Prometheus Fuels Lower Cost Than Fossil Fuels

tahanson43206 · 2022-05-16 08:25:49

For Calliban re #75

Thank you for adding new insights and calculations to the flow of this topic ...

I logged in just now to pick up my study of "Beyond Oil and Gas", which you recommended. As you will (hopefully) recall, I created a topic dedicated to study of the book, and made some progress.

However, ** your ** post is far more important, because it is an important contribution to the correspondence between you and kbd512.

As a reminder for readers who may be interested in following this topic, kbd512 will be away on business for a few days.

I will attempt to contribute what I can, but the heavy lifting is (obviously) up to Calliban at the moment.

So!

For Calliban ... the situation in Texas (as I understand it) is favorable for solar power situated well away from the Gulf of Mexico.

There are concentrated sources of CO2 located at multiple sites in Texas, so the thought in Sunday's Zoom was that a co-location of a fuel plant with a fossil fuel power plant would make sense.

One option we briefly considered was to make methane right there, by recycling all the consumables at the power plant.

This would have the effect of using methane as an energy storage vehicle.

A complication is the need for nitrogen to dilute the gas mixture flowing through the existing turbines. These are designed for the atmosphere that exists in Texas at the generating sites, and NOT for a pure Oxygen input, as would be ideal for use of liquid Oxygen to cool the exhaust and feed the turbines.

There exists an alternate future in which all these elements come together, so that the turbines can run 24*7*365 on methane and pure oxygen.

Hopefully someone (existing forum member or newly registered member) can comment upon the feasibility of designing a turbine to run with pure Oxygen and methane as inputs.

***
Pending that development, the proposal (as I understand and subject to correction) is to use existing facilities and to change nothing about them, EXCEPT to capture the exhaust.

***
Location of the Hydrogen production facility ....

We need an onsite person to investigate the feasibility of locating a solar powered hydrogen production facility on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico.

The alternative is to pipe sea water to an inland site. To keep the project to a two year time frame, the pipeline option would seem most suitable if there is an existing pipeline that can be repurposed. I'm told there are pipelines all over Texas, so there may be one available for a sea water run.

It should be noted that one of the two remaining nuclear power plants in Texas is located on the Gulf coast.

The proposal in work is NOT to seek to use the nuclear plant, except to buy power at the market rate, if that idea contributes to the overall success of the project.

I bring the location of the nuclear plant into the discussion because there may be some permitting that was completed that would be expensive to duplicate, and which might be enlisted to smooth the way for a solar hydrogen production plant.

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2022-05-16 08:31:50

For Calliban ....

This post is tightly focused ...

In a recent post, you provided an estimate of the cost of a gallon of manufactured diesel fuel at $25 (USD).

In recent posts in the Cost of Fuel topic, it has been noted that diesel is now running $5.00 per gallon at some locations in the US.

** That ** price is at the pump, and it includes costs of distribution, marketing, licensing, regulation and all other costs that burden a business in the US.

I am guessing that the price of $25 per gallon for manufactured diesel is at the output of the plant (wholesale) and that it does NOT include costs that go into the retail price.

However, all that said... kbd512 often repeats the National Security consideration....

$5.00 diesel from Russia (to pick just one source at random) is suddenly priceless.

At that point, $25 diesel looks (to me at least) like a bargain.

A major consumer of diesel (railroad, trucking line, shipping line, manufacturing facility) might be happy to pay $25 per gallon, knowing that the price is NOT going to fluctuate on the open market, and it is NOT going to disappear at the whim of a be-whiskered bureaucrat in some far away location.

Please evaluate the fixed (high) price scenario.

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2022-05-16 10:00:52

This is a repost from the topic "Beyond Oil and Gas"

it follows a (to me remarkable) insight by Calliban, that the problem of needing nitrogen to prevent melting of existing power plant turbine equipment can be resolved by using CO2 as the diluent, as would be required at Mars.

For Calliban re #53
Holy Moley! Bingo!
My reaction is to note (immediately) the connection to earlier discussion in NewMars, about how to make a workable internal combustion engine for Mars.
I had (obviously) NOT put 2 and 2 together as you have done.
it is no criticism of kbd512 to note that he did not think of that either, during the Zoom meeting.
However, the suggestion seems to me most helpful!
Let's pick it up in the Prometheus topic!
I'd like this topic to follow the presentation in Beyond Oil and Gas.
On the ** other ** hand, a powerful contribution like yours is most definitely welcome!
(th)

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2022-05-16 10:09:09

Picking up the thread here....

The proposal in work is to find a business partner in Texas who would be interested in supporting a venture with near and far term objectives...

