@@JohnnyBelgium Sorry to bust your bubble - but Simon Michaux lied to you. EUROPEAN WINTERS: His paper is all based on a 2014 studies about European renewables getting through a cold dark winter. But most of the human race lives much closer to the equator where there is no winter. THEN these studies are 10 years out of date - back when renewables were 10 TIMES more expensive! Overbuilding the grid to cope was economically impossible. So they concluded they needed 4 weeks of storage to get through winter. But today renewables are so cheap we can Overbuild the grid. EG: If winter halves renewables output, then build DOUBLE the renewables! With enough Overbuild and enough HVDC Transmission - most places can get their storage down to 2 days. DUMBEST MOVE: Michaux assumes we're too dumb to check his sources. In fact, his PDF doesn't LET you check his source for rejecting the cheapest grid storage - Pumped-Hydro Electricity Storage (PHES). Michaux claims there are difficulties finding enough sites. Really? What study is that based on? His 1000 page PDF didn’t say! But here he slips up and admits it. ruclips.net/video/LBw2OVWdWIQ/видео.html This is a study about PHES in Singapore. Singapore - where the highest hill is only 15 metres! Gee - I wonder why they had a problem finding enough sites! (Duh!) He uses this study to cast doubt on PHES for the world when most continents have 100 TIMES the PHES sites they could need. I call this lie “Painting the world Singapore!” Professor Andrew Blakers from the ANU presents the REAL story. Most countries have 100 times what they need - and if they don’t (like Singapore) - a neighbour does. ruclips.net/video/_Lk3elu3zf4/видео.html They have identified the 616,000 best sites around the world. re100.eng.anu.edu.au/global/ ABUNDANT MATERIALS: While many brands of renewables and batteries CAN use rare earth’s for certain niche markets, they do not HAVE to - and most are already weaning off them because of price and supply issues (especially with China being problematic.) EG: 95% of Solar brands ALREADY mainly use silicon - which is 27% of the Earth’s crust. Wind is made from iron (5%), aluminium (8%) and fibreglass (renewable glass fibres and renewable polyester resins). Half of Tesla’s batteries are LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate). The USGS reserves from 2022 show we have TEN TIMES the lithium we need for a world of 1.4 billion LPF EV's. SODIUM BATTERIES: Sodium batteries are now a thing. BYD are building a super cheap city-shopping car called the "Seagull", with a mere 250km range but only costing $9000 USD. Sodium is less fire prone, less toxic, and 30% cheaper than lithium. Being cheap and fire safe it’s perfect for grid batteries for a few hours (but PHES is cheaper.) 1 ton of sodium battery could run a large family’s home for 5 days - and the 38.5 quadrillion tons in the ocean is enough to store the world's electricity consumption for 152,173 years! Or to flip it around, a whole year of the world's electricity would take just 0.0006% of the ocean’s salt! Michaux published in August 2021 and said Sodium batteries were still in the lab. But sodium was well past the lab, and was into commercialisation. Indeed, the first ORDERS for sodium batteries had already been placed with Faradion over a year earlier. Michaux was making extraordinary claims about batteries - he should have taken extraordinary care! faradion.co.uk/faradion-receives-first-order-of-sodium-ion-batteries-for-australian-market/ SPEED of deployment: Solar and wind - even including the extra costs of transmission and PHES - are now the cheapest power, period. Their growth is exponential. Solar is doubling every 4 years - wind seems to be doubling about every decade. Australia will be 80-90% renewables by 2030. 10% of all cars sold are EV’s, and huge electric trucks like Janus Australia with their 1 minute-battery swap are creeping into the market. It’s starting, and will only accelerate. We’ll leave all fossil fuels way before they leave us.
Just enough to realize we ruined the environment going after rare minerals rather than doing a bit more work in dev to figure out how to do it without them.
The good doctor is a very smart man, but he is overstating the problem of cooling spent nuclear fuel if we add 4000 new plants. The energy required to cool the spent fuel pool is a tiny fraction of the output of a nuclear plant. Even a “fresh” core loaded into the pool does not require a significant amount of energy to cool. You basically need two cooling loops if your heat sink is the ocean, three if it’s a lake or cooling tower. Three pumps drawing 500 hp or about 550 kw of power is not a concern, compared to the output of a 1000 MW nuclear plant. 550 kw / 1000 MW = 0.05% He needs to be more informed on this issue so he stops spreading misinformation. Otherwise, it was a great interview.
And we really should be doing CHP will most power plants... And that can absolutely be done with the spent fuel... We shouldn't be just dumping that heat into the environment. District Heating, Industy, etc. should just become the default use for that heat... With the cooling towers, river/sea just being used to bump up the efficiency and as a full sized backup.
@@cheeseandjamsandwich Nuclear plants are situated many miles from populations and industry so using the decay heat for other purposes is not feasible. Unless we start building them in the middle of a city, your idea can’t happen.
@@kennethkaminski3438 Russia have been doing combines heat and power with nukes for decades... in fact a lot of district heating exists in the cities of the far north... it's really quite common.... One example i've personally seen is in Longyearbyen, in Svalbard, 800 miles from the north pole... their 2 boiler coal burning power plant feeds every single building in the town... and as it's permafrost, every pipe is above ground, heavily lagged, insulated, with the occasional reheat station dotted around. Fascinating to see. And very, very warm in their buildings! When you have a LOT of 'spare', waste heat, especially from big/multi reactor units, then the big pipes can pipe it a long way. So heating a local town, city is really not unfeasible. But the most important thing to consider is that 'we' often get distracted by thinking only of domestic needs for heat and electricity... Partly why wind and solar is considered feasible... as people think we only need a little bit of juice to run a house, and a big enough roof can power the house with solar... when there's not a cloudy/rainy spell... We have to remember that it's industry that we really need to decarbonise the most... as it's needs soooooooo so much energy. Indeed, a huge number of NPPs are built off out in remote areas... For safety and perceived safety reasons... Why not collocate specific industries out near them, ones that need a huge amount of process heat, that waste heat from npps can deliver. Win, win. It's just about actively seeking out who could best use it and giving incentives, easing planning applications such that they can move closer. Some industries may be able to be located right outside the boundary... perhaps others will be further down the road. But the fact remains that far too much useful heat is being dumped into rivers, the sea or the atmosphere via cooling tower. It's just a simple waste. And when you do do chp, the economics of your plant greatly increases! As the gas guys know. Also. We are nearing the deployment of SMRs... their much smaller core, thermal mass simply means that the melt down risk is massively reduced, passive safety, where walk away safety absolutely is a thing. This massively reduces the safety zone size... allowing for much closer siting of the npp.... And if we go to the next step, when we do have molten salt reactors up and running, working well, then their near 1 bar working pressure means that they have almost no requirement for any safety zone outside of the npp's buildings... So these absolutely could be place inside cities. As my couple of trips to the far north, Nordic countries showed me, there's a lot of cities that like to keep their power generation right in, or on the edge of their cities... As if the power went out, say due to an ice storm bringing transmission lines down, your city freezes, and people die. (Canada in the 90s). Even the shit we're seeing today with Putin bombing Ukraine's grid... It all leans us towards having some smaller power stations located much closer to the load centres, the cities, industry, etc. This will account for a big chunk of energy security.
@@kennethkaminski3438 TL;DR We just haven't bothered to do combined heat and power much yet... When we start doing it more, it'll prove to be something that will probably be included with every npp project. Feeding industry and domestic needs.
In the past kids built huts and fixed old cars. They gained building, engineering and construction skills, so they developed a practical intelligence which led to innovation often initiated in garages. Urban theorists have never made things they just buy things so their view of reality consists of magical thinking with no real understanding of energy exchange and no practical knowledge. A future with more control and less innovation was suggested by Klaus Schwab from the World Economic Forum which supports these mandated "green" transitions to a more impractical, dysfunctional world.
I would like this podcast a lot better if a conversation like this was broken into three parts with each 30 minutes section given an appropriate title.
@ 16:50 "[Circular Recycling] is not thermodynamically possible". The 2nd law of Thermodynamics or 'How The Universe has [us] in a Catch-22. 1. You can't win, you can only break even 2. You can only break even at Absolute Zero (0 deg Kelvin, -273.3 deg C) 3. You can't reach absolute zero. That said, Simon is right in that the Circular Economy won't fly when it's predicated on Oil/Fossil Fuel as its energy source. Our 'Glide Time and Path' into the ground is very short (maybe another 150y max, even with excluding AGW impacts) However, if 'The 4 Pillars of Civilisation' (Steel, Concrete, Fertiliser, Plastics) are backed by the Thorium/Uranium Energy Cycle, especially when leveraged by Direct 700 deg-C Process Heat straight from Molten Salt Fueled or cooled Fission reactors, then our Glide Time and Path into the ground is 10s of thousands of years from now. At a fraction of the cost and Enviro-Devastation of the NON-'Renewables' lunacy path that's starting to be taken.
That is precisely the same conclusion I've reached after an exhaustive deep dive into this subject. The Thorium/Uranium Energy Cycle and Direct Process Heat would allow humanity to continue in the manner to which it's become accustomed. Widespread deployment of assembly line-manufactured Small Modular Reactors make this concept both financially viable and technically feasible. Renewables simply will not meet the total requirements, but they can serve as an acceptable stop-gap to reduce the total amount of CO2 emitted during the interim while 4th generation reactors are tested and deployed.
Wow, there is a lot here to digest. I took a glance at the Finnish paper, 200 pages, I’ll be reading that soon. Once again, the math does not support the renewables only dream.
Great content by the way. It is quite frightening to me that we seem to be on this trajectory to obvious failure with some of these energy policy choices. @56:00 Chris your instincts and information on spent nuclear fuel are correct. The volumes are tiny, the cooling requirement is minuscule. Take a current design like AP1000, it produces ~24t of SNF annually if it runs at 100% output all year generating 10,135,320 MWh. Bringing that into a personal context, a typical Canadian home heated by natural gas might consume 5,000 kWh/year of electricity, that would be 1 cc (a cube 1 cm x 1 cm x 1 cm, there are 5 cc/5ml in one teaspoon) of spent nuclear fuel from an AP1000. Spent nuclear fuel and its management are human problems, not technical problems.
Uranium is a finite fuel ..just around 10% of world generation..Diesel petrol produce 10Kwatts per liter/quart...vehicle energy from these 6.5 billon Kwatts per 1:11:48 day.. transportation would need energy and batteries of around 70,000,000,000 billion Kwatts every day..how much copper what weight batteries green restart is illusion with present population ..food energy requirements (this is 1/3 of total world energy produced every day) ..
Yea what the hell, Simon had a super bad take on this. I mean you need to operate a few pump to keep it cool (not tomention you may find a way to use the small amount of wasteheat which ofc not that easy to use but still) is this really substract anything significant from the energy production of a reactor, because I don't think so. Beside all that, I would imagine that is included in the EROEI right ? Nuclear has the highest EROEI (geothermal exluded cause Idk about that but it's probably lower) so basically that answers the concerns.
A lot of very smart people have a hard time artculating things when put on the spot. He tried to say various things at once so maybe it got lost. I'm going to try to see what he said about this. He mentioned understanding the whole fuel cycle. He also mentioned thorium. He mentioned a point in time that is at the "end" which is 75 years from now after having built 1875 reactors. So the year is 2098 and we have had quite a number of reactors running for a while. I assume he thinks we're actually running very low on fossil resources so we need all the energy we can get from the reactors vs spending it on inputs as energy is actually really constrained now. He mentions the whole fuel cycle. With that many reactors running for that long we might be running out of Uranium too. That means that we need to take it from the Ocean at high cost and high energy cost. If we did it now it would cost 600 bucks per pound but in the year 2098 energy is constrained. The enrichment process is also very energy intensive. I don't know why he focusses on the trash. Is it a space thing? We will have new plants so those new plants will come with their own pool area for the short storage. Maybe he assumes we will use less enriched uranium or other degradations in the fuel so it becomes less efficient and therefore we have more waste? He also seems to imply that for this whole thing to work we need thorium or any more advanced reactor design so that we make sure the energy equations square when we run out of cheap uranium. I still have no idea what he tried to really say. Also not sure why it was edited out, maybe he clearly looked like an idiot for a nuclear savy crowd and so Dr. Keefer took this out out of kindness and to not degrade his credibility on mining which he surely knows more about.
