We don’t have anything close to the battery manufacturing capacity yet. And most of that capacity is in the hands of China, which poses major geopolitical risks akin to Russia’s dominance of Europe’s natural gas supplies.
Firstly, the comment was that the materials don't exist. That's factually inaccurate. There's plenty of minerals. The issue is and was always going to be supplying them.
As for your argument about there not being enough domestic supply I wholeheartedly agree, but that's a timing issue not a feasibility one. If you look back my exact argument from 3 years ago is the one you've just made.
The Inflation Reduction Act may be the silver bullet here. The issue isn't battery production, that is already set to explode and may even outstrip demand according to some analysts. It's going to be the procurement of materials outside of China's supply chain. You can set up a mineral processing plant in 2-4 years but a mine takes 5-10. This is the clock that won't tick faster. The IRA isn't fully implemented as the definitions need to be codified by the IRS, but I think you'll see an explosion once that occurs. There is enough battery manufacturing capacity planned over the next 5 years to meet the demand that is expected by then. The issue will be mineral supply. Would suck to build a multi billion dollar battery plant and then not have the minerals to make any batteries
The two big things that balance this equation are money and innovation. With the IRA and subsequent European initiatives there's very powerful financial incentives to get things moving quickly. I think we'll see record increase in battery mineral mining. Keep in mind the over increase in actual mining will not be that big. The least conservative estimates are that there will need to be 400 new mines to supply the increase in minerals. While that sounds like a lot, there's 35,000 mines in operation today. It's doable. The second thing is innovation and chemistry substitution for most minerals. China has now been able to produce sodium ion batteries that have have almost the same energy density as LiFePO4. CATL had a new LiFePO4 chemistry with manganese that vastly improved performance. We're seeing batteries strictly for stationary storage with chemistries that are far cheaper. This kind of innovation will continue. The best cure for high prices of minerals is........ high prices for minerals.
It's easy to get negative, but if you dig a bit, there's plenty of positive and exciting things coming. The change is afoot and humanity is actually rising to the most significant threat it's ever faced
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Speaking of good news, solar deployment is still increasing far faster than the rosiest of outlooks predicted:
EU blindsided by ‘spectacular’ solar rollout
Quote:
Explosive growth in solar power means most EU countries will hit their 2030 renewable energy targets ahead of time, new data shows, fuelling optimism on efforts to bring down global emissions.
The bloc added 41 gigawatts of new solar capacity in 2022 — a 40 percent increase on 2021. That's expected to rise to over 50 GW this year.
It can be hard to see when we live in a place that isn't experiencing the same growth, but this is a global phenomenon and we're getting to our renewable targets much faster than predicted. This is unabashedly good news
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Some sobering reading on the future of SMR nuclear by a fairly knowledgeable person. She was Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and has had fellowships at places like MIT, Stanford, and Harvard
[B]The end of Oppenheimer’s nuclear energy dream: Modular reactors supported by ideology alone[b]
Hardly ideology to align oneself with the second and fourth laws. That tends to work out in the long run and even irrational human markets are starting to agree.
First off, she built precisely zero reactors in her illustrious two year stint at the NRC. Her expertise is limited to not building, so I suppose getting her to write this article was a good idea.
Her beef with Oklo is weird. The NRC is one of the worst offenders in terms of ensuring the “nuclear is expensive and dangerous” narrative remains true, and then pretends they have no part in that process.
Nuclear is expensive precisely because it has to pay off every Tom, Dick and Sherry that “has a concern”, valid or not. The process takes forever, and everyone gets a piece. The grift factor is huge, and yet, because it is so productive, it can pay the price.
Oklo made a choice to not pay the gate fee at that time. They couldn’t afford to! Deferring engagement with the regulator is not the same as being outright rejected or being unable to answer the questions. Now that they’re going public, they’ll be able to give the NRC enough lunch money to not get punched in the face for a while. Go look at what they made NuScale pay into the process, and their engineering still isn’t done. I am not convinced on NuScale, either to be totally friggen honest. So what’s the difference? Well, Oklo isn’t backed by a big EPC that gets to milk the project for billable hours, so they did what’s right for the project. WEIRD.
