Energy in the Future

[sdw]

Energy in the Future should be a combination of Nuclear, Solar Electric and Wind Electric. If you watched the aftermath of the Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami on the Nuclear plants, the big problem was when the plant shut down due to the Tsunami, there was no power to operate the cooling pumps. That lead to the cores becoming extremely hot and destroying the core. The system then flooded with salt water as designed. There wasn't outside power connected to the Nuclear Power Plant because nobody thought it would ever be needed. It took over a week to arrange for outside power and by then the Nuclear Power Plant was unrecoverable. All that was left was a massive clean up job. The emergency generators that the Japanese and USA flew in were simply not up to the task of delivering enough power.

If your Nuclear plant is not water cooled, but liquid metal cooled, you can harvest every bit of heat and convert it into energy. It's a multi Turbine setup that spins one Turbine after another with the waste heat from the previous Turbine. The waste heat from the final stage liquefies the metal for the first stage Turbine.

What you don't want happening is having the pumps shut down. So, you fill the Nuclear reservation around the Nuclear plant with Solar Electric Panels and Wind Turbines. That way you add to your power generation when the Nuclear Plant is running normally and have a ready source of already connected power when and if you need it.

What you would get is something like Noor 1 in Quarzazate Morocco. Just add a lot of Wind Turbines where they don't shade the Electric Panels. Noor 1 is in place. Noor II and Noor III are planned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouarzazate_solar_power_station

The Noor facility stores it's energy for nighttime use as molten salt. There will be a planned 8 hours of energy storage at full load.

Alberta has both Wind Turbines and Solar Electric Panels in commercial production of Electricity

http://www.skyfireenergy.com/solar-...tric-systems/2-mw-solar-farm-bassano-alberta/
Solar Farm at Bassano Alberta

http://windfacts.ca/alberta
Blackspring Ridge Vulcan County Alberta Wind Turbine Farm

Since Solar Electric Panels alienate the ground that they are on, they could surround the Nuclear Power Plant in it's Exclusion Area, then the Wind Turbines could be installed around the Nuclear and Solar Panel Plants. Wind Turbines don't alienate the ground that they are on, so the land could be productive in a variety of other tasks.

 

[Bone_eve]

Problem with alternative energy

Energy in the Future should be a combination of Nuclear, Solar Electric and Wind Electric.

these sources currently supply less than 5% and it won't increase by a lot very soon

see bringing-math-skills-to-the-problem as why

 

[sdw]

Wind generation is location specific because there needs to be sufficient wind velocity a sufficient percent of the time to make the expensive wind turbine a reasonable capital investment. Often those locations suitable for wind turbines are not particularly suitable locations for nuclear reactors (at least current power generating designs). Things like lack of adequate cooling water or the presence of geological faults being some of the potential issues.

An easier solution to the nuclear reactor issues raised is to go with a design where the control rods are held out of the reactor using electrical power where gravity will cause all the control rods to slide in by gravity force alone in the case of power loss, thus shutting down the reactor without human intervention. Cooling systems designed in a similar manner that use gravity to deliver coolant automatically in the case of power loss.

Or go to a molten thorium design. Totally different technology so a regulatory nightmare but the design has a number of advantages. Nuclear weapons grade uranium cannot be diverted / covertly removed from the reactor without causing the reactor to wind down. A melt-able plug in the floor of the reactor vessel will dump the liquid core in the case of runaway heating. The liquid would then be directed into several separate containment vessels where the smaller volume will not have sufficient mass to sustain chain reactions and thus automatically shutting the reactor down without requiring power or human intervention. Also, moving at least some of the world's nuclear power to thorium will extend our finite supply of uranium fuel.

As for solar power, it would not have helped in the Japanese reactor failure. The tsunami destroyed the equipment in the power house that routed power into the reactor building. Had the power house been properly located on higher ground, there would have been a greater chance of reestablishing power to the reactor control systems and cooling systems. All of the reactor failures to date have primarily been caused by failure of design and human error or negligence.

From an electrical energy supply perspective, there are locations where photoelectric installations will make economic sense and places that they will not. Same for wind and the same for nuclear. The likelihood of finding locations where all three align in sufficient numbers for nuclear generation to be a sufficient percentage for the mix is not good. Better to engineer the nuclear plants in a way that eliminates this issue in the first place.

There is a Nuclear Power Plant design that has been in use since 1961 in over 400 naval vessels. Prior to 1961, the early Nuclear ships and submarines had a number of different designs and technologies. Westinghouse and GE build the post 1961 Reactors to a standard design. That way everyone that works with an unit is trained at Goose Creek and doesn't have difficulty going from ship to ship.

As long as a Nuclear Design requires large heat sinks of water, Nuclear Power Plants will need to be located in exactly the wrong location for the safety required. Japan demonstrated that.

Solar Electric Panels don't need to be warm to harvest electricity from the Sun's photons. They just require very large arrays to be commercially useful. That's why Morocco has an ideal location, the desert is otherwise useless land. We could start with the three Canadian Deserts The Thompson River valley west of Kamloops B.C., in the vicinity of Osoyoos in the southern Okanagan valley of B.C. and the south eastern Alberta badlands.

 

[sdw]

these sources currently supply less than 5% and it won't increase by a lot very soon

see bringing-math-skills-to-the-problem as why

The great difficult, as outlined in the article, is storage. That's why Morocco went with molten salt. Molten sulfur would work as well and we have lots of sulfur sitting around Alberta.

 

[sevenofnine]

a buddy was investing in geo-thermal a few years back,

they were drilling wells shit ridiculously deep, I forget just how, pump down water and up comes steam, endless amounts of steam
,
problem being you need a large diameter hole way down there,, they have down it with small diameter holes but not bigger holes to make it profitable.

if they ever solve that problem that is the energy of the future.

I believe ice land has almost all its power from geothermal where it lies much close to the surface, lots of hot streams etc in Iceland.

 

[wetnose]

If they can figure out the construction issues, then thorium is really the future...abundant in the earth's crust, design has safety built in, reduced radioactive waste, cheaper to build