@@simonjohn6156 It’s a shame such little thought has been applied to this obvious hoax. It’s obvious no one has taken two seconds to examine this problem. Even if it were true, we’re going about everything absolutely in the wrong way, but that’s the way lobbying works. It’s an absolute cruel joke on the poor and middle-class perpetrated by our political class of morons.
Very interesting. I don’t have much expertise on these topics, but I did notice that the paradigm of having to stop a vehicle from working in order to charge the battery ignores the idea of swapping out fully charged batteries like we do with most tools
Like what? Laptops, tablets (iPads), phones, battery powered power tools and most other serious devices almost all have built in batteries (unfortunately). About only things that don’t are toys. Has been like this for most of last 10 years. So what are you talking about????
When China stopped buying Australian coal, other countries bought the ships load, and the other countries then sold the coal to China. The ship sailed directly to China as always. Some things are bigger and hard to stop. But if coal did stop people starve because they cannot afford food imports.
Simon Michaux claims the world doesn’t have enough metal for the energy transition. But it turns out his impressive 1000 page paper is all based on 3 strawman attacks - and he’s hoping to hide these false claims by overwhelming readers in details. False claim 1: We’d need 4 weeks storage to get through winter. This is a myth. Read most peer-reviewed renewables papers and they consciously measure winter looking for “Dunkelflautes” - and then overbuild the wind and solar for them. Most nations can be balanced by 2 days storage. According to Michaux’s own numbers on metal resources there is enough metal for this. False claim 2: That they HAVE to build grid-scale batteries. He dismisses pumped hydro dude to availability concerns, but hasn’t considered off-river. Most continents have 100 TIMES MORE off-river potential than they need! False claim 3: That renewables need the fancier metals. They don’t. There are ways to build wind and solar and batteries from vastly more abundant plainer metals. The WHOLE PREMISE of the paper is a ridiculous strawman! I’ve gathered the evidence here. eclipsenow.wordpress.com/2023/01/13/professor-simon-michaux-how-to-strawman-renewables-and-ignore-industry-standards/
@@eclipsenow5431 Energy density is the killer though. Wind and solar are very low density. And batteries are too. It's just the limitations of chemistry, physics. Things we cannot argue with. Like not at all. We'll never receive more that 1kw of solar energy per square meter on the earths surface, and only in the ideal location, and with the ideal conditions. Never. And hardly anyone live in these areas, cos it so damn hot and dry. And where do people live? They mostly live in regions that simply are not that windy. Annoying eh. And again, hardly anyone lives in regions where hydro or pumped storage is even possible. The UK has fantastic wind resources, but it'll struggle to have more % wind on it's grid. Every other country simply won't be able to entertain it. And Intermittency, this is the other killer. There's nothing we can do about the day/night cycle, and there's no way to have constant wind. Dunkelflaute is just a real observation of how our weather is. If the whole of Europe is experiencing a period of low wind, then it's fucked. If it's backed by gas (which it will have to be), then the prices will go even more exponetial than we've ever seen, and many countries will receive none as there simply couldn't be enough supply for a resource that's used intermittently. Power cuts kill people. You cannot run industry with randomly fluctuating, intermittent energy supplies. You cannot make a wind turbine, or it's massive steel and concrete foundations without enormous amounts of uninterrupted heat and electricity. You cannot make solar panels or the aluminium frames without enormous amounts of uninterrupted heat and electricity. Wind and solar do not produce industrial amounts of heat. Wind and solar cannot generate the energy needed to make wind turbines and solar panels. Do you know how big a battery would have to be to power NYC, or London, or Tokyo even for 1 day? You can work it out. It's quite big.
@@eclipsenow5431 The issue you may have is that you don't quite grasp the scale of the situation. This is an enormous problem. Fossil fuels have given us absolutely enormous amounts of energy, constantly. To replace fossil fuels, we need something that's 'better' that they are. As we have to do it completely, and quickly. Splitting atoms is a million times more energy dense than chemical reactions like burning stuff... Not an exaggeration. A million. With todays reactors, which are running, you get 2x more electricity out of a Nuclear rather than Coal fired power station, using the same concrete, steel, etc, etc. We need to fully replace coal. So we could replace all the existing coal plants with half as many nuclear ones. This is possible, don't you agree? All with using the same sites, the same grid infrastructure, but without the daily trains, the pipelines, etc. We really haven't optimised nuclear power yet... we're only a 70 years in, and we've done fuckall because of the irrational fear from Chornobyl and Fukushima, etc... We're gonna get very, very, very good at nuclear power in the next few decades. Nuclear power will eventually lead to us eliminating almost all the wind and solar generation around the world, apart form it's existing niche use cases we're already used to. And it'll eliminate it for the technically correct reasons. Nuclear power will be the thing that saves our arses.
@@cheeseandjamsandwich Hey - I'm a fan of nuclear - have been for maybe 15 years and even wrote in an environmental magazine about it. But it's unpopular - and it's illegal in Australia! When I became a fan of nuclear 15 years ago wind and solar were NEARLY that much more expensive. As in about a DOZEN TIMES that much more expensive. But now they're so cheap we can overbuild them for winter. Nuclear has a problem: nuclear builds take forever, are often blocked by opposition groups and challenged in court - and solar will soon be deploying about a TERAWATT per year! Wind and solar can be overbuilt for winter with extra backup from off-river pumped hydro - of which most continents have over 100 TIMES what they need. Pick your best 1% and you're done. No environmental damage - because it's a closed loop on someone's farm somewhere, or public land. Off-river. Build the dam and pump the water in from dozens of km's away later. Cover in solar panels to slow evaporation. Basically by the time we got the nuclear prohibition in Australia lifted - wind and solar will have already done the job. Solar should be 1/5 the cost of nuclear (in raw, unfirmed LCOE) by the end of the year.
@@eclipsenow5431 Great that you're a fan. I think things have changed, such that you might be able to have a more positive outlook on it. "But now they're so cheap we can overbuild them for winter.": Why are they so cheap now? It's a mixture of newer technology, scaling up of manufacturing, competition, optimisation of manufacturing processes and also installation, economies of scale... Everything is just standard stuff, typical reasons... The first few are expensive, then when you commit and make larger and larger orders, the price comes down. How much would making one iPhone cost? We already have the wonderful example of France, showing that you can build out a lot of NPPs for cheap and fast. South Korea are the very latest example. Look at what just happed in the UAE. "Wind and solar can be overbuilt for winter with extra backup ": This is where scale comes back in, like i mentioned previously. You really do have to overbuild it... by A LOT! And that takes a lot of resources, a lot more land, a lot more transmission lines, a lot more money, a lot more replacing everything you've overbuilt every 20-25 years. 'Just' building out some backup is an unbelievably massive task... How long do the Tesla batteries last on the grid in SA, etc? Minutes at most. They're a wonderful thing to have on a grid for so many normal grid management reason, but for grid scale backups, powering Syders or Melbs for a few days, that would require astronomically big batteries, which takes a huge amount of materials, more mining, more processing, etc. etc. And then yes, these would have to be replaced after however many years they last... Hydro... Hydro is VERY geographically dependent. If you have Fjords, like Norway or NZ, you're laughing. How much off-river PH is actually possible in OZ? realistically? It absolutely will face opposition and it absolutely will cause environmental damage making them. And do your rivers ever have problems with flow, drying up? Even the mighty Murray isn't immune. Remember, the weather is only gonna get more weird over the next decades... Meaning our stable, predictable seasons and water flows will not be there when we need them. Oz especially will probably have some horrifically dry spells where it's as dry as a dead dingo's dead dad's donger... For multiple years! Scale! With renewables, weather driven, intermittent power sources, you are forced to accept that the backup has to be of the same peak generating capacity as the load it's supplying... i.e. how many GW peak the whole grid can demand on the 'worst' day. This is because renewables really do have the ability to generate Zero Watts if the weather is a bit wrong... Obviously at night, there is zero power from solar. If there's a huge calm weather pattern over a the country, then there can be zero watts from wind. And in Oz, this would likely be coupled with very hot weather, so large demand! In Europe, the historical weather data includes periods of weeks where there would be almost zero output from wind and solar... Weeks!!! How big is a battery that can power the whole of Europe for 2-4 weeks??? It's hilariously ginormous! And even when the wind and sun comes back, you'd have to have overbuilt out the W&S such that you could recharge the batteries, PSH, etc. as probably the weather is only marginally better... The scale of this bonkers. I mean fucking amazingly bonkers. Cost: At the moment, we're running mostly on Coal and gas... Wonderful things, apart from all the pollution that has, is gonna fuck us in many ways... but apart from that, they're amazing. Very energy dense. Very portable, storable. Allows for extremely dispatchable electricity and heat. They require a few generating sites and a few mine sites, with trains/ships/terminals to link them together, and then transmission lines to link them to the cities... So the cost is Plants + Mines + transport + transmission. If you went big time W&S, you've only got part of the system that's needed. You HAVE to have W&S + Backup, where the backup is of the same generating capacity. So you're building out TWO sets of generation!!!! Ok, you don't need fuel. So that's a win. But you deffo need A LOT of mines for the 'continuous' manufacturing of turbines and panels, as they're such small generators individually. So many, many more mines that we have today (see multiple Decouple podcasts explaining this! Not just this one.). Fuel transport isn't needed, but the continuous transportation of new turbines and panels is not trivial, and has to go to many, many, many sites. Fossils = Thermal PPs (5-10% over peak demand capacity) + Mines/Wells (a lot!) + fuel transportation + transmission. Renewables = W&S (overbuilt, million, billion of units) + backup (overbuilt) + Extra transmission + replace W&S every 20 years + magnitude more mines for all materials. Nuclear = NPPs (5-10% over capacity)(but half as many!) + 5 mines globally! + existing transmission + 4 trucks per year to refuel!!! Oh, did we mention that W&S only create electricity? And that's only 1/4-1/3 of our energy needs. OK, concentrated solar can generate heat, but not in truly industrial scales, and nowhere near the existing industry that needs it. Remember, wind and solar can't produce the energy needed to manufacture wind turbines and solar panels. Where are you gonna buy the turbines and panels??? China. Which is really not a secure energy situation... As Russia just pointed out to us in a devastating manner. The devil is in the details... And more so in the scale, in this example. Wind & Solar will remain as amazing for niche uses, but will be (are already) an expensive folly that doesn't allow us to do the task at hand... Getting off of fossil sourced fuels. Cost is laughably in favour of Nuclear, by a huge margin. I dare you to do the basic sums... how many wind turbines would it take to power Oz today... same with solar panels... And then start factoring in all the capacity factors, and weather patters, and then consider the growth in energy needs of OZ in the future. It's far easier to just build out a few fleets of nuclear reactors around OZ. "But it's unpopular - and it's illegal in Australia!": Views change... Laws can be changed... And they absolutely will be! Everyone is waking up to the realities of the energy situation... They're looking at Germany, at Japan, at Ukraine... They're realising that energy security is THE most important thing. Not something to gamble with. Energy enables everything withing a country, its wellbeing, its prosperity, its stability, its future. Guess what, Coal and gas are also very unpopular!!! But Oz keeps using it, mining it, selling it... If Oz has to, it absolutely could just build out NPPs even without public support... As the situation demands it. But views are changing... People are questioning what Greenpeace have been spouting, what Helen has been spouting... They're realising that what they warned of hasn't happened... 3 meltdowns didn't kill anyone... That nuclear has been endlessly been portrayed as evil, when actually, it's just sat there, working, doing what we want, in a very nice reliable way, and it turn out that it's also wonderfully clean... Which is something that we really, really need, really quickly. WRT our climate 'problem'... It's not how fast we start to get off of fossils, but how fast we can get that job done, finish it. Yes, a nuclear power plant does take a few year to build, but as France, Japan, South Korea have demonstrated, if you build out fleets of them, concurrently, then in 10 years time you start having GW+ NPPs coming online every year, every few months. Australia isn't stupid... It just has a few greedy people in bad places that just want to keep it how it is... But the new folks coming in will see this as a wonderful opportunity... They're sitting on so, so much uranium... But why sell the ore, when you can sell the fuel bundles instead??? Why sell iron ore when you can sell steel instead??? Why sell copper and zinc and lead ores, when you can sell the metals instead??? All you need is gobs of energy... electricity and heat... That you can put next to the mines, or on the coast. Australia can sell the metals, not the ore. An nuclear power, SMRs, HTGRs, etc will allow it to do so... And as the world is changing towards the nuclear direction, Oz isn't gonna maintain its "stick in the mud" attitude when i realises that there's money to be made, and that coal is gonna go out of fashion. The law will be changed, university courses started, multiple vendors from South Korea, UK, Canada, USA, etc will be given the job of building out several reactors, large and small. Then Oz will jump into the nuclear game big time, developing a lot of domestic technology, capabilities, skills, as there's a whole world to repower. Wind & Solar will eventually fizzle out, back down to it's undeniable niche uses. And we'll have to clean up an enormous amount of sites in the coming decades. Don't worry, Australia will go nuclear. And in a big way. It absolutely will not miss out on this opportunity.
