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Renewables Won’t Save Us If The Electric Grid Is Not Ready
https://www.forbes.com ^ | Sep 30, 2020 | David BlackmonSenior Contributor

Posted on 10/06/2020 5:42:28 PM PDT by RomanSoldier19

In recent weeks, the media landscape has been awash with stories declaring the beginning of the end of the age of hydrocarbons in America and around the world.

The facts on the ground, however, paint a different story.

As of this year, renewable generation accounted for only 17.5% of the US’ energy mix. While Deloitte predicts this number will grow to just shy of 50% by 2050, it would be naïve to assume that fossil fuels won’t continue to play a significant role in our lives for the foreseeable future.

The road to the energy system of the future is not a straightforward one and policymakers, utilities and governments have a critical role to play in ensuring we don’t run headlong into the obstacles and challenges that a changing energy system will inevitably bring.

(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: elonmusk; ev; falcon9; falconheavy; joke; spacex


1 posted on 10/06/2020 5:42:28 PM PDT by RomanSoldier19
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To: RomanSoldier19

Get rid of the grid. Local micro nuclear plants for all.


2 posted on 10/06/2020 5:52:34 PM PDT by Fester Chugabrew (I'd rather have a rude President than a polite tyrant.)
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To: RomanSoldier19

BBC was spruiking the following this week on its World Business Report. plenty of laughs:

3 Apr: Bloomberg: China Wants to Power the World
A Global Energy Interconnection would create a supergrid that spans the globe.
By Adam Minter
(China’s State Grid Corporation) Chairman Liu Zhenya has a plan that he believes will stall global warming, put millions of people to work and bring about world peace by 2050...
Among other benefits, according to Liu, the system will produce “a community of common destiny for all mankind with blue skies and green land.”...
State Grid estimates it would cost $50 trillion to develop a truly global grid...
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2016-04-03/china-s-state-grid-wants-to-power-the-whole-world


3 posted on 10/06/2020 5:59:33 PM PDT by MAGAthon
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To: Fester Chugabrew

Good luck with that.


4 posted on 10/06/2020 5:59:55 PM PDT by EEGator
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To: RomanSoldier19

Wow,”smart” people are so smart. I am a nobody and could come to this conclusion in way fewer words.


5 posted on 10/06/2020 6:05:13 PM PDT by shanover (...To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.-S.Adams)
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To: MAGAthon

6 posted on 10/06/2020 6:25:42 PM PDT by RomanSoldier19 (Game over, man! Game over! ; : rem ad triarios redisse is)
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To: RomanSoldier19

The grid is a white elephant in the making. A hot potato that no one wants to be responsible for when energy production and storage are localized.


7 posted on 10/06/2020 6:30:48 PM PDT by Born to Conserve
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To: RomanSoldier19
the only one that works is hydro electric....no sun or no wind no electricity
8 posted on 10/06/2020 6:30:53 PM PDT by Hojczyk
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To: RomanSoldier19

Not too long ago, 0bama and sleepy Joe were looking for shovel ready jobs.
They claimed no shovel ready jobs to be found

They did not build the wall
They did not manage the forests in california
They did not rebuild the grid


9 posted on 10/06/2020 7:01:06 PM PDT by Steven Tyler
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To: RomanSoldier19

“Renewable” is deceptive. The vast bulk of that 17.5% is hydro and that is not expanding. The rest are boondoggles whose expense is crushing the grid.


10 posted on 10/06/2020 9:29:38 PM PDT by UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide (Reverse Wickard v Filburn (1942) - and - ISLAM DELENDA EST)
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To: UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide

11 posted on 10/06/2020 9:34:08 PM PDT by RomanSoldier19 (Game over, man! Game over! ; : rem ad triarios redisse is)
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To: RomanSoldier19
Anyone who believes this fairy tail crap about renewable energy are really dumber than they look. I mean there is no way to describe the immenseness of their stupidity; its really beyond belief!
12 posted on 10/07/2020 12:39:17 AM PDT by Herakles (Diversity is applied Marxism!)
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To: Hojczyk