The opening bid would be to offer to collect the CO2 exhaust from a gas burning fossil fuel power plant.

The long term objective of the enterprise is to convert the output of the power plant to gasoline or diesel fuel.

This set of objectives does NOT eliminate the use of mined petroleum, but it DOES set the stage for that to happen.

If a plan is set in motion to re-use the exhaust from a gas powered turbine, using solar power to store energy in the form of methane and liquid oxygen (and now a supply of liquid CO2 as a diluent) then the power plant can operate 24*7*365 using manufactured methane as the equivalent of a battery.

The benefit is that the owner of the existing plant has to do NOTHING at all to become carbon neutral.

The objections to nuclear fission power in Texas are avoided.

This topic is open to comments and criticism.

The intent of this open-to-all discussion is to shake out the defects in an Open Source procedure that delivers a reliable plan that anyone on Earth can implement.

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2022-05-16 13:20:45

For Calliban re estimate of $25 per gallon to make Diesel fuel

This post is intended ** only ** to introduce an element for planning ... if there is a member of the forum with more expertise, please help out ...

Inflation is a factor in planning a long term project ... if a project is built with a fixed rate of interest for the portion that must be financed, then inflation will ease the burden over time.

Google found an inflation calculator that shows:

$100 in 2022 will be worth $269 in 2062 (40 years projected lifetime of plant)

The calculator used 2.5% as the average inflation rate.
Cumulative inflation is given as 168.51%

If our hypothetical plant starts out charging $25 per gallon of diesel fuel, and if that amount remains constant, then (I'm assuming) the corresponding cost of the fossil fuel derived version would increase to $13, or just under half.

However, inflation would NOT be the only factor working on the fossil fuel version ...

Scarcity of supply and increased demand would also tend to increase the price.

Is it practical to imagine the price of the manufactured product could be held steady?

Maintenance costs would be a part of the expense to maintain the plant.

There are (most likely) many factors this simple analysis does not consider, on both sides of the situation.

(th)

Calliban · 2022-05-16 13:32:29

The calculation was for the energy cost of producing the fuel. If electricity costs $0.19/kWh, then the electric power cost is $12.4 per litre. I do not have any estimate at present for how other costs stack up.

tahanson43206 · 2022-05-16 15:13:46

For kbd512 re topic ....

It's past time (for me for sure) to go back and re-read your opening post for this topic.

I asked Google about Rob McGinnis and it came back with a ** lot ** of links ...

From your opening:

A former US Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) technician named Rob McGinnis went to Yale after leaving the service and earned a PhD in Environmental Engineering. He then proceeded to devise a method to produce gasoline, kerosene, and diesel fuels by electrochemically reversing the combustion process using CO2 captured from the atmosphere, entrained in water to produce alcohols, separated using Carbon NanoTubes, and then combined in a reactor to produce hydrocarbon products free of aromatics and contaminants like Sulfur.

And here is Google's list of snippets:

Rob McGinnis - Founder, CEO - Prometheus | LinkedIn
www.linkedin.com › robertmcginnis
Rob McGinnis · Founder, CEO at Prometheus · About · Activity · Experience · Education · Publications · More activity by Rob · Websites.
This former playwright aims to turn solar and wind power into gasoline
www.science.org › content › article › former-playwright-aims-turn-solar-a...
Prometheus relies instead on a proprietary carbon nanotube membrane sieve ... Ethanol is poured onto a glass plate at Rob McGinnis' research lab in Soquel,.
Prometheus Fuels - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Prometheus_Fuels
Founder Rob McGinnis speculated that even though the theoretical efficiency of Prometheus' system was only 50–60%, their less energy-intensive process could ...
Headquarters: Santa Cruz, California, USA
Founded: 2019
Products: Zero-net-carbon gasoline and jet fuels
Industry: Carbon-neutral fuels, carbon capture and storage, environmental services
People also ask
Who is Rob McGinnis?
Is Prometheus fuels for real?
Who owns Prometheus fuels?
How do I invest in Prometheus?
Rob McGinnis - Founder and CEO @ Prometheus - Crunchbase
www.crunchbase.com › person › rob-mcginnis
Rob McGinnis has 2 current jobs as Founder and CEO at Prometheus and Founder at Nagare Water . Additionally, Rob McGinnis has had 1 past job as the Founder ...
LinkedIn: View on LinkedIn
Rob McGinnis (@Rob_McGinnis) / Twitter
twitter.com › rob_mcginnis
Rob McGinnis. @Rob_McGinnis. Founder, CEO of Prometheus. I make sci-fi real. Santa Cruz, CA prometheusfuels.com Joined October 2009.
Duration: 0:35
Posted: Jun 9, 2020
Will eFuels save combustion engine motorcycles? Rob McGinnis ...
www.youtube.com › watch
Oct 19, 2021 · Dr. Rob McGinnis bet his career on eFuels by founding Prometheus Fuels. Here's why it ...
Duration: 35:15
Posted: Oct 19, 2021
This $1.5 billion startup promised to deliver clean fuels as cheap as ...
www.technologyreview.com › Climate change › Carbon sequestration
Apr 25, 2022 · Rob McGinnis, the founder and chief executive of Prometheus Fuels, was ready to show off his “Maxwell Core.” The pipe-shaped device is ...

