We’ve had this discussion here on lemmy a few days ago: practically all electricity generation is by making turbines spin.
Hydropower means river makes turbine spin. Wind power means wind makes turbine spin. Coal/gas power means combustion makes turbine spin. Nuclear means hot steam makes turbine spin.
However, that doesn’t mean that all electricity sources are spinny things.
- solar cells have no mechanically moving parts
- batteries utilize chemical energy directly
solar cells have no mechanically moving parts
ironically, large grid tie systems are starting to “emulate” the spinning mass behavior of turbine generators, since there’s an exponential failure issue waiting to crop up if you aren’t careful, as texas has already learned, a very significant part of your solar generation can just, go offline, if it decides grid conditions aren’t suitable, which can lead to LARGE drops in power production and frequency, which is likely to kill even more generation.
So the solution is to make it emulate the physical mass tied to a turbine, or at least, more generously provide power in fault like conditions, to prevent this sort of exponential breakdown of the grid. You could of course, use a large spinning flywheel to regulate grid frequency, as is being used in a few places right now. I’m not sure how popular that is, outside of wind energy. It’s likely to get more popular though.
weird little side tangent, but the frequency of electricity on the grid is essentially directly tied to the rotational speed of all turbines currently on the grid, meaning there is a very large inertia in the grid frequency, it’s weird to think about, but makes perfect sense, and it provides for an interesting problem to solve at large scales like this.
Batteries are really fucking cool btw, the fact that you can just chemically store electricity, and then use it, is really fucking crazy. The fact that it’s the most accessible technology is also insane to me. But maybe it’s just the adoption being the way it is.
Also, solar trackers are a big deal for large farms when you start to scale above residential. Those trackers physically moving the panels to optimize generation are moving pieces.
this is sort of true, it depends on the array, but from what i understand, unless you’re doing an experimental array, it’s most common to just use fixed axis mounted panels, it’s much cheaper and more cost effective that way. Ideally you would use a tracking array, which is better, but more complicated, and requires significantly more maintenance and investment. Single axis tracking arrays might be a clever solution to this problem though.
Regardless, it’s not relevant to the grid inertia problem at hand.
I dont think this is true.
I think people underestimate the value of intertia in power generation. I liken it to the way capacitors regulate voltage changes or coilovers absorb bumps and vibrations.
The inertia of the generators connected to the grid helps stabilize frequency changes caused by blackouts, power plant issues, etc. by resisting and thereby slowing down frequency decline. It buys time for grid operators to find a way to balance loads in a way that doesn’t weaken or disable the grid as a whole.
Here’s a great NREL report explaining how this all works, and what other systems we use to stabilize grid frequency.
I think people underestimate the value of intertia in power generation. I liken it to the way capacitors regulate voltage changes or coilovers absorb bumps and vibrations.
the best way to think about it is a literal flywheel, because that’s what this is, just at a grid scale, and directly tied to the frequency.
The inertia of the generators connected to the grid helps stabilize frequency changes caused by blackouts, power plant issues, etc. by resisting and thereby slowing down frequency decline. It buys time for grid operators to find a way to balance loads in a way that doesn’t weaken or disable the grid as a whole.
TLDR it moves the “OH SHIT OH FUCK” window from about < 1ms worth of time in the worst cases, to the much more manageable, seconds window.
It’s a potential challenge with moving to renewables, but not a significant one, i think. This is also a big advantage to having sources based on thermal generation, like nuclear.
Most of our power generations comes from “make water hot, hot water boils into steam, steam spins magnet”
Nuclear power is just a different source of heat.
Only alternatives that I’m aware of:
- solar cells (converting photon energy into electricity)
- acid batteries (converting chemical energy into electricity)
- peltier devices (converting heat differential energy into electricity)
- induction (converting electrical energy into electricity on a different circuit)
- bioelectricity (using biochemical energy to produce electricity)
- static buildup (using friction between various materials to produce a voltage differential)
I think there’s a way to use lasers to generate electricity, too.
Piezo converting pressure or vibration to electricity
I think it’s note-worthy that while the list is long, only 3 of them are practical to supply/regulate electricity on a large/industrial scale: solar, spinny things, and acid batteries.
We use all three of them in today’s and in the future’s electricity network.
Producing acid batteries, or any batteries isn’t power generation. It’s turning chemical potential (which was generally produced in an energy-consuming process) into a storage device for electrical potential.
Induction is just changing the properties of your electricity, not generation.
