japan the combined power dissipation of all toilet seats heating is equivalent to 2 nukes....

Quote from Alan Smith

thorium-powered nuclear reactors

See:

Home - Thorium Energy Alliance

THORIUM WILL POWER THE WORLD The future of energy is Thorium. Join Us The Thorium Energy Alliance is a 501(c)3 Educational advocacy organization. We…

thoriumenergyalliance.com

Batterie breakthrough ?? https://news.kaist.ac.kr/newse…news/?mode=V&mng_no=36310

Professor Kang noted that the hybrid sodium-ion energy storage device, capable of rapid charging and achieving an energy density of 247 Wh/kg and a power density of 34,748 W/kg, represents a breakthrough in overcoming the current limitations of energy storage systems.

Quote from Wyttenbach

In Japan the combined power dissipation of all toilet seats heating is equivalent to 2 nukes.

A fine example of shitty statistics.

EIA: U.S. wind generation falls for first time since 1990s

EIA: U.S. wind generation falls for first time since 1990s

Data from EIA's Power Plant Operations Report show that U.S. wind generation in 2023 totaled 425,235 GWh, 2.1% less than the 434,297 GWh generated in 2022.

www.renewableenergyworld.com

Because of changes in the weather. Capacity is up and capacity factors are gradually rising. See also:

What is U.S. electricity generation by energy source?

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

Wind produces 63% as much as coal:

Wind 425 billion kWh, 10.2% of total

Coal 675 billion kWh, 16.2% of total

In 2000, coal produced 52% of electricity:

https://www.eia.gov/coal/review/pdf/feature00.pdf

Wind plus solar produce 25.3% of electricity, far more than coal. Most new capacity is now solar, because it cheapest per kilowatt-hour.

The New York Times reports that EV batteries in China have been improved. They allow cars with a ~600 mile range. As I have said here before, 600 miles is roughly as far as most people want to drive in one day. You can recharge overnight in many locations, so you can drive the whole day without recharging. That means the slow time it takes to recharge compared to filling with gasoline no longer matters.

As a practical matter, you do not want to drain the battery close to zero. So, to drive 600 miles, starting with a full battery, you would recharge at least once. With this new battery a 10-minute charge "would give a range of 370 miles." I assume that is starting from close to zero.

QUOTE:

Better batteries and falling costs underpin China’s push in electric cars. CATL, based in southeastern China and the world’s largest manufacturer of electric car batteries, announced last week at the Beijing auto show that a 10-minute charge of its newest battery would give a range of 370 miles. A 30-minute full charge would give a range of 620 miles, the company said.

Achieving these distances involves extremely high-precision chemistry and engineering and “putting each nano-particle in the right place,” said Gao Huan, the chief technology officer of CATL’s electric car business.

Shared article:

China’s Electric Cars Keep Improving, a Worry for Rivals Elsewhere (Gift Article)

More capable autonomous driving is just one way Chinese automakers are threatening to pull ahead — their E.V.s are also becoming bigger and roomier.

www.nytimes.com