So! Now I'm wondering if we (working on manufactured fuels) are missing a bet by NOT contacting Dr. McGinnis?

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2022-05-16 21:13:45

For the record ....

In another topic, Calliban suggested using CO2 as a diluent gas to protect existing gas turbine equipment from excessive heat that would be caused by use of oxygen without a diluent.

His proposal is to cool air using solar power, remove the nitrogen and save the oxygen.

Feed the liquid oxygen into an existing gas turbine power plant (or coal plant if that is the customer type), cooling the exhaust to liquefy the CO2

***

A completely "green" solution would use solar power to make methane using CO2 and water produced by a gas turbine power plant.

Once a cycle of materials is in place, there would be little need to add more material.

Solar energy would be used to make methane and liquid oxygen.

The cost of additional water (for hydrogen) would be optimized depending upon the circumstances.

Assuming there are losses in the system, a small amount of additional methane might be required.

Thus, the methane and oxygen would serve as a chemical battery for a traditional, well-understood gas turbine powr plant.

(th)

kbd512 · 2022-05-16 21:34:18

tahanson43206,

I already tried that, via LinkedIn. No response from Rob McGinnis yet, but maybe he doesn't check very often or has more important things to do than answer LinkedIn E-mail from random people he doesn't know. I suspect it's the latter.

Calliban · 2022-05-17 00:25:26

Calliban wrote:

The calculation was for the energy cost of producing the fuel. If electricity costs $0.19/kWh, then the electric power cost is $12.4 per litre. I do not have any estimate at present for how other costs stack up.

Per gallon, not per litre.

tahanson43206 · 2022-05-17 06:26:29

For Calliban re #85 ... thanks for the correction!

For kbd512 re #84 ... thanks for confirming you tried to contact Dr. McGinnis!

Does he franchise his operation? ... it appears that he is using a proprietary nanoscale filter to improve performance of the CO2 capture.

Franchising successful business models is time-honored in the US ....

Per Google:

This is a list of the 240 operational coal-fired power stations in the United States.
List of coal-fired power stations in the United States - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org › wiki › List_of_coal-fired_power_stations_in_the_Unite...
About Featured Snippets

That would be (presumably) 240 plants that could be converted to a closed loop with solar refurbishment of the materials used to make power.

Also per Google:

There are over 3,400 fossil fuel-fired power plants in the United States.
Power Plants and Neighboring Communities | US EPA
www.epa.gov › airmarkets › power-plants-and-neighboring-communities

The better strategy might be to convert the 3,400 first and then (or simultaneously) convert the coal plants to gas using the freed up gas supplies from the converted gas plants.

A national strategy to facilitate this transition might make sense ...

Private industry supported by public policy seems like an American way of bringing about change on this scale.

(th)

Calliban · 2022-05-17 07:20:50

Interesting article from the Netherlands.
https://4thgeneration.energy/the-true-c … enewables/

New build nuclear capital costs aren't as bad as they are made to sound, when you consider the amount of electricity these plants produce over their lifetimes. Some of the cost is due to recent build projects being first of kind in the recipient states or countries. If we could get nuclear build costs down to where China and Korea have them, which is where they were in western countries until relatively recently, then synthetic diesel produced by electrolysis would likely be cost competitive with diesel from natural sources.

A number of things make nuclear power interesting in this application. Firstly, the product is a storable and easily transportable liquid. No long-distance transmission is required, as the synthetic fuel plant can be built on site. The inputs to the process are CO2 and water, which can be found in abundance in sea water. This allows both power plant and fuel synthesis plant to be built anywhere with a coastline. Such plants could be built in northern Canada or Australia, where land is cheap.

Secondly, as the product is a bulk liquid that can be removed by tanker, there is essentially no limit to the number of reactors that can be built at a single site. We could in fact apply series production to dozens of reactors, reducing build costs to very low levels by establishing volume production with a dedicated construction workforce. Such a site, with tens or hundreds of GW of electricity being used to produce hydrogen, would be sufficiently large to make the recipent nation a significant diesel producer on the world stage. Finally, by clustering a large number of reactors on a single site, the cost of many site services, such as emergency power, fresh water supply, waste heat removal, spent fuel storage and reprocessing and long-term waste storage, can be spread across a large number of reactor units on the single site.