They are all just ways of converting energy from one form into electricity. Every single one of the ways we “generate” electricity ultimately comes from gravitational energy. By the time we use it to power electrical circuits, it all has gone through various energy-consuming/losing processes.
The list wasn’t so much a “ways to create electric energy that aren’t spinning turbines” as a “power sources for electric circuits that aren’t spinning turbines”, which is why I included chemical and electrical, even though they often aren’t very useful without another source of electric power.
Fair enough. As you said, none of these are net producers of electricity if your thermodynamic system is big enough to count as closed.
I think there’s a way to use lasers to generate electricity, too.
i’ve read some really cursed direct photonic conversion theory from nuclear energy. It’s uh, novel. Definitely a pipe dream though.
Humans only have one good way to turn hot into lightning.
to be fair ; its both.
It is not the top one in the typical usage of the word “nuclear energy.” Sure, it is nuclear energy, but that normally refers to electrical infrastructure, not nuclear weapons. Nuclear electricity is pretty much always just heating water up in a safe and controlled manner, and using that to spin a turbine.
Until something goes wrong and it is not safe and controlled anymore. You know, because of the whole exponential chain reaction thing.
So do you still believe in bloodletting to cure colds or the earth being 10,000 years old?
Nuclear plant accidents have happened tho. Remember Fukushima? It was 13 years ago, not that long. It didn’t strait up explode like a nuclear bomb, and neither did Chernobyl, but still; contamination is a pretty big deal. You can argue that the risk isn’t that bad or that fossil energy plants also have risks; but you can’t just dismiss it as a superstition.
You get much more radiation and excess deaths from Coal and Natural gas plants than Fukushima and Chernobyl, it’s just that it’s not as obvious as it happens slowly over time.
In fact there are more deaths caused by wind energy sources than nuclear energy sources.
There was still 164,000 people who needed to evacuate 230 square miles. The land is contaminated and cleanup is proving difficult. Japan will be dealing with the environmental impact for a century I’d wager.
Put them in more appropriate places (not like everything has to be nuclear) and don’t act like the USSR.
Nuclear is a very valuable component of a mixed energy structure. There are absolutely use cases for it and we should not avoid it.
This one says, now it’s only 27 square kilometers ( fuck your stupid ass miles) https://edition.cnn.com/2022/06/14/asia/japan-fukushima-katsurao-village-return-intl-hnk/index.html
And this is from 2022
Look up fly ash storage ponds. That’s just normal coal usage. Then look up fly ash spills. Then look up how much radioactive material is released into the atmosphere each year from burning coal. Compare that to the estimated amounts of radioactive material released into the environment from all the nuclear plant accidents, and tell me we still wouldn’t be better off switching all coal off and using nuclear.
Now, we don’t really have to do that, because we have other options now. But we definitely should have used more nuclear 50 years ago, just for the reduced cost of human lives.
Fukushima? It was 13 years ago, not that long. It didn’t strait up explode like a nuclear bomb, and neither did Chernobyl, but still;
fukushima was a BWR design, put on the coast of a place known for having tsunamis, and wasn’t properly equipped with emergency generators (they flooded, oopsies) which they couldn’t get to, in order to service the reactor, due to the roads being fucking yeeted.
Literally any other plant on earth is going to have a better outcome.
Modern reactor designs have no such problem, hence the reference to ancient science.
The idea of an explosion is. That’s what this thread is about. It’s not just about meltdowns, which, like you said, is very low risk, and lower than ever from what we’ve learned in the past.
Sure, nuclear energy is valid and all, but you sound like an absolute spanner…
If you want to argue that nuclear energy has its place, maybe don’t ridicule people who remember how much of an issue the last major nuclear meltdown was (and partially is).
Let’s compare it to oil, gas, coal…
The body count and environmental damage doesn’t even compare. The bad examples are just more spectacular and singularly horrifying in the moment. It’s a perception issue.
Fukushima has barely any fall out though, does it. And the nuclear energy sector is moving towards even safer methods with SMRs that are self contained and just can’t have a runaway reaction AFAIK
Can’t have a runaways reaction like the Titanic was unsinkable.
Well there is a difference between marketing and physics
Flippant “it sounds true-isms” are not useful for discussion and can even spread misinformation.
So please: explain your comment or stop repeating it
i mean, the titanic was also definitionally, not unsinkable, they just called it that.
But Fukushima did render a fairly large area uninhabitable, and the ongoing cleanup is still costing billions every year.