And why do they spend energy on cooling spent nuclear fuel? It would be much more economical to store that fuel in small steel radiators that could be used for heating water and air in winter in large production facilities. In large plants, these nuclear radiators could be put to good use and protected from theft.
So Red Hydrogen is being made in Japan. They are using a different nuclear reactor that generates electricity and Vast amounts of Hydrogen in a way that up is very safe, now Hydrogen can be used for everything else.
The USA has 200 years of coal and oil still in the ground but not allowed to extract!!!!! Worked in mining for years , has always been a boom and bust , we have gold rushes and mining booms , worked a few myself worked a oil boom too .
A new mine takes about 20 years from "dig here" to production, and takes about 2,000 sq. kilometers! Think on that. We have already dug up the "good stuff",. So where to dig now??
There was no mention of heap leaching for recovery of copper and other minerals. Only the ball grinder then flotation route. Also heard no mention of rail. At one point all the copper pit mines had a rail line down into the pit and the shoves loaded string of open railcars. Three off the largest mines I can think of off hand had _ELECTRIC_ rail lines down into the pit. Phelps-Dodge Morenci, Kennecott Bingham pit, and Anaconda at Butte. Which also had an all electric haul from the pit in Butte to smelter in the town of Anaconda for concentrate. Now I don't know how it weighs out resource wise to do it that way, vs trucks, but it is worth throwing into the equations. The cost of rail, ties and the poles for the overhead catenary and the long string of cars that a single engine can haul; vs the flexibility of trucks. The tracks have to be moved periodically to keep up, but on the on manpower side; a single engineer pulls a string of say 10 rock cars up to the crusher; instead of 10 drivers per each shift of rock truck operators. So it can get complicated. Most mines still operating use trucks now; and there were also Diesel train operations at some pits like Ajo and Magma that are shuttered; just for reference. Something to keep in mind. I also didn't hear anything about how much mining would have to be done to extract the uranium for all the plants you both suggested building. It don't grow on trees.
I thought his views on SNF was kind of ill informed. Also, someone, please buy Dr Chris a razor. I love the mustache, but the rest has to be cleaned up on a gentleman.
I’m 100% for more “clean energy “ renewables,and total destruction of the “dirty” “fossil fuels “ industry.Just because I’m in the business of selling fire wood and heavy coats for this winter doesn’t mean I suffer from a conflict of interest.
Somewhere in this discussion you talk about the social sciences being as important (or more so) than the natural sciences. You are leaving a third huge field out. I might say that you seem to be blind to it (as Nate Hagens also does). When I was a freshman starting out my four years at Harvard college all the way back in 1968 I was required, before I chose my course of study, to take at least one course in each of THREE curricula -- the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. I chose the third, partly because I was convinced that it was the most powerful. I still believe that, and if you want to see humans change their ways( a change in their paradigm) look to the arts -- narrative fiction, performance, songwriting, movie making, entertainment. That is at least worth discussing. The sciences have made their case perfectly clear for 50 years, and think about how little difference it has made.
Probably the easiest way to demonstrate the role of the arts is in "commercial art", advertising (in the Western, capitalist economies and accompanying taught culture). But there the artists have been bought to do evil. How memorable is that little rhyming couplet (doggerel really) "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz. Oh what a relief it is." The artists to undo that damage are not likely to be paid. Who will be their patron? If you need to start somewhere, though, consider Breanna Quinlan.
I watched wind turbine blades be shipped up the Mississippi via barge, unloaded by crane to a holding area in my city, then shipped via semi west on I-90 to be buried in Idaho or Montana, because they cannot be recycled. To me, it was the most gross waste of materials and fossil fuel I'd ever witnessed in my life. We basically wasted extraction to bury it again in another form.
I’m a civil engineer and reckon that although this lecture was interesting and smart b it could’ve been in better plain English. Not sure engineers talking to doctors in slang-jargon is crystal clear.
I fear that "their" vision of a future society will hold two groups of people, those that gets the scraps and those that have all the energy they want. just so their energy balance sheet is "balanced"
I`ve been thinking this too. I think it is going to be- The rich live alight, the rest have to survive somehow or die. And I think *they* know this...But I`m a pessimistic, rural bastard, so what do I know??? :/
You are thinking clearly, this is about reducing human population (by all means possible) to balance energy/all minerals against their calculations of time and consumption to reach an "optimal" population level.
The 0.01% will do whatever it takes to make sure they don't have to give up anything and everyone else makes the sacrifices, but this will do so much damage to the current world system that their luxuries just aren't going to be possible anymore in any form.
The problem I have with Simon and people like him is that he has to talk in away where he is the authority on everything. The truth is that sometimes you don’t know the best way to do something until you try. Mistakes are the best way to learn if you’re willing to admit you made one.
Well I i liked the energy density discussion and I would add this is one of the most information dense/rich, talks/ interviews I have ever listened to Thank you to your guest for sharing his deep understanding of the issues discussed and his well informed views on the challenges that are looming up in the near future Thank you to the host for being a true partner in this conversation your concise questions and undoubtedly substantial understanding of the subject matter enabled you to take full advantage of the benefits if such an accomplished guest.
The reason many scientists aren't giving their own definitive opinion on the matter has nothing to do with humility. Its because of fear. Anyone who is loud or public in their statement or in an influential, is reticent to share on this subject because there is a powerful political aspect to this movement. And the politics of the environment has become associated with a left political leaning that professes tolerance and practices censure, sometimes violently.
I, too, a very doubtful that we will transition to renewables without incredible financial turbulence and a downshifting of lifestyles. However, with batteries, the miners could have two or three charged up batteries to replace immediately. It's highly unlikely that only one batter would be used and recharged each time.
Why bother with batteries at all. Why not use a pantograph. It is proven technology, and I am sure those trucks are predominantly driving up and down the same road all day long.
Concentate on anthracitic coal mining, it burns clean with the highest combustion enthalpy, about 33000 kJoule per kg, the combustion products, when properly burned are just clean carbon dioxide ready for infustrial use as well as agricultural, greenhouse growing enhancer (3 to 4 times higher productivity) The rest is happily absorbed by the green stomata of the leaves with minimal water consumption. This is a real increase in efficiency and clean air.
I love you guys. Have you checked out the molten salt reactor that can use from water cooled reactors which still contains of the nuclear energy. The beauty is, that you can leave the uranium and transuranics in the reactor until they fission which leaves you only fission products with their much shorter half-life's. Salts have a 1000C liquid range at atmospheric pressure, so the possibility of catastrophic cooling failures are very easy to engineer out. The waste steam is tiny per kilowatt compared to our current technology. The molten salt reactor waste can be "mined" later on for the rare earths as they reach their 10+ times half-life's and are less costly to refine out using the salt chemistry, because of the weaker ionic bonds. You can "mine" for medical isotopes in real time also, using a reactor loop for that purpose. You may also refine out the short-lived isotopes in real time, if you wish using the same loop. Molten salt reactors run very hot which can provide you process heat for manufacturing or simply to run turbines more efficiently for electrical power. The Zeon problem is solved by capturing it as it out gasses from the molten salt. The Zenon was a very big problem at Chernobyl, within its solid fuel, when they tied to restart the reactor. When a molten salt reactor reaches the end of its long life you can just send it back to the factory where you can reconstitute the remaining fuel to be used other reactors. Since the reactor can be built at a factory, the cost per unit is less. The reactors are relatively compact and can be buried underground for safety and close to where the power is needed.
Forget a "silver bullet" idea. We need to explore many solutions working together to bring abundant power. Oil and gas are part of this mix for quite sometime.
@@sonnyeastham Correct. Soon you'll see nuclear reactors and aluminium smelters living next to each other. It won't just be the hydro schemes, as has been mostly seen to date. Any country that wants to entertain any industry will being going nuclear in big ways in the next few years. Those going bigtime into renewables will likely lose all of their industry, especially heavy industry. Very especially if we put a price on carbon. Everyone's watching Germany of course. Sad to watch, as an engineer myself. The link between industry and nuclear is only going to get stronger and stronger and stronger... As the fact that a 1GWe (electricity) NPP actually produces 3GWt (thermal)... It produces 3x more heat for the electricity it generates... Meaning that if you just want the heat, you're in luck! Nuclear hasn't been harnessed much in the west for industrial heat... but that's going to change BIG time very soon. Nuclear thermal plants will be very common. And any 'normal' nuclear power station producing electricity today can also have all its 'waste' heat, that is just dumped into the atmosphere, or body of water next to it... Again, not done much in the west. Combined heat and power (CHP), cogeneration massively improves the efficiencies and the economies of any NPP. Once we start doing this more widespread, nuclear power gets cheaper and cheaper and cheaper and cheaper... And if you happen to have any large ore bodies in your country, why would you sell the ore to other countries??? Why not just stick a small or medium sized reactor near the ore bodies and directly produce the iron, aluminium, zinc, lead, tin, copper, nuclear fuel, etc, etc, etc, etc... Selling the final product is always much more profitable than just selling the raw materials!
Great thoughts at the end with the can kicking stuff and attempts to delay the thermodynamic reset but if this is the case why has nuclear been opposed for decades? With massive nuclear power we could have largely decarbonised the grid and used the plentiful nuclear energy for synfuels. Also saved massive amounts of gas and coal, which could in theory have been used to offset decline in petroleum production which is coming. Yes you can make petroleum products like diesel from coal etc. It would have at least bought us more time if that is indeed what they are trying to do. It just doesn't stack up that they would hamstring nuclear in the way they have UNLESS THEY WANT WHAT IS COMING.
"...could've decarbonized the world"???? You're delusional. Not worth arguing. Another champagne socialist from the privileged lap top class devoid of reality his whole life.