Further scale economies are possible under this scenario, as local demand is sufficient to allow reactors to be scaled up beyond the practicality of ordinary electricity grids. If each fuel synthesis plant consumes tens of GW of power, then individual reactors can be scaled up to 2000MWe or greater. Nuclear power genedation becomes more efficient, both in terms of materials and thermodynamics as individual units increase in size.

I calculated global diesel consumption to be 17,100TWh per year. This is equivelent to a continuous energy consumption of 1950GW. We would need about 3,000 large 1200MWe nuclear reactors to produce that much diesel fuel. A coastal site with say 300 nuclear reactors, could meet 10% of present global diesel demand. This would be sufficient to push back the peak oil problem by a decade.

Given that the location of the site is flexible, there would be no requirement for an investor in Texas, say, to be limited to building the plant in Texas. A Texas investor could provide finance for a project in Alaska or Canada, for example.

PS. Resolution island appears to be a good site for a mega-nuke fuel production complex.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolut … _(Nunavut)

The island is uninhabited and has an area of 1000 square km. One of the advantages of locating the facility above the Arctic circle is the higher CO2 concentration in cold water. The Russians have a huge number of potential sites for a facility such as this.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-05-17 08:21:27)

tahanson43206 · 2022-05-17 08:31:29

For Calliban re #87

Congratulations and thanks! Your post seems (as I read it) to extrapolate a plausible future.

May I inquire if there are uninhabited islands that are still in what is left of the UK global enterprise, where such a site could set up?

A facility such as you've described must be protected 24*7*365 by a robust Nation State with nuclear weapons and the willingness to use them to protect assets.

China already has a potential site in the South China Sea, where they've built up islands for major military installations.

This would be a public/private partnership.... Private enterprise can most certainly meet the challenge, but Public policy is needed to protect what is built from those who might be tempted by assets assembled in one place.

The US rule-of-thumb for suppliers to government entities is a minimum of three vendors.

Applying this rule to your scenario, there would be three islands protected by a Nation State or a consortium of Nation States such as the European Union.

For all/anyone .... please identify suitable locations for the power center described by Calliban ...

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2022-05-17 09:11:32

For kbd512 re #84 ... thanks for confirming you tried to contact Dr. McGinnis!

I'd like to follow up, but since you have the lead, please see if you can find a copy of your original correspondence.

If you ** have ** the original on hand, and it is suitable for publication in the forum, please post a copy, so we can plan a follow up that allows your initiative to remain in view, while adding whatever additional touches may seem appropriate.

It is possible (for example) your original inquiry did not include the question of franchise opportunities, similar to McDonalds, Burger King or a myriad of other US organizations that allow for private entrepreneurs to participate in the success of a founder.

(th)

Calliban · 2022-05-17 10:35:23

This link shows the site layout for the 1200MWe Sizewell B PWR power station in Suffolk.
https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCol … 010110.pdf

The containment dome, turbine hall, fuel handling building and control building, all form a single square complex that has dimensions 200m x 200m. Based on these dimensions alone, 100x 1200MWe nuclear power plants would occupy a space of 4 square kilometres.

The whole site is roughly square, with dimensions 300m aside. Outside of the square central complex we find the diesel generators, water treatment plants, rad waste building, cooling water pump house, workshops, reserve ultimate heat sink. On a site containing dozens or hundreds of nuclear reactors, many of these services would be shared between units. With this in mind, we could easily fit a powerplant containing 100 large nuclear reactors on just 10 square kilometres of land. So the site itself need not be enormous. If individual plants are scaled up, say with 2000MWe reactors or with multiple reactors sharing turbine halls, the arrangement could be yet more compact.

Building so many reactors on a single site would have both safety and economic benefits. On the safety side, we could do things that wouldn't be affordable for a single reactor plant, such as provision of long duration gravity fed cooling water supplies and multiple backup for reserve power supplies. On the economics side, providing services for a site containing 100 reactors spreads costs over a much larger number of units. The per reactor costs would be much lower, even as the quality of services gets better. A site like this could benefit from an integrated reprocessing plant with long-term geological waste storage facility constructed on site.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-05-17 10:43:13)

tahanson43206 · 2022-05-17 10:58:40

For Calliban re #90

Thank you for the link to the report on the Sizewell plant, which was (according to the authors) written for the general public.

Hopefully other NewMars members will also read (or scan the report as I did) and come up with a question or two for you ...

I noted that the fuel assemblies were designed in three levels of enrichment of U235.