Also, there’s still no solution to nuclear waste beyond burying it and hoping that no one digs it up.
Renewables exist, and, combined with upgrading the grid and adding sufficient storage facilities, can provide for 100% of electricity demand at all times. Without any of the risks associated with nuclear power (low as they may be, they exist), and without kicking a radioactive can down the road for hundreds of generations.
Uninhabitable? Most of the evacuations were unnecessary, and there would have been less loss-of-life if most people sheltered in-place. In the year following the event, nearby residents received less than 20% of lifetime natural background radiation, about 2 chest CT scans, or a bit more than an airline crew, and less than a heavy smoker.
As for waste, dry casks are plenty good. The material is glassified, so it can’t leach into ground water, and the concrete casing means you get less radiation by sitting next to one, as even natural background radiation is partially blocked. Casks are also dense enough for on-site storage, needing only a small lot to store the lifetime fuel use of any plant. A pro and a con of this method is that the fuel is difficult to retrieve from the glass, which is bad for fuel reprocessing, but good for preventing easy weapons manufacturing.
Meanwhile, coal pollution kills some 8 million people annually, and because the grid is already set up for it, when nuclear plants close they are replaced with coal or oil plants.
Upgrading the grid is expensive, and large-scale storage is difficult, and often untested. Pumped hydro is great for those places that can manage it, but the needed storage is far greater, and in locations without damable areas. Not only would unprecidented storage be necessary, but also a grid that’s capable of moving energy between multiple focus points, instead of simply out of a plant. These aren’t impossible challenges, but the solutions aren’t here yet, and nuclear can fill the gap between decommissioning fossil fuels and effective baseline storage.
Solar and Wind don’t have the best disposal record either, with more efficient PV cells needing more exotic resources, and the simple bulk of wind turbines making them difficult to dispose of. And batteries are famously toxic and/or explosive. Once again, these challenges have solutions, but they aren’t mature and countries will stick with proven methods untill they are. That means more fossil fuels killing more people unnecessary. Nuclear can save those people today, and then allow renewable grids to be built when they are ready.
100% minus the energy requirements of AI 🫠
Also, there’s still no solution to nuclear waste beyond burying it and hoping that no one digs it up.
what about shit like lead? Or arsenic? That shit doesn’t go away, yet we still use it all over the place, maybe not arsenic, but still lead is huge.
But Fukushima did render a fairly large area uninhabitable, and the ongoing cleanup is still costing billions every year.
ironically, there has been research to determine that a lot of the initial evacuation actually exposed people to MORE radiation, than had they not evacuated, interestingly, they did see an increase in cancer rates, and what not, down the road. However, it wasn’t statistically significant compared to other stats from other places.
So even if it did matter, it seems in terms of healthcare, it was a statistical anomaly, more than a concern.
Plus now we have some really cool radiation detecting networks that are volunteer(?) led, it’s been a while since i’ve read into this, but these systems give us a MUCH better idea of what’s happening now with radiation, than when it happened. So if it did happen again, the results would be even better.
or the earth being 10,000 years old?
Humanity, or at least written scripture, is roughly 10,000 years old. So if you take humanity = earth, then yes it’s approximately true. But also, it’s an incredibly egoistic viewpoint because earth is not just humanity.
Edit: by humanity, I mean human culture and not so much human biology.
so basically, if you define a leaf as a caterpillar, it’s basically the same thing, got it.
yeah, you got it!
sick
My parents have witnessed not one but two nuclear catastrophes in their lifetime. Wtf are you talking about?
how many cancers have they witnessed from the likes of coal power? Or things like asbestos? Shit like arsenic, or worse, lead. They probably have a significant IQ drop from leaded fuel, assuming they’re american.
that’s the thing though, the exponential chain reaction isn’t possible.
The problem is that when fuel breaks the strictly controlled fuel rod environment, it stops being cooled properly, and regulating it becomes more interesting (not impossible, there are some clever solutions out there, look at metal cooled reactors for example) and as a result, the spicy particle generation tends to break containment, which is why we have things like PCVs, which contain the corium long enough to at least prevent the elephants foot troll, which is then contained by the secondary containment (the building around it) which is also contained by the rest of the building, surrounding the containment building.
It’s pretty hard to fuck up a reactor. Even harder when the idle state of the reactor is safe, as is with metal cooled reactors. Those are some of the most promising designs, because you can literally just do nothing with them, and nothing bad happens.