Second, the HALEU is messed up. She gets to claim that SOME of the reactors will make proliferation and waste issues worse, without pointing out that not all of the SMR variants or vendors require HALEU, or that some of the variants including Oklo will also consume SNF stockpiles which will have a net reduction of concern. Why is moving towards a closed cycle a bad thing?
It gets weirder here, given that Altman, Gates and Buffet are behind reactors that will require HALEU. Reactors sized quite nicely to run dedicated advanced data centres for purposes of let’s say… supporting OpenAI and MS Copilot efforts. Efforts that, without doubt, have proven they can effectively select who gets to win an election, or not. Do you think that Altman and Gates, with their open pandering to Congress regarding regulation of AI tools are not including access to HALEU in some kind of cross-agreement that will protect the interests of the bureaucratic class in exchange?
Third, and this is totally a dead horse, but I will repeat. Rebuildables are an inexpensive way to produce expensive electricity. Nuclear is an expensive way to build cheap electricity. Optimizing delivered cost and utility (exergetic potential, or, is it useful?) is the goal of the system, NOT maximizing the profit potential of those who invest in GENERATION.
That said, GW scale Gen III / III+ variants (VVER, Hualong One, EPR, AP) all have different performance metrics. First of a kind projects always do poorly, sorry to say. Megaprojects as a category also do poorly. GW scale projects are megaprojects by default and are thus subject to the pratfalls. Pointing to the worst of the worst, ignoring all other factors is deliberately misleading. Where is her example of Barakah, or OPG’s recent refurbishments? The markets that have GW scale plants have robust economies and outcompete their neighbours. The projects develop skills and establish supply chains that are broadly very useful, transferable and multi-generational. Very few “impartial analysts” discount these facts.
Four, we cannot eliminate spent fuel or weapons stockpiles without power reactors. Period. We can certainly develop more radioactive waste and weapons without power reactors. This equivalency is one of the most potent in the anti-toolkit and frankly we need to take that away from them. It’s a harmful narrative.
Five, Ray invested in TransAtomic and despite that shop predictably going bust, he made a return. It is true that raising capital for a new reactor design is a major challenge due to the risk bubbles and timelines involved, but many companies have done so. Very few of the start up vendors are chasing a BOO model where early investors will be asked to also invest in the construction of the projects themselves. Who invests in these are entities that have a timeline of concern greater than three months, and reap downstream benefits of having available, reliable, affordable, and useful energy provision. Exergic energy units are the base currency of every biophysical web, of every complex dissipative structure in the universe. Ignore that law at one’s own peril.
Six is one point where I partially agree. The phrase SMR is not helpful. All past reactors had elements of modularization. Modularization is not the panacea that folks on mega projects hope it will be. What is more useful is to think about the nature of the safety systems, and the market fit, not how it will come together between factory and site. Gains come from just straight up not needing to build massive containment structures out of tremendous amounts of specialized steel and concrete. Avoiding extended finance costs via reduced construction periods is also essential. Standardization and repeatability is a potential but distant and likely unnecessary benefit to make “SMRs” work.
As for market alignment, the BWRX-300 is not overly novel tech wise but has struck a major chord with the overall offering. Poland putting up for 90 units says a lot about the need for a non-emitting, dispatchable source in the neighbourhood of 300MWe. Oklo has an order book. Last Energy has an order book. Thorcon has an order book. This all says that GW scale nuclear is not the only nuclear with a willing market. Some places pay a huge amount TODAY for their power price sly becyaee they’re doing highly dischaotic work in remote places, and need a middle ground option that doesn’t involve coal, natty or diesel.