I could guess why that was done, but since you are (hopefully) available to provide an authoritative answer, and if you have a free bit of time needed, please add a bit of background to explain those design decisions.

***
To your larger view ... developing such a site, in the numbers you are considering, I would think that an island well away from any inhabited land mass, would be worth considering.

It is my understanding there ** are ** uninhabited islands here and there around the world.

It might be a ** lot ** easier to obtain permission to build a site like the one you have proposed, if it is well away from land.

I note provisions for earthquakes and attack by missiles or airplanes.

Some members of this forum have complained (or so I interpret their comments) about the cost of regulations of nuclear plants.

I note that the paper you've referenced makes clear (to a lay person) why extra expense is needed.

Those extra expenses would be spread over a number of reactors, in the island scenario.

(th)

Calliban · 2022-05-17 13:30:27

TH, in answer to your question:

Enrichment varies across the length of a fuel assembly in order to achieve an even power rating along its entire length. It is desirable to do that because the limitation on core power output is the rate of heat transfer out of the fuel and into the coolant. So ideally, you want every section of every fuel rod generating power at the same rate.

The same effect is achieved radially, by shuffling fuel inwards during refuelling cycles. Most LWRs refuel every 12 months, with one third of fuel removed and new fuel introduced at the outer edges. Fuel is shuffled inwards. That way, the most depleted fuel ends up in the centre of the core. The fission rate at any particular point in the core is proportional to both local neutron flux and local fissile concentration. Because neutrons leak out the reactor around the edges, flux follows a parabolic curve with a maxima at the centre of the reactor and a minima at the outer edges. So you want higher enrichment at the edges so power profile is flat, or at least flatter. Other ways of flattening the flux profile of a reactor is to provide reflection of neutrons at the core edges. PWRs do that by having water flow down the outside of the core barrel before it passes up through the core.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-05-17 13:42:07)

tahanson43206 · 2022-05-17 15:23:24

For Calliban re #92

Thank you for the easy-for-me-to-understand explanation.

The fuel rods shuffle toward the center as they are consumed, to provide a (somewhat) uniform field of neutron generation over the span of the reactor.

That design ** also ** insures a requirement for human operators to attend to the moves safely.

You've described other designs over the many posts you've contributed, and I assume they all have similar concerns, but perhaps the details are handled differently.

This particular design (as I understand the paper) was based upon a design from Westinghouse, that was adapted for the more strict requirements of service in the UK.

The reward for all that extra care appears to be a record of safe operation in the UK, despite the age of the design.

***
I'll be watching to see how you develop your idea(s) for a large concentrated fuel production facility.

To this point, I haven't seen any indication you are tempted by the island idea, but I'll keep a watch for developments.

This is almost entirely a social problem to solve.

It appears (to me at least) that the technical considerations are well in hand.

(th)

kbd512 · 2022-05-17 23:43:49

I'm not convinced that expending our supplies of Uranium / Plutonium / Thorium to produce lower energy density fuels is a good trade, unless the only alternative is an endless stream of nearly impossible to recycle electronic waste. We need nuclear materials to power our military ships and submarines, nuclear thermal rockets, and nuclear power plants on Mars. On Mars, the continuous per-capita energy requirement is around 100kWe. So long as we colonize Mars, that energy requirement never ends. We can't do that with solar in any practical way and we can only barely do it using fission reactors. DU is also required for ship and vehicle armor and various armor penetrator cores, namely automatic cannon rounds and tank main gun rounds. Nothing else works as well as DU.

I don't take as much issue with devoting low value or waste products to synthetic fuel production. To the degree possible, we want to run this fuel production plant off of low value inputs that are both abundant and have low embodied energy cost. That does not describe Uranium or the high value materials used in nuclear reactors. Over time, the requirement to continually refuel 100 GW-class nuclear reactors with fresh Uranium will make fuel production impractical, which means fuel reprocessing on an unprecedented scale, an activity that NRC has all but outright banned. That's why it has to be solar thermal vs nuclear thermal or photovoltaics or wind turbines. The total materials consumption for the reactors is the lowest, and I would never dispute that fact, but there's a difference between low grade steels / glass / concrete and the super grade stuff we tend to use in nuclear reactors.

After we trade the materials for the gasoline and diesel fuels, or compressed gas fuels for lower CO2 emissions, the solar thermal plant does not appreciably degrade in output capacity, it "refuels" every day using thermalized photons, and we do not require total redesign and scrapping of large parts of our present electrical distribution infrastructure in a vain attempt to make everything electric while lacking the materials and technology to do so.