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That’s just another way to turn heat into electricity. Those thermocouples could also be used on a campfire.
You think that’s hot shit: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2468606921000538
In theory, if you made it small enough, you could make a gamma rectenna. Considering gamma rays are often smaller than an atom, you’d have to make the antenna out of something other than atoms though. Good luck.
that’s just a modified Peltier device :)
This exists, but it’s generally only used in spacecraft.
Most terrestrial uses of RITEGs have resulted in tragedy.
Spicy rocks make water hot.
If it hasn’t been already said: the issue is public perception. If you ask any American in the street what they relate to nuclear power the majority will tell you: Chorynobyl. Even though anyone that’s looked up anything knows that technology is leaps ahead of that disaster, that’s the fear mongering that everyone jumps to.
i mean… This is how most electricity production works.
Hydro, solar, wind…
hydro works in the exact same way, just with water instead of steam, solar works using PV technology, so it’s fairly novel.
And wind is basically the same thing, just using the air, instead of steam.
It’s all mechanically the same at the end of the day, excluding solar. The primary difference is that we don’t burn fuel for heat to make steam, we use potential, or kinetic energy from our environment instead.
Also to be clear, if we’re being pedantic and nitpicky, when i say most i mean percent of production. The vast majority of production globally is through coal, oil, and natural gas. All using thermal processes. And some nuclear, though not as much as solar/wind though.
Water is last year’s news. Helium is the new water now.
Hot salt is where it’s at
Are there any molten salt reactor designs that do not use water as a coolant?
Molten salt reactors use salt as the coolant
Maybe the primary coolant but all the designs i’ve seen so far use water for the secondary coolant / working fluid.
fission is bad for us
“sHoW yOUr WoRK!”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runit_Island#Runit_Dome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accidents_by_country
The first light bulbs ever lit by electricity generated by nuclear power at EBR-1 at Argonne National Laboratory-West, 20 December 1951.
That is a lot of “accidents” for an energy source less than one 80 years old. We only have so many places to store the waste. And the accidents.
Yeah, but keep in mind that nuclear waste has some time left to do damage. It’s not like a hydro plant is going to come back and haunt you in a 100 years from now. That’s what worries me with nuclear, aside from the fact that it’s too slow to build to be a solution to the climate crisis.
Solar, wind and hydro should be top priority in my opinion.
Edit: Want to add energy storage to top prio as well, as that is needed to balance the grid.
It’s not like a hydro plant is going to come back and haunt you in a 100 years from now.
the ecological impact of it, probably will. But that depends on whether you consider altering the ecological environment a “bad” thing or not.
That is a good point, it probably will, and I do consider it bad.
there is actually a significant history with hydropower, back when it was growing as fast as it could. We discovered that it had significant ecological impacts, in particular on things like salmon migration here in the US, so now we have to seed rivers, and have done that since we’ve built most of those plants.
There’s a reason it’s fallen out of favor. Although pumped hydro i think is uniquely equipped since it’s not nearly as disruptive as building a massive dam in a huge river.
Oxygen is bad for us, but it’s a lot better than the alternative.
fukushima was entirely a skill issue, just don’t
TMI was entirely a skill issue, and didn’t even release any significant radiation as far as we can tell. Didn’t even breakthrough the PCV, so this probably shouldn’t even be on the list.
chernobyl was a bad design, and a skill issue, plus a few other skill issues.
the runit dome was from atomic bomb testing right? Not even real nuclear power, it may have been a fission bomb, but i’m not looking into it far enough. Weird that you don’t mention nagasaki or hiroshima in that case.
the hanford site, i’m not familiar with, but im guessing this is a development plant? And probably just procedural skill issues? There have been a number of smaller accidents, most of which are due to people being stupid.
The half life of fall-out from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs was a couple of decades.
The half life of nuclear waste from powerplants is anywhere from thousands of years to millions of years, depending on the mix of isotopes.
anywhere from thousands of years to millions of years
only in a strictly thermal reactor environment, if you’re using a fast reactor, something like the SSR that is currently being worked on in canada, it can both burn waste, and reduce it’s lifespan to a much more reasonable length.
As always, development is the problem, if we had more energy being focused on this, we would be farther along, but such is scientific development.
Don’t feed the troll. It won’t come back, it’s too expensive.
I mean, there’s barely any difference between the heating of the earth’s mantle, i.e. geothermal, to the heating by fission. We are just kind of doing the process manually on the surface of the planet where a tiny mistake will cover it in contamination.