This is the most informative iv ever watched, im a former. Nuclear Submarnier, thats says so me thing, i misszpel on pourposa to confuse the bots anb ai
Why would entire wind turbine blades need to be trashed when the turbine stops functioning properly? Why couldn't the blades be made so that only the electrical portions (e.g. wiring, etc) would need to be replaced?
Dr Simon needs to speak in Australian parliament and educate Albo and Bowen otherwise we are all doomed. Mad Max looks like a reality coming to a place near you soon.
Its 98 degrees. Im hot not gonna lie. But i still wont put a ac in the window. Honestly if we just go back to the ol fashion way of living combined with very efficient building and smart city development we can just lessen our demand for energy and change the math. The math just doesnt make sense. We need to change everything.
"The generation that will have to build whatever it is, will have to be stronger than the generation that fought world war 2.". I'm not overly optimistic.
Good point, at 1:13:00 the guest does not consider the battery swapping technology being developed by Nio. Also Anglo American mining company is developing solar powered electrolyzers to provide hydrogen on site for hydrogen fuel cells on a big mining truck.
One Korean specialist double-hulled bulk-carrier shipbuilding yard could construct 10GigaWatts per year. e.g. 20×ThorCon TMSR-500MWe for between $800 to $1000 per kiloWatt fully fitted except for fueling salts and towed like a barge, the first to Bangka Islands in the Java sea. This from Indonesia's current PPA with ThorCon for 8× 500MWe liquid Thorium metal ion molten sodium & berilium fluoride salt burner energy converters. The first is expected to be producing power by the end of 2025 at a pre-profit cost of less than $30 per Megawatt.hour (
Dear Professor, it is such a shame that Politics doesn’t attract knowledgeable people but rather silly people who don’t even know how little they know. Heaven help us.
If I’m not mistaken the corpse-statue line, also one of my favorites, is attributable to Charles Hall, I believe from his tome Energy and the Wealth of Nations.
1.4 B cars, 6 to 12 Kg of cobalt per car, the total amount of cobalt on earth is 7.6B kg. That translates to around 845m cars. To replace cars today we need to DOUBLE the cobalt supply on earth. No wonder Musk is building rockets, he's gonna need to go get a cobalt asteroid.
Electric Grid blindness is very real. 5times bigger grid capacity is stupendously expensive, and its cost must be added to the 5times more electricity generation from the central generation plants proposals..
Hi! Great podcast. A question to both of you: do you know when the first industrial water electrolysis was built and why? Hint: it's about food. In other words some analysis on our food supply requirements would really be an important addition. For people keen on energy and industry that does not seem to be major, but when it comes to your conclusion, it is. Things will become an archaic (ie. No society will be able to do the 3 step process properly anymore). So food supply needs to remain under control for the whole time during the transition. By the way, a little anecdotic thought on your conclusion. It reminds me a bit if this science fiction film when the remainders of society where living under a small dome, and to keep sufficient space people had a life countdown clock implanted in their hand. It was meant to be a horror scenario, but in the near future, we can be happy if we manage to implement such human way of degrowing the 8 billion human society. The biggest challenge will be that decisions will have to be taken on who can live and who can't. Of course less energy means less food but also less healthcare, so that at least in western societies the elderly (ie. At the time it comes to that the likes of Simon & myself...) will have the good taste of just dying of COVID or the then epidemic instead costing huge amounts of energy to be saved for a couple of month or years at best. Keep smiling and keep working on having people face the real problem of Energy! Thanks again guys!
One more kick at the can on nuclear technology. The buildout would not be X plants per year, but more like Y%/year where the number of new plants built each grow steadily over time, as industry capacity and capability grows with that demand. And of course if people think that this is important you can front-run that investing the areas that would be a bottleneck to exponential growth ahead of time.
Yes. The costs of 'fixing' it will only get more and more and more expensive, the longer we leave it... So it's going to be cheaper to commit soon, and fully. And to repeat the much used example, we just need to do a 'France'... 10-15 years and you've decarbonised all electricity grids, with all countries doing this concurrently... And everything speeding up as the industry and technology grows, develops... By the time we really do have functional SMRs, mass producable, then it's simply a case of setting up lots of factories around the world, pumping them out... in 5 years we might only see a few npps come online, but after that, it absolutely will be GWs, then10s of GWs and 100s of GWs... We just need to commit. Also... we will probably still see the old dogs refusing to learn new tricks... countries, oil & gas companies, etc, refusing, lobbying to keep the status quo... But you only need one country (china, india) to suddently start selling lots of reactors abroad, or a middle east oil company going all in on nuclear power synfuels, and you'll start to see a lot of piss and panic as everyone then rushes to catch up. The wonderful economics and practicalities of doing nuclear properly (smrs, fleets, chp, industrial) i forsee will just make them the bleeding obvious way and everyone will run with it, and everything will be better...
As someone who had to study geology and ecology as part of his studies (carthography) I can say that anyone with any knowledge of the topic already knew nuclear was the only solution - 15 years ago. Solar MIGHT eventually be an alternative after we greatly improve the efficiency (which is very slowly improving so in 30-40 years assuming no breakthroughs we'll get there) and create a working energy storage system (which is nowhere on the horizon).
@@HontounoShiramizu Indeed. Solar has a slight little problem though... The hard limits... Only 1kw of solar energy lands on a square meter of earth when the sun's directly above and the atmosphere is clear... There's no way to get more than this. Then there's the single layer limit of about 33%, and the multilayer limit of 66%, assuming infinitely thin, perfect layers, such that it can get all the wavelengths possible... All these theoretical limits are hard limits... nothing will ever exceed this, unless something really bad happens with our atmosphere!!! Many people think that most technologies, including wind and solar, are gonna also scale up like semiconductors have, following Moore's Law, doubling every 18 months... This simply will not happen... We're already in the 20s percent wise with solar panels... any future gains are gonna get smaller and smaller each time... Yeah, the cost and materials need might get really really low, but we'll still be left with the unavoidable need for a ginormous surface area needing covering... and that lots of people live fairly far north, so just don't get much sun, and don't get much at all when they actually need more leccy... I foresee solar remaining a very useful niche technology, but it'll disappear from grids... And rooftop solar will only really work out if it is the tiles, shingles themselves... but the cost and effort installing them might still just be huge compared to being plugged into a grid full of nukes... Deffo want it on my desert island tho!
Only one.....historically proven solar event that destroys satillites, power transformers/sub stations/emergency back-up generators...and all those non-functiong nuclear plant reactors will poison Earth forever...,,look at Fukashima for that type of outcome multiplied by a thousand.....got it now?
Besides....there is only at best a 20-30 year supply of uranium if everyone in the world went nuclear....back to the same old problem. So....how do you plan to dispose of all us useless eaters (old dogs?) and who will make those choices?...ultimately the elite will be forced into the Mad Max plan/solution. MY BEST ADVICE....dont have children/grandchildren unless you plan to die before witnessing them suffer horrendously....but remember...many still will.
1:19:00 We went from a CO2 reason for coming off fossil fuels to a running out of fossil fuels reason. I didn't see any justification for saying we are running out of fossil fuels or nuclear fuel anytime soon.
There are a lot of lies in 'proven reserves' numbers due to companies and state governments needing to keep up appearances, but more importantly there is a rising EROEI on liquid fossil fuel extraction that is mostly hidden from the stats on reserves and projected production numbers. EROEI on liquid fossils is declining and will be at unsustainable levels far sooner than depletion of reserves, leading to collapses in the monetary system which will destroy energy demand if we haven't run out first, which leads to declining or perhaps zero investment in developing new fossil energy extraction. (The money-energy relationship is a separate topic but super simply: energy is the true universal currency of all life and all systems including societies, money is therefore a claim on the expenditure of energy and debt is a claim on future energy expenditures, governments can print all the money they want [by, of course, generating debt] but they can't print more energy so, eventually, as energy production becomes more expensive in EROEI terms and production of energy declines or at best only expands linearly the ballooning exponential increase in debt [exponential because debts need repayment in a percentage of principal] becomes unsustainable leading to a series of monetary collapses, crises and eventual decline of the economy). See the work of Arthur Berman for more info on fossil fuel depletion. Nate Hagens for the money-energy relationship.
@kurtniznik8116 how convinced are you of the EROI numbers? It seems ver contentious issue. And some peer reviewed papers atm to aye that renewables have EROI numbers comparable to hydrocarbons. From a thermodynamic perspective it makes sense that more energy dense sources would be more efficient and more profitable. But maybe I'm just a pessimist.
@@user-nx6ji9tk8i Those folks have it backwards. Energy is required to get the commodities, as with everything. Energy is the universal currency, this is a law of nature.
@@kurtniznik8116 ok. Agreed! I think I,d heard Simon Michaux coin the phrase. Or was Nate Hagen or any of those others. And above and beyond the mining issues here, Putin,s supposed PhD tells us it,s all about an energy grab.
The economic growth that comes from the green transition will be amazing. Dunno why so many people are against this. Plus there will be less heavy metals in drinking water.
This guy is closest to the actual reality next to maybe Charles Hall in explaining the problem itself. The solution of course is a moral and logical course correction that requires a change in consumption and expectation. The only question is how much of that will come down to sheer force and natural law vs free will.
As the world's population becomes richer it will require more transport, homes , and infrastructure to exist. The choice for mining and resource collection is whether to design a reliable renewable system or replicate the current methods of use and waste. The living standards of richer countries will need to fall , and the poorer countries will need to rise. More energy and mining will be required to release the tension of living standard inequality around the world and reduce migration.
@@gibbogle No, the rich will not, but as living standards rise for the poor less will be available for the rich. A reduction of commodity use will naturally happen and the wealthy will become less wasteful and resource intensive. Renewable energy technologies will make everyone less poor and less needy as a steady state of energy price and use is achieved. We have all been fascinated by the super rich , but they are a small group.
@@robinwhitebeam3955 What I call "rich" you probably call "middle-class". All North Americans and Europeans are rich in global terms. I can't understand why you think the billions becoming less poor will result in a reduction of commodity use. As their standard of living rises their use will be more like ours. I am certainly not fascinated by the super rich, and they are irrelevant to this discussion. I am familiar with the views you express, and I think they are best summed up as "hopes and prayers".
Great enlightening discussion - thanks. Also - sure all battery electric mining equipment is impractical with the exception of the dump trucks which could be hybrid with electric motors providing variable torque and speed while the diesel engine runs at its optimal revolution charging the suitably sized battery pack and able to use regenerative braking when tripping downhill in the mine?
On nuclear fuel cycles and storage of spent nuclear fuel. Tomorrow's tech will be different to today's tech. As we get to nuclear reactor designs that burn 100% of the heavy metal we put into them, we then start burning down the spent nuclear fuel accumulated from earlier designs, leaving only fission products behind. If that technology takes another two or three decades to emerge, there's still plenty of time and uranium and storage to go around.
Well I was pretty interested in everything they were saying as I thought it made sense until I heard big batteries pack is going to take longer to charge. Doesn't matter if you're charging a little cell or many cells 20 minutes is kind of the standard to go 80% proven by all the electric cars on the road right now. Most of the stuff they're talking about I don't really know the details but this one point that was stated makes me question everything else that was said. Something to remember when you're talking don't say something that's wrong after you've said many things that might be right because people that know are going to question everything you just said because of that one wrong statement. All in all this was a very good conversation and I'm glad I listen to it, lots to think about.😊
We burn a cubic mile of oil every day, we will run out in the next few decades unless we build several hundred nuclear "waste" burning thorium reactors a week (please do the math). We currently spend about 1/4 of the oil we make getting tankers fueled to MOVE the oil to where we need it, so if we built a few dozen nuclear powered oil tankers that would help.