We will use the following:
1. Waste photons from the Sun - energy input is external
2. Waste CO2 from gas turbine or coal power plants - fuel chemical constituent is collected and liquefied
3. Waste salt from sea water for thermal energy storage - Hydrogen split from the water is collected and combined with CO2
4. Valuable byproducts of water desalination / flash evaporation / splitting (Lithium / Magnesium / Uranium) are filtered out or chemically separated for resale
5. All excess CO2 is converted to Carbon Fiber or CNT

We'll have a fuel production schedule that runs for 6 hours each day when we get the most power. We will book-end fuel production with morning and evening Carbon Fiber and plastics production runs, which is how and when we draw-down excess atmospheric CO2 by converting it into saleable structural materials. We need sufficient plastic / CFRP for passenger vehicle / light truck / aircraft production. If we end up with a lot of excess material, then we'll start making ISO containers from CFRP.

Design and Analysis of a Lightweight Composite Shipping Container Made of Carbon Fiber Laminates

Abstract:
The literature indicates that a 20% reduction in the weight of empty 40-foot shipping containers would result in $28 billion of fuel savings, along with a 3.6 exajoule reduction in the energy demand over containers’ 15-year lifetime. Decreasing the energy demand and thereby greenhouse gas emissions by utilizing lightweight shipping containers has been an unexplored strategy. In this regard, this study investigates the possibility of further reducing the weight of an empty container without compromising the structural integrity, strength, and function of a traditional steel container. This research finds that up to an 80% reduction in weight is possible by producing shipping containers with composite materials. This research presents the new design of a 40-foot container made of carbon fiber laminates. The tare weight of a traditional 40-foot shipping container is around 3750 kg. On the contrary, in this research, the weight of a composite design of the same container is calculated to be around 822 kg. Additional tests with various loads, such as lifting the container and stacking loads onto the composite container, are performed to explore the strength and buckling issues of the design presented in this study. The analyses reveal that the composite shipping container is a highly promising candidate for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, providing fuel savings and thus reducing the operational costs of transportation.

The steel / concrete / glass for the solar thermal solution certainly aren't "free" and thinking we could build the entire plant from scrap materials is downright silly, but the required material quantities still fall well within our basic production capabilities over time. We are not straining the existing supplies. The solar troughs are primarily tempered glass with a very thin / highly reflective Aluminum coating applied. The steel tube contains thermal power transfer fluid. That steel could be a low-alloy variant with a ceramic-based aerospace coating in lieu of higher value stainless steel. The salt storage tanks could also be ceramic coated to reduce corrosion rates.

We can afford to devote significant quantities of those abundant materials to transportation energy production, because they're low embodied energy and low total cost to us. Nobody will miss the sea water, CO2, or salt we consume. The steel and concrete requirements are rather high, though not astronomical, and there is no explosion in the quantities of electronics / semiconductors / batteries to make this work.

In order for us to bring 100 gigawatt-class nuclear reactors online within the next 10 years, we would need to start reprocessing fuel again. Both the NRC and the Uranium mining industry are highly resistant to the idea of fuel reprocessing because it negatively impacts the Uranium mining industry. We've already pulled enough Uranium out of the ground to run America off nuclear power for the next thousand years, but no new reactors are being built because NRC's core mission is to prevent the construction of new commercial reactors.

I say we side-step this project-killing regulatory hurdle. We need fuel now, and fighting with regulators and environmentalists has already wasted far too much precious time while we're actively running out of gasoline and diesel, with nothing to replace it. The environmentalists get some of what they want, everyone else gets life-saving energy that will not come from costly electronics, and our nuclear programs can focus on applications where solar will never work in any practical sense (ships, moon, Mars). That's pragmatism overriding endless possibilities and ideology.

tahanson43206 · 2022-05-18 06:17:48

For kbd512 and Calliban...

Each of you has an open lane for your particular development path. There is and should be no conflict.

What there ** is ** is healthy competition.

kbd512 appears to have a solution in mind that will work well for Texas, and has a high probability of working well for most locations in the US where solar power is available.

Calliban appears to have a solution in mind for a Nation State the size of the UK, with suitable locations away from population for production of hydrocarbon fuels using nuclear fission.

Eventually (I devoutly hope) arrival of practical fusion will allow earlier technologies to retire from active service.

However, that day is not yet, so I encourage each of you to engage with the Real Universe, and create working plants based upon your particular preference.

There is plenty of room in this Universe for each of your proposals to gather support, and to achieve productive status.

The Prometheus topic appears to be the right place for the approach of kbd512.

For Calliban, your proposal appears to be a better fit for Nuclear Power is Safe, although a dedicated topic for your vision of a fuel manufacturing plant is an option that some might prefer.

