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synoptic

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Posts posted by synoptic

  1. 17 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

    Yes, I understand that and stated so directly in my post. But the author of the article asserted otherwise regarding the economic vitality of the energy asset. Regardless, I do think the calculations cited in that article are generally not reliable. It appears to be based on a study that took pains to exaggerate the life cycle of a nuclear powerplant and the associated energy outputs, while taking the lowest possible number for the life cycle of both solar and wind assets. And, as a 6 year old article based on a 7 year old study, its calculations for wind, solar, and fossil fuels are outdated regardless. 

    I'm not convinced the metric is particular useful other than perhaps identifying energy assets that cannot return positive energy over their lifetime. Once an asset gets past 1, other considerations are going to be far more important. As a predictive measure of asset development, it is clearly useless based on the numbers from the article. As an economic measure, again, it also appears to be functionally useless given that the numbers in the article are essentially the opposite of economic reality. So, what purpose does this metric serve? When would you rely upon it and why? 

    EROEI is a fundamentally important criteria when evaluating potential energy resources and production methods, but of course not the only important criteria.  For long term economically viability in modern society it is necessary to have an energy source with high EROEI.  But it is a necessary condition for long term viability, not a sufficient condition. EROEI becoming less important as long as it's over one is clearly not the case, as EROEI of one is break even (i.e. useless).  We need lots and lots of net energy production and this is very hard to achieve with low EROEI sources. For more information on EROEI and its significance, watch the original linked video.   

  2. 50 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

    I'm sorry, that article is ridiculous on its face. 

    "Also referred to as Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI), EROI is the ratio of energy returned to energy invested in that energy source, along its entire life-cycle.* When the number is large, energy from that source is easy to get and cheap. However, when the number is small, the energy from that source is difficult to get and expensive."

    It then follows that with a chart that shows Nuclear with the highest EROI.  Do you need anything else to know that it is complete non-sense? Nuclear, the thing that no one has been able to build economically in decades, should be "easy to get and cheap?"  I'm not saying that this metric itself isn't useful or interesting, but its importance for decision making or predictive analysis seems extremely limited. And the numbers from that particular article and referenced study are highly questionable and certainly outdated. 

    EROEI is not a measure of what is economically feasible to build under any given circumstance (such as in the US from 1990-present).  It is an energy ratio (output/input) to develop and run an energy asset.  You can have an energy asset with a high EROEI that is a bad commercial investment or not economically viable due to a range of other reasons.  Doesn’t mean the calc on nuclear is wrong or that it is not a useful metric. 

  3. 39 minutes ago, wild_turkey said:

     


    I tend to agree, but there needs to be heavy direct involvement from the governments worldwide.

    I personally don’t see a path forward without nuclear. We have a goal of eliminating coal and reducing/eliminating natural gas, and those energy sources can’t be replaced entirely with wind, solar, and hydroelectric.

    Our energy requirements are significantly increasing worldwide and certain places (Texas!) can’t even reliably supply power in extreme cold or hot conditions.

     

     

    Agreed on everything here.

    To give some scale of the current resistance to nuclear, not only is there a push to block new reactors, but there is strong push to shut down existing reactors ahead of schedule.  For example, Indian Point was shutdown 14 years ahead of schedule:
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-entergy-indianpoint/new-york-citys-closest-nuclear-power-plant-to-shut-by-2021-idUSKBN14T1YA

    Predictably, natural gas consumption increased considerably as a result:
    https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=47776


    To me, it is a crime against humanity to shut down a reactor ahead of schedule that is safely producing many MWs of carbon free baseload power at a very high capacity factor, just to replace it with loads of CO2 emissions via NG power production.  But the public supported it and government presented it as the responsible choice.  

    So basically, we need to swing public opinion all the way from “let’s shut down all nuclear ahead of schedule, even without proper backup plan in place” to “let’s build new nuclear reactors at an unprecedented rate.”  That is a big swing.  Doesn’t help that Chernobyl is top streaming show, either.  
     