Nuclear power works 90+% at full power base loads. The typical plant runs at 100% output for 18 months then shuts down for two weeks to refuel and shuffle rods around 1/3 are replaced the other 2/3 are moved around to even the burn out. Nuclear power is 100% renewable every year more uranium than humanity can burn up is washed into the oceans where it is in equilibrium with the subsea sediments at aleast 4ppm concentration. The USA and Japan both have technology that can extract uranium is commercial rates the reason we do not is cost. Seawater uranium is $250 lb of yellow cake , Australian mined uranium is $80 simple economics. But when the cheap easy to mine stuff runs out and the need for $250 lb uranium takes off there’s an unlimited supply in the oceans enough for billions of years of use even at a consumption rate of thousands of times what humans use every year in total energy. As humans use seawater uranium lowering the concentration in the water more leaches out of the sediments and off the land in runoff from rivers replacing what we take out. There simply is no way possible for man to deplete the uranium levels in the oceans they are too massive. As for waste I’m a geologist I can name at least 5 places in north America that have geologically stable rocks of over a billion years of stability. Deep bore hole disposal in bentonite lined holes at 4,000 meters depth with 2000 meters of concrete plug is the answer to waste disposal. Waste is a political problem not a scientific one. That’s even without going to fast breeder or transmutation reactors for deep buring the wastes before deep geological disposal. Nuclear is the only truly renewable energy source that can provide the constant and also the volume needed for modern society. Nuclear power can also make seawater into drinking water at a fraction of the cost of buring hydrocarbons to dp it let alone solar or wind. The fuel costs of nuclear are less than 1% of the total cost per megawatt hour even going from $80lb uranium to $500 the upper limit for seawater recovery only raises the cost by a few percents. This is because the raw uranium cost is only a small fraction of the cost to make nuclear fuel, even a 6x increase in raw uranium is only 1/3 the input cost of making new fuel.


13 posted on 10/07/2020 1:43:10 AM PDT by JD_UTDallas ("Veni Vidi Vici")
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To: JD_UTDallas

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-seawater-extraction-makes-nuclear-power-completely-renewable/amp/&ved=2ahUKEwizloCfkaLsAhUKT6wKHT4UCTUQFjACegQIBBAF&usg=AOvVaw1yTltbbLtDxmZOjNLy5EKv&ampcf=1

https://www.osti.gov/etdeweb/servlets/purl/20265931&ved=2ahUKEwj3nPX1kKLsAhUHd6wKHdCUCCUQFjABegQIARAB&usg=AOvVaw0ZYPJ598mHsGEuhdrY7wNj


14 posted on 10/07/2020 2:14:53 AM PDT by JD_UTDallas ("Veni Vidi Vici")
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To: JD_UTDallas
Partitioning the "waste" (it isn't really that, for the most part) reduces volume by about 90%. It recovers unfissioned uranium and plutonium (which is not weapons-grade plutonium), which can be recycled back ino MOX-based fuel. Of the remaining 10%, full actinide recycle gets rid of most of the activity left, and, more importantly, the remaining heat load. What you have left can go into a facility like WIPP.

Right now the economics favor terrestrial mining and once-through fuel use. But higher demand may make reprocessing and seawater extraction economically viable. Jimmy Carter implemented a national policy discouraging reprocessing. Supposedly Reagan issued an EO cancelling Carter's EO-based ban on reprocessing, but I cannot find a copy of it that has words to that effect in it. Still, it doesn't matter, the die was cast. Nobody will build a reprocessing plant worth billions of dollars if some political hack can shut down your business with the stroke of a pen.

15 posted on 10/07/2020 2:55:33 AM PDT by chimera
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To: chimera

George W. Completely rescinded Carter’s none sense. Seawater uranium extraction has come down to nearly $100 a lb and is dropping. The once through is only possible because the NRC has allowed the temporary storage of wastes in dry casks and unshielded fuel ponds it’s simply unsustainable yucca mtn will only hold 70,000 tons of HLW we have no.choice but to partition out high heat load fission products for decay and vitify the long lived trans uranium elements or chose some form of transmutation be it deep burn in epithermal spectrum, fast burn in fast spectrum or using particle beams and accelerator driven sub critical systems. UT Austin has a fusion fisson hybrid design that incinerates 10 lwr worth of transuranium worth for each hybrid. It not a matter of if but when we have to manage the spent fuel there already is too much to store without partitioning in yucca mtn. The better alternative is to partition into LLW of spent uranium and HLW with two streams a short half life fisson product stream put in air cooled casks for a few hundred years and a long lived transuranium plus the long lived fisson products into a boron silica glass waste form then into deep bore holes in geologically stable continental.shield rocks. There is no alternate to at minimum partitioning. Fortunately GWB told that moron Carter to piss up wind. The NRC stalling is the reason we don’t they are letting the stake holders kick the can down the road for at least 20 years more thats when the fuel ponds and dry cask storage space fills up. Read the second links PDF they have an economic break down of the deep burn partition deep burn and direct burial it is.already competitive with LWR even without breeding which the gas cooled helium reactors can also do with full reprocessing in a closed fuel cycle.


16 posted on 10/07/2020 9:49:47 AM PDT by JD_UTDallas ("Veni Vidi Vici")
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To: JD_UTDallas
I don't see any alternative to partitioning and some kind of actinide recycle. The heat load is just too much. YM is politically doomed but as long as the NWPA stands as it is the government is on the hook for on-site cask storage, which is not sustainable in the long term. Better to amend the NWPA to focus on the partitioning/recycle effort and get some kind of repository set up along the lines of WIPP, which has better rock anyway.
17 posted on 10/07/2020 10:32:48 AM PDT by chimera
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