I'd like to see each of you make specific progress over the coming weeks.

We've accumulated enough knowledge in this forum to support each of your proposals.

It is time to start collecting human beings to support your respective ideas with physical objects manipulating physical materials.

(th)

kbd512 · 2022-05-18 10:31:07

tahanson43206,

It's not a competition. It's an acknowledgement that government and industry have conspired to wipe out nuclear power. Failure to acknowledge reality is where all "good ideas" go to die. This has nothing to do with whether or not nuclear power could be used to produce fuel, because it absolutely could be used for that purpose. However, it won't be. We all know that. It's still totally doable using solar thermal power. This isn't about making myself or any other constituency totally happy. It's pragmatism in action. We can synthesize fuel using process heat and a little bit of electro-chemistry to reduce input energy requirements, which is the only real "magic" (applied technology that most people don't understand) happening during the process. Batteries / photovoltaics / wind turbines supplying enough power and doing that sustainably is a total farce. Nuclear is a farce because of human factors totally unrelated to whether or not it can and will work, because nuclear power would absolutely get the job done as cheaply as possible (which only matters if we decide to use nuclear power and cease with all the "fear factor" roadblocks).

However, go to the NRC and tell them that you want to bring 100 new GW-class reactors online and put them, possibly all in one location. See how that process goes. They will show you the door about 5 minutes into your presentation. We all know what the end result will be, even if some of us refuse to acknowledge that the perfect is the enemy of the good in this situation. NRC makes every nuclear power project double to triple to quadruple the necessary total cost, even after all prudent reactor control measures are considered and included, merely by driving up the price of investment money to the investors through regulation. NRC exists to fleece investors in nuclear power, simple as that.

These days, most colleges are the exact same schtick. They spend 2 years teaching you things that will seldom, if ever, actually be used in a job (general studies not directed at solving specific problems that business or society needs solved- like knowing what dates in US or World History were associated with some war or other event to someone who will never teach or know anything more about history because they're interested in English literature or computer science or mechanical engineering). Education is not supposed to be an endless series of trivia quizzes, unless you're educating future Jeopardy contestants. The last two years you might receive a cursory introduction into your actual field of study. That's extraction of money from young adults with no real purpose except for making one party richer and the other poorer. A Master's degree means you actually spent 4 or more years being educated in some specific field of study, and should know enough to be reasonably useful to an employer who requires expertise in that particular field of study. At the end of that process, you've spent enough money to buy a very nice house, which you will then spend most of the rest of your adult life paying back, even if you swiftly progress through the corporate career structures.

The same applies to the present state of nuclear regulations, where vastly more money is squandered checking off boxes than actually ensuring that the basic plant concept of operations is sound and controllable and functional if plant capabilities degrade from a system casualty. If we want to go whole-hog on nuclear power, then there has to be some demonstrated desire to do that on the part of regulators and industry. If there is any real desire, then I don't see it. After basic requirements are set by the regulators, there can't be any more of this "wait, that's not what we actually meant, go back and redo what you've already done" type of nonsense. The same applies to sophisticated weapon systems like the F-35, where the government continually moved the goal posts while the defense contractor was attempting to develop and produce the end product. The majority of Lockheed-Martin's cost-overruns were associated with software development to make X / Y / Z feature or weapon system compatible with their fighter, despite the fact that none of those requirements were in the original contract. If Lockheed-Martin had simply thrown up their hands and said "we can't do what you want for any reasonable amount of money", then America and our allies are left without a multi-role fighter jet that has over-match capabilities against nearly all Russian and Chinese fighter jets. Beating Lockheed-Martin over the head for problems that our government intentionally caused (by asking for features that were never part of the original contract) is downright silly. In the end, astonishingly, they produced a peerless fighter jet that is less expensive per unit copy than other competing designs and has every conceivable feature that the other designs lack.

I feel the same way about commercial nuclear reactors. We spent heaps of money and devoted decades of continuous development effort to produce a power source that is clean, reliable, compact, and efficient, but we also developed all those concepts to the point that it's like investing in the F-35 program before serial production starts, and there's basically no serial production of GW-class nuclear reactors. Every reactor used here in America is a type of one-off design experiment. All the investors show up with cash in hand, AFTER you actually need their money. The nay-sayers don't have any intellectual arguments to make about why it won't work, they simply oppose nuclear power due to ideology or unfounded fears. The same was true of the F-35. There wasn't a single intellectual argument presented, apart from total cost, that was leveled against it.

The real question is how do you convince people to use nuclear power rather than starve themselves to death because the rest of the machinery that runs society has no fuel source without a reliable heat engine creating the fuel products they require to live the way they presently do?