It is annoying to me, but not really surprising, how often people react to the presentation of facts about the material requirements of the energy transition by seeing it as arguing against the transition. Both the speakers accept the need to react to global warming, but they both like to deal with reality.
Sounds like yet more hyper planned economy solutions. "Getting absolutely everyone to understand" sounds a bit like gun to our collective heads cause nearly everyone has different needs.
The modern style of interviewing, it seems, consists in asking a series of questions, with little reflection on what was said. "I felt outside the silence, yet had my fingers in all the silence." "Tell me about blowing things up". Hmmmmm.
Hey Brad: You said nuclear is not transportable. Doombcoff yes it is. With a molten salt thorium reactor it is cheap enough to make transportation fuel. Have ya'll never heard of diethyl ethane. Diesels can run perfectly with this liquid.
YA right, blackouts will get us off computers and allow for quality family time... Here in Alberta, and everywhere, when the power goes out, we drop into survival mode. That's the time you find out about the quality of your family.
The best thing we have with easily available materials is concentrated solar power. Focusing solar rays into water or oil to drive turbines. The heat is transmitted to a tower or by fluid conductors to a generating station, and the heat can be stored too. Such a station I wouldn't be surprised being ale to operate for min 50 years. That's important, because the life span of these green techs are far to low
If you have abundant nuclear energy you don't need load following and it can help with the other stuff. At minimum we should be building a LOT of it, and by the way most of nuclear's "issues" have either been solved for decades (like what to do with waste, deep borehole disposal though we think in future we might be able to use the waste and keeping it handy might be a good idea which is why nobody is too fussed about it), and building at scale - well you mass produce reactors in a factory (Rolls Royce, GE, others have been building small reactors with decent output, incredible safety records that don't need refuelling over a 25 year plus lifespan for a long time, lets do something with _those_ reactors - fun fact Rolls Royce and GE are and it is essentially just a licensing matter). Certainly, if you're one of these climate folk and you're not arguing fission first, you're doing it wrong - we have a generation of fission reactors then fusion energy will be plentiful by the time they're end of life.
@@owenshaifer7031molten salt reactors are never going to be an actual _thing_ - grossly overengineered and overpriced way to solve a solved problem. Next up: triangle wheels and whatnot. We don't need fuel we have breeder reactors and reprocessing, we don't need molten salt because we have competent engineering.
The spent nuclear fuel heat removal really is a non-issue, we should be using that low grade heat for CHP/district heating systems instead of wasting in into the environment though. I think a new Czech company has a patented technology to do this? Another thing, he criticises the EROEI/EROI methodology due to the discrepancies of what's included within the system boundaries of the model (i.e. energy inputs for transmission lines, the energy to power the construction vehicles to install said transmission lines, the energy to produce the vehicles etc.), which I agree with him on, but if you look closely at various papers from various authors, some define their systems inputs and outputs very precisely and clearly - only this way the EROI can be an extremely useful tool. Really interesting content nonetheless guys!
computers _do not get cooked_ from brownouts. IF they get damaged, it is because all the safety precautions fail _and_ the power supply is of _low quality_
Re: the technology to store power generated by wind and solar for weeks at a time - what about pumping water uphill into a reservoir and then releasing it into turbines when it’s needed? Why is or isn’t that a feasible solution?
It is feasible. There are thousands of sites already identified by Satellite imagining. The issue is transmission lines, which in turn takes government eminent domain and financing.
Reality will hit the fan and we will realise, that our decarbonisation dreams are just that, pipe drams. Humanity will be burning hydrocarbons for a long time to come. They will eventually be replaced, where feasible, but not everywhere.
So - as a farmer you know all about the escalation in energy costs! But cooking over an open fire - not for me. Ah - in a house - built by hand in the dark with cob walls off your own land. Amazing.Glad you don,t have to do the washing as well.
the giant fusion reactor in the sky has energized the whole planet for billions of years until the temporary recent addition of fossil fuels. if homo sap is as smart as he thinks, we can do it again.
Many engineers are on the government payroll and do not rock the boat. Many engineers are excited buy their expertise being in demand in a huge expansion.
OK not that I think mining methods are changing any time soon but let's say it did and to elictric, trucks batteries would be changeable to keep those trucks moving eg 2 or 3 batteries for every truck. But again mining methods will be the last thing to change low lighting fruit first.
"Oil is a steak wrapped in bacon, and all the renewables are lettuce". That about sums it up.
Brilliant! I’m stealing this statement/analogy thanks.
And we’ve eaten half the steak ruclips.net/video/kZA9Hnp3aV4/видео.html
@@life42theuniverse and farted a lot of deadly steak farts.. also killed many people because of that steak.
There is no fart from steak. Ask anyone on keto. We have no climate crisis.
@@nescius2Brilliant. You must have a degree in women’s studies.😅
As a European, I say every single person in Europe needs to hear these conversations.
As a redditor: normies don't want to hear it. They are too emotionally invested in this ride.
@@JohnnyBelgium Sorry to bust your bubble - but Simon Michaux lied to you.
EUROPEAN WINTERS: His paper is all based on a 2014 studies about European renewables getting through a cold dark winter. But most of the human race lives much closer to the equator where there is no winter. THEN these studies are 10 years out of date - back when renewables were 10 TIMES more expensive! Overbuilding the grid to cope was economically impossible. So they concluded they needed 4 weeks of storage to get through winter. But today renewables are so cheap we can Overbuild the grid. EG: If winter halves renewables output, then build DOUBLE the renewables! With enough Overbuild and enough HVDC Transmission - most places can get their storage down to 2 days.
DUMBEST MOVE: Michaux assumes we're too dumb to check his sources. In fact, his PDF doesn't LET you check his source for rejecting the cheapest grid storage - Pumped-Hydro Electricity Storage (PHES). Michaux claims there are difficulties finding enough sites. Really? What study is that based on? His 1000 page PDF didn’t say! But here he slips up and admits it. ruclips.net/video/LBw2OVWdWIQ/видео.html
This is a study about PHES in Singapore. Singapore - where the highest hill is only 15 metres! Gee - I wonder why they had a problem finding enough sites! (Duh!) He uses this study to cast doubt on PHES for the world when most continents have 100 TIMES the PHES sites they could need. I call this lie “Painting the world Singapore!” Professor Andrew Blakers from the ANU presents the REAL story. Most countries have 100 times what they need - and if they don’t (like Singapore) - a neighbour does. ruclips.net/video/_Lk3elu3zf4/видео.html They have identified the 616,000 best sites around the world. re100.eng.anu.edu.au/global/
ABUNDANT MATERIALS: While many brands of renewables and batteries CAN use rare earth’s for certain niche markets, they do not HAVE to - and most are already weaning off them because of price and supply issues (especially with China being problematic.)
EG: 95% of Solar brands ALREADY mainly use silicon - which is 27% of the Earth’s crust. Wind is made from iron (5%), aluminium (8%) and fibreglass (renewable glass fibres and renewable polyester resins). Half of Tesla’s batteries are LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate). The USGS reserves from 2022 show we have TEN TIMES the lithium we need for a world of 1.4 billion LPF EV's.
SODIUM BATTERIES: Sodium batteries are now a thing. BYD are building a super cheap city-shopping car called the "Seagull", with a mere 250km range but only costing $9000 USD. Sodium is less fire prone, less toxic, and 30% cheaper than lithium. Being cheap and fire safe it’s perfect for grid batteries for a few hours (but PHES is cheaper.) 1 ton of sodium battery could run a large family’s home for 5 days - and the 38.5 quadrillion tons in the ocean is enough to store the world's electricity consumption for 152,173 years! Or to flip it around, a whole year of the world's electricity would take just 0.0006% of the ocean’s salt! Michaux published in August 2021 and said Sodium batteries were still in the lab. But sodium was well past the lab, and was into commercialisation. Indeed, the first ORDERS for sodium batteries had already been placed with Faradion over a year earlier. Michaux was making extraordinary claims about batteries - he should have taken extraordinary care!
faradion.co.uk/faradion-receives-first-order-of-sodium-ion-batteries-for-australian-market/
SPEED of deployment: Solar and wind - even including the extra costs of transmission and PHES - are now the cheapest power, period. Their growth is exponential. Solar is doubling every 4 years - wind seems to be doubling about every decade. Australia will be 80-90% renewables by 2030. 10% of all cars sold are EV’s, and huge electric trucks like Janus Australia with their 1 minute-battery swap are creeping into the market. It’s starting, and will only accelerate. We’ll leave all fossil fuels way before they leave us.
Here in Europe we're too busy whining about "human rights". It's so pathetic.
You need to go off grid.
EU will find out, but it’ll be too late.
You had me at "the green transition will take 5 times more copper than has ever been mined".
Just enough to realize we ruined the environment going after rare minerals rather than doing a bit more work in dev to figure out how to do it without them.
The good doctor is a very smart man, but he is overstating the problem of cooling spent nuclear fuel if we add 4000 new plants. The energy required to cool the spent fuel pool is a tiny fraction of the output of a nuclear plant. Even a “fresh” core loaded into the pool does not require a significant amount of energy to cool.
You basically need two cooling loops if your heat sink is the ocean, three if it’s a lake or cooling tower. Three pumps drawing 500 hp or about 550 kw of power is not a concern, compared to the output of a 1000 MW nuclear plant.
550 kw / 1000 MW = 0.05%
He needs to be more informed on this issue so he stops spreading misinformation.
Otherwise, it was a great interview.
Thank you for articulating this. I was just going to swear but I don’t feel the need anymore.
And we really should be doing CHP will most power plants... And that can absolutely be done with the spent fuel... We shouldn't be just dumping that heat into the environment.
District Heating, Industy, etc. should just become the default use for that heat... With the cooling towers, river/sea just being used to bump up the efficiency and as a full sized backup.
@@cheeseandjamsandwich
Nuclear plants are situated many miles from populations and industry so using the decay heat for other purposes is not feasible. Unless we start building them in the middle of a city, your idea can’t happen.
@@kennethkaminski3438 Russia have been doing combines heat and power with nukes for decades... in fact a lot of district heating exists in the cities of the far north... it's really quite common.... One example i've personally seen is in Longyearbyen, in Svalbard, 800 miles from the north pole... their 2 boiler coal burning power plant feeds every single building in the town... and as it's permafrost, every pipe is above ground, heavily lagged, insulated, with the occasional reheat station dotted around. Fascinating to see. And very, very warm in their buildings!
When you have a LOT of 'spare', waste heat, especially from big/multi reactor units, then the big pipes can pipe it a long way. So heating a local town, city is really not unfeasible.
But the most important thing to consider is that 'we' often get distracted by thinking only of domestic needs for heat and electricity... Partly why wind and solar is considered feasible... as people think we only need a little bit of juice to run a house, and a big enough roof can power the house with solar... when there's not a cloudy/rainy spell... We have to remember that it's industry that we really need to decarbonise the most... as it's needs soooooooo so much energy.
Indeed, a huge number of NPPs are built off out in remote areas... For safety and perceived safety reasons... Why not collocate specific industries out near them, ones that need a huge amount of process heat, that waste heat from npps can deliver. Win, win.
It's just about actively seeking out who could best use it and giving incentives, easing planning applications such that they can move closer. Some industries may be able to be located right outside the boundary... perhaps others will be further down the road. But the fact remains that far too much useful heat is being dumped into rivers, the sea or the atmosphere via cooling tower. It's just a simple waste. And when you do do chp, the economics of your plant greatly increases! As the gas guys know.
Also. We are nearing the deployment of SMRs... their much smaller core, thermal mass simply means that the melt down risk is massively reduced, passive safety, where walk away safety absolutely is a thing. This massively reduces the safety zone size... allowing for much closer siting of the npp....
