Fossil Fuels are Not the Enemy

[Hobohunter]

Now, let's jump over to nuclear power. What is the biggest downfall of nuclear in the power grid? It cannot be acelerated or throttled quickly. It is a good solid base load power generator, but cannot compensate for the peaks during the day. So, you would traditionally build nuclear to cover the minimum power requirements throughout the day, every day of the week, and rely on coal/gas/oil to cover the peaks throughout the day.


What is we instead built nuclear to the full value of the peaks?



You would end up with hours of the day where the nuclear plants are outputting all of this power, and it has nowhere to go. While we move to more EVs, we would expect the peaks and valleys to change some as people start charing millions of cars at home every evening, but it certainly wouldnot level things out completely. We would still have hours and hours of the day and weekends where the nuc plants are outputting more power than the grid needs.



What if…just supposing…during these off peak hours, we applied the extra electricity on the grid to electrohydrolis….of the hot cooling steam at the nuclear power plants?



You have now supplied electricity is the cleanest form we currrently can, with nuclear power, you have provided alternative transportable fuel sources, ala hydrogen and oxygen for fuel cells, and done it without incurring excess enviromental costs. You’ve also supplied all the power you need for increasing EVs

Thought I'd jump in here, I worked in both military and commercial nuclear power. Commercial nuclear power, at least in the U.S., is only limited in how fast they can change their power levels by design of the fuel, it is not an intrinsic limit in uranium fuel. Military reactors can and constantly do change their power levels at rates similar to other commercial but non-nuclear power plants.
In other words, it's not that it can't be done, it's just the way current commercial fuels are designed.
You're right that the fuel currently in our commercial reactors is incapable of rapid power changes, but it is not an obstacle that couldn't be overcome.
The temperature of the steam coming out of those cooling towers is not going to be hot enough to be particularly useful. It's only around 100F, it's not particularly energetic, there's just a ton of it. The commercial plant I worked at turned about 30k gallons of river water to steam every minute at full power.

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[Dr. Norts]

Come to Canada and then you'll really have a reason to complain about gas prices haha.

$1.90 a gallon
1 US gallon = 3.785 liters

Gas price where I live today (regular for comparison sake) = $1.19 a liter

Equal to $4.57 (Canadian dollars) a US gallon.

= $3.58 USD (converted from Canadian dollars at today's exchange rate)

Quit yer bitchin' lol

 

[Hobohunter]

you have to put more energy into the breaking of the atomic bonds than you get from 'burning' aka re-combining them. Basic physics. Which EV acolytes apparently never bothered to take.

We should be building nuclear non-uranium-cycle reactors by the fistful (no Plutonium byproducts, scram safely) but 'we' have refused to get out of the research reactor level. The military WANTS it's weapon and despite the incredibly dangerous spent-fuel and fuel-reprocessing processes and 1000 year hazards, we don't move on to the better technology. Ditto coal - we should be doing what the Germans did in WW2 and make synth-fuel. That way you're not burning the C and having to deal with all the loose Sulphur in the exhaust.

Every dollar spent on solar/wind (which are as useful as masturbating) properly belongs on fixing the nuclear problem.

There's nothing wrong with uranium fuel in commercial nuclear reactors. The U.S. doesn't reprocess spent nuclear fuel from commercial reactors to make weapons. While current commercial reactors do generate plutonium, it is used as a fuel in the same reactor. The plutonium is formed from neutron interaction with the uranium, and the same neutron interactions fission the plutonium while the fuel is in the reactor. Every fuel bundle used in a U.S. reactor remains on site, in special casks.
Those casks sit on site, out in the air, with no active forms of cooling. I know, I've walked amongst the ones stored at the site I worked at, many times. While that fuel is incredibly dangerous if you could get close enough to it, the casks are so robustly build that they can survive trainwrecks without breaching. You can find videos on Youtube of the testing that went into those casks, they put one on a semi truck and strapped rockets to it, and shot it into concrete without any problems.
The reactors that generated plutonium for usage in thermonuclear weapons work very differently from commercial nuclear power, their purpose was to make plutonium, any electrical generation was a beneficial side affect. You may recognize this as being very different from commercial power plants.

 

[sk47]

The Green Bubble (msn.com)
Hello; The link above seems to be worth adding to this discussion. I have only read a portion so far but that part includes a lot of information.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

What is the biggest downfall of nuclear in the power grid? It cannot be acelerated or throttled quickly. It is a good solid base load power generator, but cannot compensate for the peaks

Then explain this:

 

[Ishyne22]

That's a red herring. Learning to code is a way more viable skill. There's a reason Biden said we need to get rid of coal and oil; it's a failing industry. It's declining. We need to stop living in the past and get rid of our toxic dependent relationship with China. That starts with jobs at home. We need to stop cancerous fossil fuels.

You're probably one of the sheep that thinks a $15 minimum wage is a good idea too.

 

[Dr. Norts]

You're probably one of the sheep that thinks a $15 minimum wage is a good idea too.

From an outside perspective....just because someone's opinion / belief doesn't align with yours doesn't make them a sheep.

Calling someone that has to be the weakest argument known to man.

Just sayin

 

[Bikeman315]

You're probably one of the sheep that thinks a $15 minimum wage is a good idea too.

Ross, you are entitled to your viewpoints and opinions but this forum does not allow political conversations. We actually had a political sub forum that was removed because many members found it difficult to behave in an respectable manner. That includes name calling. How about we leave that for Facebook And Twitter?

 

[shogun32]

Every fuel bundle used in a U.S. reactor remains on site, in special casks.

until heat death of the universe. Or since we terminated our own processing industry, ship it off to the Russians to deal with. There are LOTS of problems with the uranium fuel cycle that does not exist with other fissionable fuels. You can't ever lose water circulation of the spent fuel pool. Which means if the grid goes down you have a spent fuel meltdown. Our reactors are decades past their certified life and the technology is badly outdated. There are better ways to do uranium and we've never implemented it.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

From an outside perspective....just because someone's opinion / belief doesn't align with yours doesn't make them a sheep.

Calling someone that has to be the weakest argument known to man.

Please take your sexism elsewhere!

 

[Bikeman315]

Please take your sexism elsewhere!

“Calling someone that has to be the weakest argument known to Human Kind.”

Better?

 

[HoosierDaddy]

“Calling someone that has to be the weakest argument known to Human Kind.”

Better?

Other than still using a pronouns such as "someone" without the intended reader's permission but I didn't bring that up with the sexism so as not to pile on.

Or maybe I just "woke" up on the wrong side of the bed today.

 

[shogun32]

Or maybe I just "woke" up on the wrong side of the bed today.

ya think? 'man' is short for 'mankind' which is the common short form for 'human-kind'. There's like 4 ladies on this forum out of47,000 members.

 

[sk47]

Hello; Man works just fine in that sentence. No need to change centuries of common use. The idea of communication is to get a point or message across in a manner common enough to be understood.
I plan to use the common terms such as man, woman, him, her and so on in the long understood context.

 

[RaceHorseV8]

From an outside perspective....just because someone's opinion / belief doesn't align with yours doesn't make them a sheep.

Calling someone that has to be the weakest argument known to man.

Just sayin

An opinion/argument is just that, an opinion. Make your counter argument if you want but don't just go to berating someone. By the way, instead of "sheep" he should have used the words "ignorant people". That is an objective term, not subjective. And the argument against $15 is supported by economics theory and the GAO agrees.

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