     

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  4. I am very pro nuclear.  If I were running things, I would build nuclear reactors all over the world to power everything and electrify heavy industry and transportation.  Convert nuclear power to hydrogen via electrolysis for heavy trucks, airplanes, ships (probably need to convert some hydrogen to ammonia for ships and other applications).  But the reality is that most of the public doesn't want nuclear, and every nuclear project triples its initial budget and schedule.  Without heavy direct involvement from government, there are too many financial/permitting obstacles for private industry to get nuclear reactors built these days.  And I am skeptical sufficient percentage of government officials get fully behind nuclear due to public perception.  

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  5. On 11/8/2021 at 2:06 PM, Grimas said:

    Watch this (posted on another thread) - it's a bit slow at first but sets the foundation for their conclusions...

     

    This is a good video on this topic.  Here is an article that more succintly states some of the same principles.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2015/02/11/eroi-a-tool-to-predict-the-best-energy-mix/?sh=63757687a027

    Bottom line is that renewables don't produce very much usable energy as a ratio of the energy it takes to develop the assets.  Nuclear, on the other hand, has the highest energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) of all known energy sources.  

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  6. 10 hours ago, Chewbacca said:


    Yep. We are making a lot of money right now on renewable and transmission projects. But it's going to take years. Decades.

     

    Agreed.  I think it is going to take the rest of the 21st century to achieve many of the goals.

     

    3 hours ago, Neonmoon said:

    This really isn’t based in reality. People need energy. Energy companies provide said energy. While there is a long goal of transition to renewables, people still need lots of energy today. I think the transition will happen, and but there will certainly be bumps in the road. One side will point out all the stumbles in the transition and scream unreliable. The other side will point out all the progress and scream fossil fuels are over. Both are correct and incorrect at the same time. There will be unreliability. We will always need some fossil fuels. The rest is just cheerleading from teams. 

    Yep, many bumps in the road and many folks using every setback to claim how it is all wrong.  It is going to take massive investment, technical innovation, and political collaboration over the next several decades.  Also, relatively few companies are willing to take full turn key construction projects these days, so a massive expansion of large scale industrial project execution capabilities will be needed.    

  7. 30 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    Correct.  The wealth distribution will be the focus and purpose.  Any real "energy transition" will be incidental and of minimal benefit.

    Suppose I claimed in 1995 that in 25 years most Americans would be able stream unlimited data at 25 mb/s to their computer or phone.  Also, the computer in your phone would be over 100x as powerful as your current desktop and you would probably never buy a camera again because that would also be on your phone, and also most people won't even have landlines anymore because phone signals are very reliable and cheap.  And laptop computers would be many orders of magnitude more powerful and somehow also cheaper.  And TVs are gigantic and approach reality level resolution and are also cheap and in basically ever household. 

    A cynic may argue no, because the rich only get richer and this information age nonsense is all just a ruse to transfer money, and clearly nothing can ever get better because of the evil hearts of men.  Well, maybe the rich will get richer, and maybe even some dreaded billionaires will be made, and maybe it's true that all men are evil and terrible 100% of the time.  None of this has anything to do with the claims.  

    The energy transition is already underway and will happen.  I can't guarantee that no one will make any money, though.      

     

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  8. 3 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    Good luck.  We will get fucked.  The rich will get richer.  This process will be nothing but a massive wealth transfer, with little actual benefit to anyone but the folks on the receiving end of the $$$$.  We could find an easy-to-access source of virtually free and unlimited energy, and we would all end up paying MORE than we do today, for a product that manages to do double duty of enriching the already-rich and fucking the consumer and the environment.  That is how the real world works, and there's no unfucking it.

    The rich can get richer while technology improves and advances.  This thread is about the energy transition, not wealth distribution.  

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  9. 10 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    Hope.  Y'all fuckers in her talking bout hope.  Cracking me up.  The only dead-on, balls-accurate post in here is

    There's too much money in keeping things fucked.  There's too much cost in the effort to get them unfucked.  You can stop reading after those two facts.