Then there are the high temp “primary” energy applications that “SMRs” (read Gen IV) designs serve in a way that the Gen II - III+ are just not designed to handle, and frankly nor are renewables. Copenhagen atomics and X-Energy both have order books right now for industrial applications that need high temp poly-gen plants co-located with their legacy assets to remain competitive and sustainable.
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If the NHL ever needs an enema, Edmonton is where they'll insert it.
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Hardly ideology to align oneself with the second and fourth laws. That tends to work out in the long run and even irrational human markets are starting to agree.
First off, she built precisely zero reactors in her illustrious two year stint at the NRC. Her expertise is limited to not building, so I suppose getting her to write this article was a good idea.
Her beef with Oklo is weird. The NRC is one of the worst offenders in terms of ensuring the “nuclear is expensive and dangerous” narrative remains true, and then pretends they have no part in that process.
Nuclear is expensive precisely because it has to pay off every Tom, Dick and Sherry that “has a concern”, valid or not. The process takes forever, and everyone gets a piece. The grift factor is huge, and yet, because it is so productive, it can pay the price.
Oklo made a choice to not pay the gate fee at that time. They couldn’t afford to! Deferring engagement with the regulator is not the same as being outright rejected or being unable to answer the questions. Now that they’re going public, they’ll be able to give the NRC enough lunch money to not get punched in the face for a while. Go look at what they made NuScale pay into the process, and their engineering still isn’t done. I am not convinced on NuScale, either to be totally friggen honest. So what’s the difference? Well, Oklo isn’t backed by a big EPC that gets to milk the project for billable hours, so they did what’s right for the project. WEIRD.
Second, the HALEU is messed up. She gets to claim that SOME of the reactors will make proliferation and waste issues worse, without pointing out that not all of the SMR variants or vendors require HALEU, or that some of the variants including Oklo will also consume SNF stockpiles which will have a net reduction of concern. Why is moving towards a closed cycle a bad thing?
It gets weirder here, given that Altman, Gates and Buffet are behind reactors that will require HALEU. Reactors sized quite nicely to run dedicated advanced data centres for purposes of let’s say… supporting OpenAI and MS Copilot efforts. Efforts that, without doubt, have proven they can effectively select who gets to win an election, or not. Do you think that Altman and Gates, with their open pandering to Congress regarding regulation of AI tools are not including access to HALEU in some kind of cross-agreement that will protect the interests of the bureaucratic class in exchange?
Third, and this is totally a dead horse, but I will repeat. Rebuildables are an inexpensive way to produce expensive electricity. Nuclear is an expensive way to build cheap electricity. Optimizing delivered cost and utility (exergetic potential, or, is it useful?) is the goal of the system, NOT maximizing the profit potential of those who invest in GENERATION.
That said, GW scale Gen III / III+ variants (VVER, Hualong One, EPR, AP) all have different performance metrics. First of a kind projects always do poorly, sorry to say. Megaprojects as a category also do poorly. GW scale projects are megaprojects by default and are thus subject to the pratfalls. Pointing to the worst of the worst, ignoring all other factors is deliberately misleading. Where is her example of Barakah, or OPG’s recent refurbishments? The markets that have GW scale plants have robust economies and outcompete their neighbours. The projects develop skills and establish supply chains that are broadly very useful, transferable and multi-generational. Very few “impartial analysts” discount these facts.
Four, we cannot eliminate spent fuel or weapons stockpiles without power reactors. Period. We can certainly develop more radioactive waste and weapons without power reactors. This equivalency is one of the most potent in the anti-toolkit and frankly we need to take that away from them. It’s a harmful narrative.
Five, Ray invested in TransAtomic and despite that shop predictably going bust, he made a return. It is true that raising capital for a new reactor design is a major challenge due to the risk bubbles and timelines involved, but many companies have done so. Very few of the start up vendors are chasing a BOO model where early investors will be asked to also invest in the construction of the projects themselves. Who invests in these are entities that have a timeline of concern greater than three months, and reap downstream benefits of having available, reliable, affordable, and useful energy provision. Exergic energy units are the base currency of every biophysical web, of every complex dissipative structure in the universe. Ignore that law at one’s own peril.