And if we go to the next step, when we do have molten salt reactors up and running, working well, then their near 1 bar working pressure means that they have almost no requirement for any safety zone outside of the npp's buildings... So these absolutely could be place inside cities.
As my couple of trips to the far north, Nordic countries showed me, there's a lot of cities that like to keep their power generation right in, or on the edge of their cities... As if the power went out, say due to an ice storm bringing transmission lines down, your city freezes, and people die. (Canada in the 90s).
Even the shit we're seeing today with Putin bombing Ukraine's grid... It all leans us towards having some smaller power stations located much closer to the load centres, the cities, industry, etc. This will account for a big chunk of energy security.
@@kennethkaminski3438 TL;DR
We just haven't bothered to do combined heat and power much yet...
When we start doing it more, it'll prove to be something that will probably be included with every npp project. Feeding industry and domestic needs.
In the past kids built huts and fixed old cars. They gained building, engineering and construction skills, so they developed a practical intelligence which led to innovation often initiated in garages.
Urban theorists have never made things they just buy things so their view of reality consists of magical thinking with no real understanding of energy exchange and no practical knowledge.
A future with more control and less innovation was suggested by Klaus Schwab from the World Economic Forum which supports these mandated "green" transitions to a more impractical, dysfunctional world.
I would like this podcast a lot better if a conversation like this was broken into three parts with each 30 minutes section given an appropriate title.
Fantastic video. Many, many thanks for making it. Excellent scholarly dialogue, very informative.
@ 16:50 "[Circular Recycling] is not thermodynamically possible". The 2nd law of Thermodynamics or 'How The Universe has [us] in a Catch-22.
1. You can't win, you can only break even
2. You can only break even at Absolute Zero (0 deg Kelvin, -273.3 deg C)
3. You can't reach absolute zero.
That said, Simon is right in that the Circular Economy won't fly when it's predicated on Oil/Fossil Fuel as its energy source. Our 'Glide Time and Path' into the ground is very short (maybe another 150y max, even with excluding AGW impacts)
However, if 'The 4 Pillars of Civilisation' (Steel, Concrete, Fertiliser, Plastics) are backed by the Thorium/Uranium Energy Cycle, especially when leveraged by Direct 700 deg-C Process Heat straight from Molten Salt Fueled or cooled Fission reactors, then our Glide Time and Path into the ground is 10s of thousands of years from now. At a fraction of the cost and Enviro-Devastation of the NON-'Renewables' lunacy path that's starting to be taken.
That is precisely the same conclusion I've reached after an exhaustive deep dive into this subject. The Thorium/Uranium Energy Cycle and Direct Process Heat would allow humanity to continue in the manner to which it's become accustomed. Widespread deployment of assembly line-manufactured Small Modular Reactors make this concept both financially viable and technically feasible. Renewables simply will not meet the total requirements, but they can serve as an acceptable stop-gap to reduce the total amount of CO2 emitted during the interim while 4th generation reactors are tested and deployed.
Wow, there is a lot here to digest. I took a glance at the Finnish paper, 200 pages, I’ll be reading that soon. Once again, the math does not support the renewables only dream.
Great content by the way. It is quite frightening to me that we seem to be on this trajectory to obvious failure with some of these energy policy choices.
@56:00 Chris your instincts and information on spent nuclear fuel are correct. The volumes are tiny, the cooling requirement is minuscule. Take a current design like AP1000, it produces ~24t of SNF annually if it runs at 100% output all year generating 10,135,320 MWh.
Bringing that into a personal context, a typical Canadian home heated by natural gas might consume 5,000 kWh/year of electricity, that would be 1 cc (a cube 1 cm x 1 cm x 1 cm, there are 5 cc/5ml in one teaspoon) of spent nuclear fuel from an AP1000. Spent nuclear fuel and its management are human problems, not technical problems.
What would Galen Winsor say about it?
Uranium is a finite fuel ..just around 10% of world generation..Diesel petrol produce 10Kwatts per liter/quart...vehicle energy from these 6.5 billon Kwatts per 1:11:48 day.. transportation would need energy and batteries of around 70,000,000,000 billion Kwatts every day..how much copper what weight batteries green restart is illusion with present population ..food energy requirements (this is 1/3 of total world energy produced every day) ..
20 million tons of batteries needed to store present rate of transport...lifespan of batteries 7 years
Yea what the hell, Simon had a super bad take on this. I mean you need to operate a few pump to keep it cool (not tomention you may find a way to use the small amount of wasteheat which ofc not that easy to use but still) is this really substract anything significant from the energy production of a reactor, because I don't think so.
Beside all that, I would imagine that is included in the EROEI right ? Nuclear has the highest EROEI (geothermal exluded cause Idk about that but it's probably lower) so basically that answers the concerns.
A lot of very smart people have a hard time artculating things when put on the spot. He tried to say various things at once so maybe it got lost. I'm going to try to see what he said about this.
He mentioned understanding the whole fuel cycle. He also mentioned thorium. He mentioned a point in time that is at the "end" which is 75 years from now after having built 1875 reactors.
So the year is 2098 and we have had quite a number of reactors running for a while. I assume he thinks we're actually running very low on fossil resources so we need all the energy we can get from the reactors vs spending it on inputs as energy is actually really constrained now. He mentions the whole fuel cycle. With that many reactors running for that long we might be running out of Uranium too. That means that we need to take it from the Ocean at high cost and high energy cost. If we did it now it would cost 600 bucks per pound but in the year 2098 energy is constrained.
The enrichment process is also very energy intensive. I don't know why he focusses on the trash. Is it a space thing? We will have new plants so those new plants will come with their own pool area for the short storage. Maybe he assumes we will use less enriched uranium or other degradations in the fuel so it becomes less efficient and therefore we have more waste?
He also seems to imply that for this whole thing to work we need thorium or any more advanced reactor design so that we make sure the energy equations square when we run out of cheap uranium.
I still have no idea what he tried to really say. Also not sure why it was edited out, maybe he clearly looked like an idiot for a nuclear savy crowd and so Dr. Keefer took this out out of kindness and to not degrade his credibility on mining which he surely knows more about.
Great conversation ! Definitively we are energy blind and raw materials blind ! The challenge is very big.
The “challenge “ is insurmountable as long as politicians continue to push this anti human,Luddite approach to energy production
No the challange isnt big at all,its supereasy to save a lot of energy if we change our weastfull lifestyle!
@@simonjohn6156 It’s a shame such little thought has been applied to this obvious hoax. It’s obvious no one has taken two seconds to examine this problem. Even if it were true, we’re going about everything absolutely in the wrong way, but that’s the way lobbying works. It’s an absolute cruel joke on the poor and middle-class perpetrated by our political class of morons.
Very interesting. I don’t have much expertise on these topics, but I did notice that the paradigm of having to stop a vehicle from working in order to charge the battery ignores the idea of swapping out fully charged batteries like we do with most tools
You going to swap a 1000-2000 pound battery like it was a double A?
@@Aidan42781 Stupid comment
Exactly my thought.
@@Aidan42781a perfect reply and funny as hell😂😂😂😂
Like what? Laptops, tablets (iPads), phones, battery powered power tools and most other serious devices almost all have built in batteries (unfortunately). About only things that don’t are toys.
Has been like this for most of last 10 years.
So what are you talking about????
Thank you for an excellent and informative conversation!! ❤
When China stopped buying Australian coal, other countries bought the ships load, and the other countries then sold the coal to China.
The ship sailed directly to China as always.
Some things are bigger and hard to stop.
But if coal did stop people starve because they cannot afford food imports.
My eyes stayed pretty much peeled open in awe of the scale of this word and our wishful thinking the whole episode! 😳🤯
Simon Michaux claims the world doesn’t have enough metal for the energy transition. But it turns out his impressive 1000 page paper is all based on 3 strawman attacks - and he’s hoping to hide these false claims by overwhelming readers in details.
False claim 1: We’d need 4 weeks storage to get through winter. This is a myth. Read most peer-reviewed renewables papers and they consciously measure winter looking for “Dunkelflautes” - and then overbuild the wind and solar for them. Most nations can be balanced by 2 days storage. According to Michaux’s own numbers on metal resources there is enough metal for this.
False claim 2: That they HAVE to build grid-scale batteries. He dismisses pumped hydro dude to availability concerns, but hasn’t considered off-river. Most continents have 100 TIMES MORE off-river potential than they need!
False claim 3: That renewables need the fancier metals. They don’t. There are ways to build wind and solar and batteries from vastly more abundant plainer metals. The WHOLE PREMISE of the paper is a ridiculous strawman! I’ve gathered the evidence here. eclipsenow.wordpress.com/2023/01/13/professor-simon-michaux-how-to-strawman-renewables-and-ignore-industry-standards/
@@eclipsenow5431 Energy density is the killer though.
Wind and solar are very low density. And batteries are too.
It's just the limitations of chemistry, physics. Things we cannot argue with. Like not at all. We'll never receive more that 1kw of solar energy per square meter on the earths surface, and only in the ideal location, and with the ideal conditions. Never. And hardly anyone live in these areas, cos it so damn hot and dry.
And where do people live? They mostly live in regions that simply are not that windy. Annoying eh.
And again, hardly anyone lives in regions where hydro or pumped storage is even possible.
The UK has fantastic wind resources, but it'll struggle to have more % wind on it's grid. Every other country simply won't be able to entertain it.
And Intermittency, this is the other killer.
There's nothing we can do about the day/night cycle, and there's no way to have constant wind.
Dunkelflaute is just a real observation of how our weather is.
If the whole of Europe is experiencing a period of low wind, then it's fucked. If it's backed by gas (which it will have to be), then the prices will go even more exponetial than we've ever seen, and many countries will receive none as there simply couldn't be enough supply for a resource that's used intermittently.
Power cuts kill people.
You cannot run industry with randomly fluctuating, intermittent energy supplies.
You cannot make a wind turbine, or it's massive steel and concrete foundations without enormous amounts of uninterrupted heat and electricity.
You cannot make solar panels or the aluminium frames without enormous amounts of uninterrupted heat and electricity.
Wind and solar do not produce industrial amounts of heat.
Wind and solar cannot generate the energy needed to make wind turbines and solar panels.
Do you know how big a battery would have to be to power NYC, or London, or Tokyo even for 1 day?
You can work it out.
It's quite big.
@@eclipsenow5431 The issue you may have is that you don't quite grasp the scale of the situation.
This is an enormous problem.
Fossil fuels have given us absolutely enormous amounts of energy, constantly.
To replace fossil fuels, we need something that's 'better' that they are. As we have to do it completely, and quickly.
Splitting atoms is a million times more energy dense than chemical reactions like burning stuff... Not an exaggeration. A million.
With todays reactors, which are running, you get 2x more electricity out of a Nuclear rather than Coal fired power station, using the same concrete, steel, etc, etc. We need to fully replace coal. So we could replace all the existing coal plants with half as many nuclear ones. This is possible, don't you agree? All with using the same sites, the same grid infrastructure, but without the daily trains, the pipelines, etc.
We really haven't optimised nuclear power yet... we're only a 70 years in, and we've done fuckall because of the irrational fear from Chornobyl and Fukushima, etc... We're gonna get very, very, very good at nuclear power in the next few decades.
Nuclear power will eventually lead to us eliminating almost all the wind and solar generation around the world, apart form it's existing niche use cases we're already used to.
And it'll eliminate it for the technically correct reasons.
Nuclear power will be the thing that saves our arses.
@@cheeseandjamsandwich Hey - I'm a fan of nuclear - have been for maybe 15 years and even wrote in an environmental magazine about it. But it's unpopular - and it's illegal in Australia! When I became a fan of nuclear 15 years ago wind and solar were NEARLY that much more expensive. As in about a DOZEN TIMES that much more expensive. But now they're so cheap we can overbuild them for winter.