    Look at our own Texas grid for how well we manage energy needs when confronted with the unstoppable warrior duo of Mega-Profits and Avoid-All-Expenses.  

    There are all kinds of great ideas out there.  There's even some work being done.  None of it will matter, because the money will make sure none of it matters.

    The energy transition is already underway.  It is happening now, and it is a foregone conclusion that the global energy infrastructure will be rebuilt.  Every energy company in the world, including the ones with major oil and gas assets, has an energy transition division, typically populated with their best and brightest.  And every developed nation in the world has developed or is currently developing their transition strategy, including major spending initiatives.  Their is too much money and interest in this for it not to happen.  As stated above, over $100 trillion in the next three decades - the largest global economic opportunity of our time.  This money is not going to evaporate.  Even heartless mercenaries who don't give a damn about the environment will participate and profit.   

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  10. 48 minutes ago, Satoshi said:

    Private companies working on fusion. 
     

     

    I have a colleague who is very interested in fusion technology and Helion in particular.  Personally, I am very skeptical on fusion for commercial scale power production for the foreseeable future, as after decades of work it has failed to produce net energy production in laboratory conditions.  To go from not yet demonstrated in lab (technical readiness level - 2 ) to TRL-9 for this type of technology is a very long jump. But it is enticing because of its near unlimited potential if it can be made to work.     

     

    50 minutes ago, Satoshi said:

    I tried to find the most anodyne link available. This is the first real “official” government estimate that I’ve seen. As with most government estimates of cost, I would expect surprises to the upside. 
     

     

    $100-150 trillion over the next three decades.  This gives some scale to the magnitude of the endeavor.  On some reports I made a few years ago, I estimated total spend would be tens of trillions and was told that sounded hyperbolic and to give more realistic approximations.       

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  11. 40 minutes ago, Harrison Bergeron said:

    Not a lawyer, energy person, or cloak room expert ... in my lay opinion, we should rely focus on nuclear until another suitable alternative emerges. 

    I feel like nuclear and renewables are the opposite side of the same coin - renewables are inefficient and not particularly good for the environment, but the average person feels good about it. Nuclear is efficient, but the average person is scared of it.

    This is a common opinion of folks within the energy industry as well.  Nuclear has the worst PR of any technology ever developed.  But, I would like to work on solutions that will get built, and not on ones that should get built but don't for whatever set of reasons (politics, public perception, economics, etc).

  12. 1 minute ago, 52-80 said:

     

    ah, yes, a message board full of lawyers and IT nerds is the perfect place to get cogent thought leadership on these issues

    Not many energy folks here?  I figure there would be some.  If not, lawyers will suffice.  In my experiences with lawyers, all that is needed to discuss and argue a topic at length is vague familiarity.  

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  13. Yep, when a large power plant with a high capacity factor gets pulled out of service, there needs to be sufficient infrastructure in place to cover.  With the desire to pull coal and nuclear offline as quick as possible, there often isn't adequate backup.    

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  14. The entire energy production & transmission, chemical process, and food production industries need to be and will be completely overhauled in the 21st century to achieve sustainability.  This endeavor has many names but is most commonly referred to as the energy transition.  It is the view of many (my view as well) that this will be the most significant and even defining achievement of the 21st century.  Being a board mostly populated by Texans, I figure many of us are already working on energy transition initiatives and was interested in getting some thoughts and discussion on the topic in general and on the following in particular:

    Renewables (Wind, solar, etc) and Energy storage

    In order to incorporate more renewables to replace baseload power plants (nuclear, coal, NGCC), we need lots of long duration energy storage.  Can this be achieved by stacking lithium ion batteries, or will it largely be thermomechanical energy storage such as compressed air, liquid air, molten salt, or emergent battery technology (e.g. Form Energy)?  Will we ultimately need to go to conversion to hydrogen or some other chemical energy?    

    Centralized vs decentralized power production

    Electric grid is currently almost entirely centralized, "front-of-meter" type production.  What percentage of power production will move to microgrids and "behind-the-meter" production?  Is dispersed, customized, "smart" microgrids the way to go?

    Carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration

    Seems to be the cheapest option for now for decarbonization for many industries, and possibly the only way to decarbonize some process (e.g. cement and certain chemical processes) but how clean is CCUS really, and will the public tolerate/support the drilling and injection of large sequestration wells?

    Hydrogen

    Will the hydrogen economy take of as some are predicting, and will we have hydrogen fueled heavy trucks, ships, airplanes?  If so, will it be mostly blue (from natural gas with carbon capture and sequestration) or green (from renewable and water electrolysis) or other?

    Nuclear

    Is nuclear over/outdated, or will it play a substantial role in the energy transition?  Engineers love nuclear, but no one else seems to.

    Food production

    How to get to net zero emissions and achieve long term sustainability while maintaining low cost, high output food production for growing population.  Other than fertilizer production, this is area I know least about.  

     

  15. My two younger daughters (under vaccination age limit) tested positive about 10 days ago.  The doctor seemed confident they had the new variant.  They have handled it well, really not much different than a mild cold other than lots of fatigue for first couple of days.  The quarantine has had a much bigger impact on their emotional state than the virus, since they've been in the house since they tested positive and missed out on summer camp.  We are following all recommended quarantine guidelines.  

    I had the one shot Janssen vaccine a few months ago and I've been fine, despite being in very close proximity to my kids throughout the past 10 days.  
     

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  16. Some are in worse shape than others, but grids all over the country are becoming less stable.  A combination of many challenges has led to this decrease in stability - technical, environmental, political, economic.  The entire energy infrastructure needs a major overhaul to achieve carbon neutral reliable power.  This will take decades and trillions of dollars to achieve.  We’ve kicked this can down the road for far too long, and now consumers are going to pay much more for less reliable power.  

  17. Well my grand pappy fought in world war 1 and world war 2 and he killed nazis in both.  He got his hands blown off by a panzer tank in the 2nd, so when he got back to the US he killed a grizzly and he built his own bear hands with his own bare hands.  Long before the internet was invented he died from a broken heart when he realized he had no more nazis left to kill.  But it follows that everyone who disagrees with me on the internet is a gaping pussy.

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  18. 19 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

    It is true that the astroturfers have been around for a good 15 years, maybe more.  I remember seeing a group astroturfing for Rick Perry's Presidential run back in 2012.  And by seeing, I mean I knew some of the people involved (and they didn't call it astroturfing, it was marketing mumbo jumbo "community outreach" or whatever).  Saw shitloads of product marketing bullshit back in the mid-2000s on a site I ran.  After I kept banning their accounts/spam bots, they straight up tried paying me (aka "sponsored posts" as they are known these days).

    On the other hand, those people/accounts are usually found and dealt with quickly.  Marketers, even with the bots available these days, are simply not going to spend the time to build up accounts with legit posting histories that can be taken seriously.  They are somewhat hit-and-run, and especially these days with the bots (and the anti-bot/spam software a lot of sites use), but they are aiming for pulling down low-hanging fruit for a cheap price, and it costs them practically nothing to spam any and every site they find, on the off chance the site is not filtering spam.  Places like Surly and reddit can crowdsource them pretty quickly though, and that's why they were pushing so much money into Facebook and twitter marketing, because it was paying off for them in spades there, without the need to worry about being filtered out.

    There is plenty of good political discourse out there, even on social media sites like reddit, and I'd argue there is some good discussion here.  And I say this as a former Republican and former Libertarian.  

    But I really think you are dismissing Trump far too much.   The guy knows reality TV, and he knows his audience/supporters, and they give no fucks about political discourse, it's about winning for them.  Somebody has to "lose" in order for them to "win" and when that mindset kicks in, yes, political discourse goes out the window.

    Fair point on Trump.  He certainly was an accelerant.  But it was going to happen with or without him.  