Six is one point where I partially agree. The phrase SMR is not helpful. All past reactors had elements of modularization. Modularization is not the panacea that folks on mega projects hope it will be. What is more useful is to think about the nature of the safety systems, and the market fit, not how it will come together between factory and site. Gains come from just straight up not needing to build massive containment structures out of tremendous amounts of specialized steel and concrete. Avoiding extended finance costs via reduced construction periods is also essential. Standardization and repeatability is a potential but distant and likely unnecessary benefit to make “SMRs” work.
As for market alignment, the BWRX-300 is not overly novel tech wise but has struck a major chord with the overall offering. Poland putting up for 90 units says a lot about the need for a non-emitting, dispatchable source in the neighbourhood of 300MWe. Oklo has an order book. Last Energy has an order book. Thorcon has an order book. This all says that GW scale nuclear is not the only nuclear with a willing market. Some places pay a huge amount TODAY for their power price sly becyaee they’re doing highly dischaotic work in remote places, and need a middle ground option that doesn’t involve coal, natty or diesel.
Then there are the high temp “primary” energy applications that “SMRs” (read Gen IV) designs serve in a way that the Gen II - III+ are just not designed to handle, and frankly nor are renewables. Copenhagen atomics and X-Energy both have order books right now for industrial applications that need high temp poly-gen plants co-located with their legacy assets to remain competitive and sustainable.
Thank you. This is very insightful and even amongst pro nuclear analysts there's rarely anything beyond the shallow "nuclear is safe and doesn't generate as much waste as you think". This type of conversation is always disappointingly shallow
I'm usually pessimistic on nuclear simply because of the continual cost/time overruns on any megaproject, but I don't have insight into the why's specifically on nuclear. China doesn't seem to have had the same issues, but they've become world leaders on scaling anything so that's hardly surprising.
I'm wondering why Wind/Solar + Hydrogen isn't discussed more. Green hydrogen can be produced during daylight hours and used in fuel cells in situ or elsewhere when renewable output is low or zero. Same as batteries, but it seems to me it would be cheaper to build longer-term storage, it's more portable, and could co-exist with blue hydrogen in an overall energy distribution network.
I get that there are efficiency losses to go from electricity to hydrogen and back again, but I would think that other benefits might balance. Curious if anyone has in depth knowledge about this.
We don't have excess supply right now to divert electricity to a use such as that. Right now every MW of gen from a non-emitting source is displacing a MW of an emitting source. These MW are also lowering the pool price.
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I'm usually pessimistic on nuclear simply because of the continual cost/time overruns on any megaproject, but I don't have insight into the why's specifically on nuclear. China doesn't seem to have had the same issues, but they've become world leaders on scaling anything so that's hardly surprising.
China doesn’t have to worry about interest groups, lobbyists, and public opponents needing to be consulted and paid off. When they want something built, they just build it.
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If this day gets you riled up, you obviously aren't numb to the disappointment yet to be a real fan.
I'm wondering why Wind/Solar + Hydrogen isn't discussed more. Green hydrogen can be produced during daylight hours and used in fuel cells in situ or elsewhere when renewable output is low or zero. Same as batteries, but it seems to me it would be cheaper to build longer-term storage, it's more portable, and could co-exist with blue hydrogen in an overall energy distribution network.
I get that there are efficiency losses to go from electricity to hydrogen and back again, but I would think that other benefits might balance. Curious if anyone has in depth knowledge about this.