I don't know how to do that, because the line of argumentation is not based in basic math or science. I don't present emotional arguments very well, because I've never argued anything from the standpoint of reactionary emotionalism. I've never viewed having energy as intrinsically good or bad, because what you do with it determines its general utility. That's what the left does, but I'm on the right. I know my own arguments about why traditional values and traditional ways of doing things, even if using bleeding edge technology, is the correct way to approach very large and unwieldy problems- you start with what you know that can be applied at scale and stop whining about the cost or potential dangers that can never be entirely eliminated. All power tools are inherently dangerous. Not having power at all is even more dangerous and assured to be far more destructive to humanity and the environment. You can't make an omelet without cracking a few eggs, and someone will always be offended or fearful over the solution.

Convince the majority of people to actually use nuclear power to its greatest potential and you'll have have no objection from me, but you're fighting an endless battle with unreasonable people and no assured outcome, no matter how hard you fight.

tahanson43206 · 2022-05-18 11:10:21

For kbd512 ....

We have a perfect setup for a competition...

You are advocating one way of making artificial fuel.

Calliban is advocating another.

Why are you reluctant to compete with Calliban, to see who can deliver artificial long chain hydrocarbons first?

You have almost ideal conditions to succeed, for all the reasons you've given over and over.

I'll try to persuade Calliban to concentrate on nuclear power in his topic.

Please concentrate on building a case for an investor to pump funds into your project.

You don't need to convince Calliban. He's not likely to invest in your project.

Your proposal seems sound to me, but whether you (and your helpers) can set up a scenario that pays back the investment in some reasonable time is pretty much up to you.

(th)

kbd512 · 2022-05-18 11:39:57

tahanson43206,

You told me you were working on a business case for this, but I guess that went nowhere faster than the large ship concept. I'm not competing with anyone, and neither is Calliban. We're posting ideas on an internet forum. Nothing will ever come of them, because it requires resources well beyond anything that anyone here could ever hope to marshal.

I guess we'll all learn to enjoy poverty, which is exactly where we're headed. Over the next 10 years, we will all live through a new era of artificial scarcity concocted through human arrogance and ignorance. To what end? That's the real question to be answered. I don't think anyone here can answer it. I certainly don't know. If you figure that out, then please let the rest of us know.

Calliban · 2022-05-18 13:50:21

Agreed on all points. I don't much care how this is made to work, so long as it does. Regarding solar thermal power, using either trough or tower collectors, the materials requirements per MWh, are less than those of PV, but more than wind power by a substantial margin. This is one of the reasons why I suggest a combination of wind and solar for input energy to the electrolyser. The other reason is that both wind and solar are seasonal, with solar producing more in summer and wind producing more in winter. By combining the two and using the molten salt for at least 12 hours energy storage, overall capacity factor can be improved over what would be achievable with solar thermal alone.

If overall electricity costs 19 cents per kWh, then the energy cost of producing a gallon of synthetic diesel will be $12. I do not know how much capital costs of the fuel synthesis plant will add. Expensive diesel will always be better than no diesel at all. But at prices north of $12 per gallon, the world will be a much poorer place. It may be that that is what the world needs to go through in order to wake up to the reality that the economy is an energy system. But poverty is not noble, or worthy or efficient. Past experience tells us that when energy gets expensive, life becomes cheap.

Kbd512 is correct in pointing out that nothing we do here is likely to make a very big difference. There is a small probability that some billionaire will read this forum and use what we have written as inspiration to change the world. Our own realisation of the approaching energy depressions may just serve as a catalyst for the realisation of others, with the power to make a difference. Or maybe when conventional oil production begins to seriously decline and we lose everything that it once provided, we won't be so surprised.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-05-18 14:18:14)

kbd512 · 2022-05-18 15:49:56

Calliban,

Whenever radicals can't get what they want because it simply doesn't exist, they throw a giant temper tantrum and then literally burn the place to the ground in the ultimate display of entitlement and a refusal to accept ugly reality. We're going to see that process play out over the next decade. When there isn't enough energy or money to simply feed everyone, the space program will virtually disappear. Money is merely the physical representation of the real world concepts of energy and labor being brought together to provide services that people find useful enough to be willing to pay for.

The only people who are fooling themselves are the ones who think they'll be able to go to a store to buy food after the diesel runs out. Production is already running at full capacity and there's not enough to supply all the trucks and tractors. The only thing that can possibly happen is a drop-off in productivity, which means less food, less transportation, and a poorer society because of it. We may have such wild surpluses here in America that the problem superficially appears to be an inconvenience or annoyance, but eventually that will metastasize into something far more destructive. The world will become a very "interesting place" (ye olde Chinese curse), in short order.

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