Submitted by chopchopped t3_y67tc9 in Futurology
I like the initiative to produce hydrogen for transportation and energy storage. But we should decarbonize the electrical baseload grid before using its assets to produce hydrogen with.
A nuclear power plant already has 0 carbon output. No reason we should stop it from doing this.
If we had more, we could decarbonize the grid easily and actually have a robust power grid. It's too bad the fear mongering campaigns have worked so well.
Sorry if I was not clear on what I wrote. I'm not speaking about nuclear power plants being carbon intensive, I say that if you still run carbon intensive powerplants (like coal or gas) alongside for your baseload electricity needs. Globally it comes back to the same as using your carbon intensive powerplants to produce hydrogen. You even add one additional poorly efficient factor in the mix compared to having your carbon intensive energy sources directly used for transportation (engines).
>A nuclear power plant already has 0 carbon output.
Not to be persnickety, Just helping create a better argument, but that's not entirely true there, It's neglible compared to other baseload supplies, but Backup SEGs, maintenance vehicles and such do make it >0. Be better argument to say near zero, or a similar caveat. If anything to block that grasping-at-straws argument from derailing a discussion.
It absolutely does make a cleaner watt, esp compared to Coal which will still be the worst in that aspect. Aside from emissions from the boilers, you have the trains bringing in the coal, all the equipment to mine it (though the conversion to electric is pretty cool, and late to the party imho). Another good point to bring up is how the US Navy has 83 Nuclear powered ships floating in the ocean, showing a properly maintained and serviced generator can, and will, be a very safe option. I mean not for the sailors, because of all the cancer that navy nukes get, but that's more due to everything around the reactors. And troops are disposable, Right every asshole who voted against the PACT Act?
Unfortunately we'll likely not see full decarbonization solely from generators due to the need for peaker plants that can fire up quickly to meet unexpected demands. Nuke for base load, Solar for daytime peak, Wind for evening peak, Hydro for grid incursions and any gaps that need filled quickly, and finally natural gas to back them all up. I do hope we can change that combination within my lifetime, but I'm pressing X for doubt on that reality appearing anytime soon.
With current technology, it’s doesn’t get much cleaner than the good old reliable atom ☢️
to be persnickety, they also they have employees that generate carbon and some such as security guards have guns that when discharged produce carbon, etc
>A nuclear power plant already has 0 carbon output.
>
>This is a lie the processes for mining and refining uranium ore and making reactor fuel all require extremely large amounts of energy. Nuclear power plants also are built with large amounts of metal and concrete, which require large amounts of energy to manufacture. Fossil fuels are used for mining and refining uranium ore, and fossil fuels are used when constructing the nuclear
power plant, so the emissions from burning those fuels should be
associated with the electricity that nuclear power plants generate.a lie
Useless comment. If you're going that far, then there isn't a source of power on earth that meets the green requirements.
Including solar, wind, batteries, etc all of which are more carbon intensive to manufacture at scale, especially factoring in mining and refining base materials, than nuclear power.
No, it is not useless, it is pointing out the obvious lie that the nuclear industry keeps promoting that nuclear fission is somehow "carbon free"
By your logic solar and wind are not carbon free
The plant can do both.
But not at the same time. Electricity used to produce hydrogen is not free energy, is electricity that won't end on the power greed. And as long as you have to supply the power grid with a carbon intensive energy source, if you use your nuclear power plant to produce hydrogen, in the end of the chain it comes back to the same than using your carbon intensive energy source to produce your hydrogen.
It's a good solution only if your electricity grid is already clean for baseload needs.
The waste heat from nuclear power generation has been used to manufacture hydrogen for years.
You could say this article is old and/or misleading, but in the internet age that’s kind of a given.
In any case, this is energy that is otherwise wasted or used for something else. It won’t affect the amount of electricity generated or used. The only thing consumed is water, which yeah will also be a problem in the coming years.
But then why not use it directly for district space heating/cooling while HVAC are running full blast all around ?
But I get your point, I thought they where using the electricity from the powerplant directly through an hydrolysis process.
Because there is probably not a significant local demand for that waste heat near the plant.
I don't know enough about it, but it sounds like hydrogen is being added to natural gas for home heating which appears to be an easy additive and seems to be gaining popularity.
Hydrogen can be produced from natural gas (blue hydrogen) or through hydrolysis (green hydrogen) if I recall correctly. Then can be either used in gaseous form (complex storage and transportation industry is not ready for that yet, although they are working on it) or in liquid form when mixed with amonnia.
Anyway, what I was starting is that, if you still need to run a gas powerplant alongside for baseload electricity production. All you're doing in your example is using electricity to produce hydrogen through a reaction (not 100% efficient) and using it mixed with gas for heating. Wouldn't it be more efficient to use the equivalent of gas needed to produce electricity in order to compensate the nuclear electricity required for hydrogen production directly for heating instead of adding an unnecessary step ? Surely, it's fantastic, but only once you don't need a carbon intensive (coal, gas,...) source for electricity production.
Not sure if this hydrogen being added to natural gas is being used for producing electricity or sent with gas to homes or both, but if sent to homes for heating then it's more efficient for it to be burned in the home than to be used to generate electricity then incur generation and transmission losses.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding your comment so I’ll try best to explain it. I’m not an expert.
Hydrogen is not being added to natural gas.
Natural gas is broken down using a thermal process and you get hydrogen fuel. The process is called Methane Pyrolysis.
Then you can use the stored energy in hydrogen fuel like a liquid battery. For example Hydrogen fuel cars have a platinum plate that pulls the electrons from the liquid and use that to generate an electric current to power the electric motor.
Hydrogen consumes electricity, it makes no sense to mix it to produce electricity. But using gas (if on the same power grid theee is gas an nuclear, whatever you're using comes back to using the dirtier source to create electricity because you're creating the electricity demand this way for the to dirty source to start open) to generate hydrogen and then mix it with gas for heating makes no sense. You lose a lot of energy content along the way.
But what if it was produced through a renewable source like wind, solar, or hydro?
Well, that's another question here. Note that nuclear isn't really polluting and so isn't the problem here, is the fact the energy demand you create on the grid is still supplied by dirty sources. While without this added demand then maybe you could have closed a carbon intensive powerplants instead.
Anyway, the problem here stays the same with hydroelectricity.
For wind and solar, it is a good idea, but still not if you use all their energy. See, a powergrid had two components; baseload, which is the current needed all day long, and variable load, which varies during the day/year. To overcome this, baseload centrales, with relatively stable electricity output, like nuclear and dams, are usually built to provide the need. Then you have multiple other electricity sources that are used partially for the baseload but also for the variable load. Like windturbines, solar, or gas powerstations.
The problem with solar and wind is that their production varies in time during the day and year. So you have to design your power supply chain for the worst case scenario. By doing so, and since you can't really modulate nuclear powerplants electricity output neither, most of the time you produce more then you consume. However this energy can't reasonably be stocked nowadays. (Well, you can always pump water up a dam, using it kind of like a battery).
Hydrogen powerplants, in this scenario, offer an opportunity to stock this excess energy by transforming it into hydrogen.
One point I didn't mention earlier, and which goes in favor of the nuclear hydrogen powerplants is that they increase massively the hydrogen production nationally. Reducing this it's price and creating availability. Boosting therefore up the interest into the technology for application that are hesitant due to availability and final costs being higher than for petroleum based applications. (They currently estimate that a subside of 3$/kg produced would be necessary to render hydrogen competitive (obviously, you could also tax carbon emissions to level the game instead)
Thanks for the comprehensive response!
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