    Many seasoned message board posters will take on numerous posters, mountains of evidence, and paragraphs worth of exposition detailing exactly how wrong they are, and they will just keep chugging right along happier than a pig in shit.  You cannot dissuade them with argumentation, insults, gifs, pretty much anything you can dream up in a text response.  People come to these forums to argue.  Arguing back at them is not going to discourage them.  What you can do, depending on the forum format, is downvote them so their posts don’t show up, shadow ban them, outright ban them, crowd source them, or make them lose points every time they post till they do some quick math and realize they’ve only got so many posts before they’re gone.  This is what really allowed for the enforcement of the prevailing dogma on political forums.  I don’t know how long time posters can think it has anything to do with the indefensibility of Trump when we all know full well that there is an endless amount of people on the internet who will gladly defend anything no matter how ridiculous.  


    I disagree on reddit.  The format of the site is not conducive for in depth discussion and that is not its intent.  It is for headlines and succinct top comments, all of which are screened & selected by mods, astroturfers, and core active posters.  Nothing about it is organic point-counter point discussion encapsulating opposing views. 

  19. 1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

    It'd be interesting to see how many people have switched parties, or at least went independent, over the last 5-6 years.

    Political parties are kind of like when you're in your 20s and get married, and you make verbal agreements with a couple of potential backup wives/spouses.  Then when you hit your 30s and/or have kids, what you are want out of a backup wife is far different from what you wanted in your 20s and so you find other potential backups, and then it changes even more when you are in your 40s.

    Sure, a lot of people have no plans on ever getting divorced or widowed, but the potential is always there and you should be prepared.  Same thing with political parties.  Never tie yourself to a party that you can't extract yourself from, particularly if that party stops being about a platform and starts being about a person.

    I’m not a relationship expert, but I’m pretty sure having agreements in place with multiple back up wives isn’t how marriage is supposed to work.  It seems the majority of the effort should go into selecting and maintaining the primary wife.  Maybe I am naive. 

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  20. 4 minutes ago, immamac said:

    That's not true at all - there's lots of good discussion here that isn't driven off of an agenda or current events. I know that the threads with that as the focus are what you are talking about - but there are many other threads that are just great discussions on general policy and stance. Those are actually the ones that are the least polarizing because people aren't starting from a position of defending or attacking, just simply thinking and positing. 

    I'm sure there is some good discussion on this site's political forum.  But virtually every forum has been thoroughly culled at this point.  I've not found an exception.    

  21. There are no good political discussion forums anywhere on the internet.  They have all polarized and solidified around their own particular dogma.  Two things happened to drive this, neither have anyhting to do with Trump.  It began before Trump and will continue long after he is gone:

    1. Game psychologists figured out that points systems with upvotes & downvotes keep people checking back more frequently.  All forums have adopted a system of the type.  To get points and not get banned or posts not shown, posting behavior gets culled and shaped to the collective views of the few most active posters. 

    2. Professional marketing groups use the internet to quickly disseminate their messages, and these slogans and messages have infected the entire internet.  Virtually everything that gets discussed is on the latest selected hot topic and the same crafted talking points gets repeated (or simply just linked to) over and over.

    Go check out any forum on the internent and within two minutes you will know what type of messages will be well received and which type will not.  The general consensus on poltical forums of all types is that everyone else has gone extreme or crazy, and they are simply being rational centrists.  They all think others who challenge the dogma are trolls who flee in fear from their brilliant irrefutable logic.  I have no idea why they think this, because true trolls do not flee from being countered; that is what they are after.  

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  22. 8 minutes ago, F250 said:

     

    Holy Shit how are we even having this argument?

    What BT is having to point out is fucking Freshmen level General Education Requirement shit. I can understand the aggy being ignorant because their basics covers aggy mythology and barn sex but pretty much everyone else not educated at Liberty University should have an understanding of something as basic as Marxism.

    You don't have to agree with something to understand it.

     

     

     

    Not sure if this was intended towards me, but I’ve taken the time to read a fair amount of source material from Marx, Engels, and others, as well as commentary on their works (the academic peer reviewed kind).  It simply doesn’t make sense to say that Marxism is not about social and political power.  He clarified what he meant in the follow up post and we are in agreement. 

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