Nuclear has a problem: nuclear builds take forever, are often blocked by opposition groups and challenged in court - and solar will soon be deploying about a TERAWATT per year!
Wind and solar can be overbuilt for winter with extra backup from off-river pumped hydro - of which most continents have over 100 TIMES what they need. Pick your best 1% and you're done. No environmental damage - because it's a closed loop on someone's farm somewhere, or public land. Off-river. Build the dam and pump the water in from dozens of km's away later. Cover in solar panels to slow evaporation.
Basically by the time we got the nuclear prohibition in Australia lifted - wind and solar will have already done the job. Solar should be 1/5 the cost of nuclear (in raw, unfirmed LCOE) by the end of the year.
@@eclipsenow5431 Great that you're a fan. I think things have changed, such that you might be able to have a more positive outlook on it.
"But now they're so cheap we can overbuild them for winter.": Why are they so cheap now? It's a mixture of newer technology, scaling up of manufacturing, competition, optimisation of manufacturing processes and also installation, economies of scale... Everything is just standard stuff, typical reasons... The first few are expensive, then when you commit and make larger and larger orders, the price comes down. How much would making one iPhone cost?
We already have the wonderful example of France, showing that you can build out a lot of NPPs for cheap and fast. South Korea are the very latest example. Look at what just happed in the UAE.
"Wind and solar can be overbuilt for winter with extra backup ": This is where scale comes back in, like i mentioned previously. You really do have to overbuild it... by A LOT! And that takes a lot of resources, a lot more land, a lot more transmission lines, a lot more money, a lot more replacing everything you've overbuilt every 20-25 years.
'Just' building out some backup is an unbelievably massive task... How long do the Tesla batteries last on the grid in SA, etc? Minutes at most. They're a wonderful thing to have on a grid for so many normal grid management reason, but for grid scale backups, powering Syders or Melbs for a few days, that would require astronomically big batteries, which takes a huge amount of materials, more mining, more processing, etc. etc. And then yes, these would have to be replaced after however many years they last...
Hydro... Hydro is VERY geographically dependent. If you have Fjords, like Norway or NZ, you're laughing. How much off-river PH is actually possible in OZ? realistically? It absolutely will face opposition and it absolutely will cause environmental damage making them. And do your rivers ever have problems with flow, drying up? Even the mighty Murray isn't immune. Remember, the weather is only gonna get more weird over the next decades... Meaning our stable, predictable seasons and water flows will not be there when we need them. Oz especially will probably have some horrifically dry spells where it's as dry as a dead dingo's dead dad's donger... For multiple years!
Scale!
With renewables, weather driven, intermittent power sources, you are forced to accept that the backup has to be of the same peak generating capacity as the load it's supplying... i.e. how many GW peak the whole grid can demand on the 'worst' day. This is because renewables really do have the ability to generate Zero Watts if the weather is a bit wrong... Obviously at night, there is zero power from solar. If there's a huge calm weather pattern over a the country, then there can be zero watts from wind. And in Oz, this would likely be coupled with very hot weather, so large demand! In Europe, the historical weather data includes periods of weeks where there would be almost zero output from wind and solar... Weeks!!! How big is a battery that can power the whole of Europe for 2-4 weeks??? It's hilariously ginormous! And even when the wind and sun comes back, you'd have to have overbuilt out the W&S such that you could recharge the batteries, PSH, etc. as probably the weather is only marginally better... The scale of this bonkers. I mean fucking amazingly bonkers.
Cost: At the moment, we're running mostly on Coal and gas... Wonderful things, apart from all the pollution that has, is gonna fuck us in many ways... but apart from that, they're amazing. Very energy dense. Very portable, storable. Allows for extremely dispatchable electricity and heat. They require a few generating sites and a few mine sites, with trains/ships/terminals to link them together, and then transmission lines to link them to the cities... So the cost is Plants + Mines + transport + transmission.
If you went big time W&S, you've only got part of the system that's needed. You HAVE to have W&S + Backup, where the backup is of the same generating capacity. So you're building out TWO sets of generation!!!! Ok, you don't need fuel. So that's a win. But you deffo need A LOT of mines for the 'continuous' manufacturing of turbines and panels, as they're such small generators individually. So many, many more mines that we have today (see multiple Decouple podcasts explaining this! Not just this one.). Fuel transport isn't needed, but the continuous transportation of new turbines and panels is not trivial, and has to go to many, many, many sites.
Fossils = Thermal PPs (5-10% over peak demand capacity) + Mines/Wells (a lot!) + fuel transportation + transmission.
Renewables = W&S (overbuilt, million, billion of units) + backup (overbuilt) + Extra transmission + replace W&S every 20 years + magnitude more mines for all materials.
Nuclear = NPPs (5-10% over capacity)(but half as many!) + 5 mines globally! + existing transmission + 4 trucks per year to refuel!!!
Oh, did we mention that W&S only create electricity? And that's only 1/4-1/3 of our energy needs. OK, concentrated solar can generate heat, but not in truly industrial scales, and nowhere near the existing industry that needs it.
Remember, wind and solar can't produce the energy needed to manufacture wind turbines and solar panels.
Where are you gonna buy the turbines and panels??? China. Which is really not a secure energy situation... As Russia just pointed out to us in a devastating manner.
The devil is in the details... And more so in the scale, in this example. Wind & Solar will remain as amazing for niche uses, but will be (are already) an expensive folly that doesn't allow us to do the task at hand... Getting off of fossil sourced fuels.
Cost is laughably in favour of Nuclear, by a huge margin.
I dare you to do the basic sums... how many wind turbines would it take to power Oz today... same with solar panels... And then start factoring in all the capacity factors, and weather patters, and then consider the growth in energy needs of OZ in the future.
It's far easier to just build out a few fleets of nuclear reactors around OZ.
"But it's unpopular - and it's illegal in Australia!": Views change... Laws can be changed... And they absolutely will be!
Everyone is waking up to the realities of the energy situation... They're looking at Germany, at Japan, at Ukraine... They're realising that energy security is THE most important thing. Not something to gamble with. Energy enables everything withing a country, its wellbeing, its prosperity, its stability, its future.
Guess what, Coal and gas are also very unpopular!!! But Oz keeps using it, mining it, selling it... If Oz has to, it absolutely could just build out NPPs even without public support... As the situation demands it. But views are changing... People are questioning what Greenpeace have been spouting, what Helen has been spouting... They're realising that what they warned of hasn't happened... 3 meltdowns didn't kill anyone... That nuclear has been endlessly been portrayed as evil, when actually, it's just sat there, working, doing what we want, in a very nice reliable way, and it turn out that it's also wonderfully clean... Which is something that we really, really need, really quickly.
WRT our climate 'problem'... It's not how fast we start to get off of fossils, but how fast we can get that job done, finish it.
Yes, a nuclear power plant does take a few year to build, but as France, Japan, South Korea have demonstrated, if you build out fleets of them, concurrently, then in 10 years time you start having GW+ NPPs coming online every year, every few months.
Australia isn't stupid... It just has a few greedy people in bad places that just want to keep it how it is... But the new folks coming in will see this as a wonderful opportunity... They're sitting on so, so much uranium... But why sell the ore, when you can sell the fuel bundles instead??? Why sell iron ore when you can sell steel instead??? Why sell copper and zinc and lead ores, when you can sell the metals instead??? All you need is gobs of energy... electricity and heat... That you can put next to the mines, or on the coast. Australia can sell the metals, not the ore. An nuclear power, SMRs, HTGRs, etc will allow it to do so... And as the world is changing towards the nuclear direction, Oz isn't gonna maintain its "stick in the mud" attitude when i realises that there's money to be made, and that coal is gonna go out of fashion.
The law will be changed, university courses started, multiple vendors from South Korea, UK, Canada, USA, etc will be given the job of building out several reactors, large and small. Then Oz will jump into the nuclear game big time, developing a lot of domestic technology, capabilities, skills, as there's a whole world to repower.
Wind & Solar will eventually fizzle out, back down to it's undeniable niche uses. And we'll have to clean up an enormous amount of sites in the coming decades.
Don't worry, Australia will go nuclear. And in a big way. It absolutely will not miss out on this opportunity.
Great presentation
And why do they spend energy on cooling spent nuclear fuel?
It would be much more economical to store that fuel in small steel radiators that could be used for heating water and air in winter in large production facilities. In large plants, these nuclear radiators could be put to good use and protected from theft.
So Red Hydrogen is being made in Japan. They are using a different nuclear reactor that generates electricity and Vast amounts of Hydrogen in a way that up is very safe, now Hydrogen can be used for everything else.
The USA has 200 years of coal and oil still in the ground but not allowed to extract!!!!! Worked in mining for years , has always been a boom and bust , we have gold rushes and mining booms , worked a few myself worked a oil boom too .
A new mine takes about 20 years from "dig here" to production, and takes about 2,000 sq. kilometers! Think on that. We have already dug up the "good stuff",. So where to dig now??
they're sitting on the wealth required to update the mining technology and improve mineral extraction but they'll reap profits until we crash instead
There was no mention of heap leaching for recovery of copper and other minerals. Only the ball grinder then flotation route.
Also heard no mention of rail. At one point all the copper pit mines had a rail line down into the pit and the shoves loaded string of open railcars. Three off the largest mines I can think of off hand had _ELECTRIC_ rail lines down into the pit. Phelps-Dodge Morenci, Kennecott Bingham pit, and Anaconda at Butte. Which also had an all electric haul from the pit in Butte to smelter in the town of Anaconda for concentrate. Now I don't know how it weighs out resource wise to do it that way, vs trucks, but it is worth throwing into the equations. The cost of rail, ties and the poles for the overhead catenary and the long string of cars that a single engine can haul; vs the flexibility of trucks. The tracks have to be moved periodically to keep up, but on the on manpower side; a single engineer pulls a string of say 10 rock cars up to the crusher; instead of 10 drivers per each shift of rock truck operators. So it can get complicated. Most mines still operating use trucks now; and there were also Diesel train operations at some pits like Ajo and Magma that are shuttered; just for reference. Something to keep in mind.
I also didn't hear anything about how much mining would have to be done to extract the uranium for all the plants you
both suggested building. It don't grow on trees.
I thought his views on SNF was kind of ill informed.
Also, someone, please buy Dr Chris a razor. I love the mustache, but the rest has to be cleaned up on a gentleman.
I disagree. The stuble suits him. Looks good.
He is handsome in all his manifestations.
Not clean-shaving saves resources.
@@nicholaswright9197 We all sound a little gay with our "man crush" on Dr Chris.
I’m 100% for more “clean energy “ renewables,and total destruction of the “dirty” “fossil fuels “ industry.Just because I’m in the business of selling fire wood and heavy coats for this winter doesn’t mean I suffer from a conflict of interest.
Somewhere in this discussion you talk about the social sciences being as important (or more so) than the natural sciences. You are leaving a third huge field out. I might say that you seem to be blind to it (as Nate Hagens also does). When I was a freshman starting out my four years at Harvard college all the way back in 1968 I was required, before I chose my course of study, to take at least one course in each of THREE curricula -- the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. I chose the third, partly because I was convinced that it was the most powerful. I still believe that, and if you want to see humans change their ways( a change in their paradigm) look to the arts -- narrative fiction, performance, songwriting, movie making, entertainment. That is at least worth discussing. The sciences have made their case perfectly clear for 50 years, and think about how little difference it has made.
Probably the easiest way to demonstrate the role of the arts is in "commercial art", advertising (in the Western, capitalist economies and accompanying taught culture). But there the artists have been bought to do evil. How memorable is that little rhyming couplet (doggerel really) "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz. Oh what a relief it is." The artists to undo that damage are not likely to be paid. Who will be their patron? If you need to start somewhere, though, consider Breanna Quinlan.