I'm order to store hydrogen as energy storage, you need to understand the losses so you can understand the economic feasibility. You lose 30% converting the electricity to hydrogen, you lose 10% compressing it, you lose some simply by storing it as it's the smallest molecule in existence and doesn't stay put well, then you lose 30% converting it back to electricity. That means you have at most 30% of the original energy left to put back into the grid. You'd need a lot of excess renewable generation to "fill" that storage for any significant gap, ie produce 3x what you'll need
I'm wondering why Wind/Solar + Hydrogen isn't discussed more. Green hydrogen can be produced during daylight hours and used in fuel cells in situ or elsewhere when renewable output is low or zero. Same as batteries, but it seems to me it would be cheaper to build longer-term storage, it's more portable, and could co-exist with blue hydrogen in an overall energy distribution network.
I get that there are efficiency losses to go from electricity to hydrogen and back again, but I would think that other benefits might balance. Curious if anyone has in depth knowledge about this.
Hydrogen has some significant obstacles that will arguably keep it from ever being a big player in the energy transition. Sabine explains:
Hydrogen has some significant obstacles that will arguably keep it from ever being a big player in the energy transition. Sabine explains:
My opinion is that people look at the transition and look for something to save us. Reality is the internal combustion engine was the perfect answer to basically darn never everything, everywhere, as was burning hydrocarbons. Except for that nasty co2 issue.
The transition will not have a single answer, it will be a complex set of solutions that are applied differently in different geographies and climates. Hydrogen will play a role, likely a pretty big one but I doubt we see a full hydrogen economy. But the video is overly pessimistic about hydrogen, pair it with ccus and it gets way better. Yes it’s a slippery molecule but that can be dealt with. I do see it getting converted to ammonia, and that getting burnt in power plants.
Lots will be learned, and learned quickly. We’ve only had hydrocarbons widely available for like 75 years and look what we figured out. There will be some stumbles here too, make no mistake, but momentum is building pretty fast in a number of fronts.
I'm order to store hydrogen as energy storage, you need to understand the losses so you can understand the economic feasibility. You lose 30% converting the electricity to hydrogen, you lose 10% compressing it, you lose some simply by storing it as it's the smallest molecule in existence and doesn't stay put well, then you lose 30% converting it back to electricity. That means you have at most 30% of the original energy left to put back into the grid. You'd need a lot of excess renewable generation to "fill" that storage for any significant gap, ie produce 3x what you'll need
I didn't realize the scale of losses involved. Thanks
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Does anyone know much about the company Acceleware? They are testing a tech that is supposed to be getting rid of sagd. They basically microwave the ground to heat it up rather than using steam/water. It seems like a "to good to be true" tech considering they are talking about next to zero emissions and it's cheaper and faster to get production started up.
Just wondering if anyone has any input into the tech, will it work, applications to the real world?
Does anyone know much about the company Acceleware? They are testing a tech that is supposed to be getting rid of sagd. They basically microwave the ground to heat it up rather than using steam/water. It seems like a "to good to be true" tech considering they are talking about next to zero emissions and it's cheaper and faster to get production started up.
Just wondering if anyone has any input into the tech, will it work, applications to the real world?
Devon Canada had a JV with someone on this (Suncor?? Can't quite remember). I worked with the guys a bit that did this project, and they never saw great results. Biggest problem was ferrous material in the soil (whether from the drilling process or otherwise) that would mess with the microwaves.
Or I remembered this all wrong, and I'm talking out of my ass. One of the two.
I'm order to store hydrogen as energy storage, you need to understand the losses so you can understand the economic feasibility. You lose 30% converting the electricity to hydrogen, you lose 10% compressing it, you lose some simply by storing it as it's the smallest molecule in existence and doesn't stay put well, then you lose 30% converting it back to electricity. That means you have at most 30% of the original energy left to put back into the grid. You'd need a lot of excess renewable generation to "fill" that storage for any significant gap, ie produce 3x what you'll need
I seem to recall that the internal combustion Engine engine only operates at thirty five percent efficiency.
If there are copious amounts of cheap solar available, it might be financially feasable