Simon keeps being interrupted by this fellow--
he has much to say in true detail.
Simon finally got into his stride--worth heeding.
I watched wind turbine blades be shipped up the Mississippi via barge, unloaded by crane to a holding area in my city, then shipped via semi west on I-90 to be buried in Idaho or Montana, because they cannot be recycled.
To me, it was the most gross waste of materials and fossil fuel I'd ever witnessed in my life.
We basically wasted extraction to bury it again in another form.
I’m a civil engineer and reckon that although this lecture was interesting and smart b it could’ve been in better plain English.
Not sure engineers talking to doctors in slang-jargon is crystal clear.
Real practical knowledge .thank you vary much
I fear that "their" vision of a future society will hold two groups of people, those that gets the scraps and those that have all the energy they want. just so their energy balance sheet is "balanced"
I`ve been thinking this too. I think it is going to be- The rich live alight, the rest have to survive somehow or die. And I think *they* know this...But I`m a pessimistic, rural bastard, so what do I know??? :/
You are thinking clearly, this is about reducing human population (by all means possible) to balance energy/all minerals against their calculations of time and consumption to reach an "optimal" population level.
I believe that if there is no nuclear collapse, only those tribal groups that live with what they have within their reach will survive.
The 0.01% will do whatever it takes to make sure they don't have to give up anything and everyone else makes the sacrifices, but this will do so much damage to the current world system that their luxuries just aren't going to be possible anymore in any form.
@@sonnyeasthamin 1990 after 20 years of farming , i woke up to the fact that humans are being farmed
AGREED ! Absolutely fascinating ! Thank you !
The problem I have with Simon and people like him is that he has to talk in away where he is the authority on everything. The truth is that sometimes you don’t know the best way to do something until you try. Mistakes are the best way to learn if you’re willing to admit you made one.
Well I i liked the energy density discussion and I would add this is one of the most information dense/rich,
talks/ interviews I have ever listened to
Thank you to your guest for sharing his deep understanding of the issues discussed and his well informed views on the challenges that are looming up in the near future
Thank you to the host for being a true partner in this conversation your concise questions and undoubtedly substantial understanding of the subject matter enabled you to take full advantage of the benefits if such an accomplished guest.
The reason many scientists aren't giving their own definitive opinion on the matter has nothing to do with humility. Its because of fear. Anyone who is loud or public in their statement or in an influential, is reticent to share on this subject because there is a powerful political aspect to this movement. And the politics of the environment has become associated with a left political leaning that professes tolerance and practices censure, sometimes violently.
This. Links to learn more?
I, too, a very doubtful that we will transition to renewables without incredible financial turbulence and a downshifting of lifestyles. However, with batteries, the miners could have two or three charged up batteries to replace immediately. It's highly unlikely that only one batter would be used and recharged each time.
Why bother with batteries at all. Why not use a pantograph. It is proven technology, and I am sure those trucks are predominantly driving up and down the same road all day long.
Concentate on anthracitic coal mining, it burns clean with the highest combustion enthalpy, about 33000 kJoule per kg, the combustion products, when properly burned are just clean carbon dioxide ready for infustrial use as well as agricultural, greenhouse growing enhancer (3 to 4 times higher productivity) The rest is happily absorbed by the green stomata of the leaves with minimal water consumption. This is a real increase in efficiency and clean air.
Yes get rid if coal first
what happened at 1:01:55? did Dr. Simon say something that you didn't want in your channel or something? please explain
I love you guys. Have you checked out the molten salt reactor that can use from water cooled reactors which still contains of the nuclear energy. The beauty is, that you can leave the uranium and transuranics in the reactor until they fission which leaves you only fission products with their much shorter half-life's. Salts have a 1000C liquid range at atmospheric pressure, so the possibility of catastrophic cooling failures are very easy to engineer out. The waste steam is tiny per kilowatt compared to our current technology.
The molten salt reactor waste can be "mined" later on for the rare earths as they reach their 10+ times half-life's and are less costly to refine out using the salt chemistry, because of the weaker ionic bonds. You can "mine" for medical isotopes in real time also, using a reactor loop for that purpose. You may also refine out the short-lived isotopes in real time, if you wish using the same loop. Molten salt reactors run very hot which can provide you process heat for manufacturing or simply to run turbines more efficiently for electrical power.
The Zeon problem is solved by capturing it as it out gasses from the molten salt. The Zenon was a very big problem at Chernobyl, within its solid fuel, when they tied to restart the reactor.
When a molten salt reactor reaches the end of its long life you can just send it back to the factory where you can reconstitute the remaining fuel to be used other reactors. Since the reactor can be built at a factory, the cost per unit is less. The reactors are relatively compact and can be buried underground for safety and close to where the power is needed.
great conversation
Forget a "silver bullet" idea. We need to explore many solutions working together to bring abundant power. Oil and gas are part of this mix for quite sometime.
in 1998 there was 23 aluminum smelters in America. now there is 8 smelters. Why because of no cheep energy.
Aluminum ore is too plentiful....the ore chases the cheapest energy source for refinement.
@@sonnyeastham Correct.
Soon you'll see nuclear reactors and aluminium smelters living next to each other. It won't just be the hydro schemes, as has been mostly seen to date.
Any country that wants to entertain any industry will being going nuclear in big ways in the next few years. Those going bigtime into renewables will likely lose all of their industry, especially heavy industry. Very especially if we put a price on carbon. Everyone's watching Germany of course. Sad to watch, as an engineer myself.
The link between industry and nuclear is only going to get stronger and stronger and stronger... As the fact that a 1GWe (electricity) NPP actually produces 3GWt (thermal)... It produces 3x more heat for the electricity it generates... Meaning that if you just want the heat, you're in luck! Nuclear hasn't been harnessed much in the west for industrial heat... but that's going to change BIG time very soon. Nuclear thermal plants will be very common.
And any 'normal' nuclear power station producing electricity today can also have all its 'waste' heat, that is just dumped into the atmosphere, or body of water next to it... Again, not done much in the west. Combined heat and power (CHP), cogeneration massively improves the efficiencies and the economies of any NPP. Once we start doing this more widespread, nuclear power gets cheaper and cheaper and cheaper and cheaper...
And if you happen to have any large ore bodies in your country, why would you sell the ore to other countries??? Why not just stick a small or medium sized reactor near the ore bodies and directly produce the iron, aluminium, zinc, lead, tin, copper, nuclear fuel, etc, etc, etc, etc... Selling the final product is always much more profitable than just selling the raw materials!
Wr are now recycling windmill blades into concrete. Very few were landfilled.
Great interview. Simon needs to work on his delivery. Stats, Bullets Points and Analogies. Watch Peter Zeihan for tips. But very good analysis.
Great thoughts at the end with the can kicking stuff and attempts to delay the thermodynamic reset but if this is the case why has nuclear been opposed for decades? With massive nuclear power we could have largely decarbonised the grid and used the plentiful nuclear energy for synfuels. Also saved massive amounts of gas and coal, which could in theory have been used to offset decline in petroleum production which is coming. Yes you can make petroleum products like diesel from coal etc. It would have at least bought us more time if that is indeed what they are trying to do. It just doesn't stack up that they would hamstring nuclear in the way they have UNLESS THEY WANT WHAT IS COMING.
If you solve a problem everyone who makes money on the existance of the problem would find themselves out of jobs.
@@HontounoShiramizu aka "Breaking The Rice Bowls of the Power Elite"
"...could've decarbonized the world"???? You're delusional. Not worth arguing. Another champagne socialist from the privileged lap top class devoid of reality his whole life.
This is the most informative iv ever watched, im a former. Nuclear Submarnier, thats says so me thing, i misszpel on pourposa to confuse the bots anb ai
Best reality check. Thank you.
Superb podcast, very interest and super pragmatic discussion grounded in some very harsh realities.
Why would entire wind turbine blades need to be trashed when the turbine stops functioning properly? Why couldn't the blades be made so that only the electrical portions (e.g. wiring, etc) would need to be replaced?
Exactly
Dr Simon needs to speak in Australian parliament and educate Albo and Bowen otherwise we are all doomed. Mad Max looks like a reality coming to a place near you soon.
Its 98 degrees. Im hot not gonna lie. But i still wont put a ac in the window. Honestly if we just go back to the ol fashion way of living combined with very efficient building and smart city development we can just lessen our demand for energy and change the math. The math just doesnt make sense. We need to change everything.
Listening to this felt like being told I have cancer and the prognosis is currently unknown.
What about using overhead power like trains for mining trucks
"The generation that will have to build whatever it is, will have to be stronger than the generation that fought world war 2.". I'm not overly optimistic.
So the interest payments are a major part of the problem!
The massive truck running on only battery power will have a battery pack which be removed to be charged and a recharged battery will be installed.
Good point, at 1:13:00 the guest does not consider the battery swapping technology being developed by Nio. Also Anglo American mining company is developing solar powered electrolyzers to provide hydrogen on site for hydrogen fuel cells on a big mining truck.
One Korean specialist double-hulled bulk-carrier shipbuilding yard could construct 10GigaWatts per year.
e.g. 20×ThorCon TMSR-500MWe for between $800 to $1000 per kiloWatt fully fitted except for fueling salts and towed like a barge, the first to Bangka Islands in the Java sea.
This from Indonesia's current PPA with ThorCon for 8× 500MWe liquid Thorium metal ion molten sodium & berilium fluoride salt burner energy converters. The first is expected to be producing power by the end of 2025 at a pre-profit cost of less than $30 per Megawatt.hour (
Yes I was wondering when thorium would come into conversation
So, Simon is a miner for a heart of gold? Great dialogue, I’m subscribing to this channel.
Dear Professor, it is such a shame that Politics doesn’t attract knowledgeable people but rather silly people who don’t even know how little they know. Heaven help us.
If I’m not mistaken the corpse-statue line, also one of my favorites, is attributable to Charles Hall, I believe from his tome Energy and the Wealth of Nations.
i listened only to few minutes, the part about electric motors vs diesel felt like crying that its too expensive to keep this planet livable..
How many months/years of solar panel operationsay in Germany to produce enough energy to make another panel?
1.4 B cars, 6 to 12 Kg of cobalt per car, the total amount of cobalt on earth is 7.6B kg. That translates to around 845m cars. To replace cars today we need to DOUBLE the cobalt supply on earth. No wonder Musk is building rockets, he's gonna need to go get a cobalt asteroid.
Or finding a cathode without cobalt as another alternative, as long as the replacement is nearly as good but not as rare.
Musk is building rockets and talking about mining planets because he's a f---ing idiot.
Wonder what the professors take on Thorium is?
how's Teslas new lithium refinery going in Texas? cheaper local sustainable lithium much?
But can't we 3D print a space elevator and colonize Mars to mine the asteroids? Privately of course, no government.
Electric Grid blindness is very real.
5times bigger grid capacity is stupendously expensive, and its cost must be added to the 5times more electricity generation from the central generation plants proposals..
What's up with the insane ultra-closeup?
Options - to educate at least a percentage of the population to understand where, how, why and what it takes to live.
Two things I disagree with.
That we have to decrease energy use.
And that you don’t take into account the decline in population worldwide
We don’t need to mine we have everything we need already. Thorium is in piles from other mining. 2,000 years of energy molten salt breeder reactors
Hi! Great podcast. A question to both of you: do you know when the first industrial water electrolysis was built and why?
Hint: it's about food. In other words some analysis on our food supply requirements would really be an important addition.
For people keen on energy and industry that does not seem to be major, but when it comes to your conclusion, it is. Things will become an archaic (ie. No society will be able to do the 3 step process properly anymore). So food supply needs to remain under control for the whole time during the transition.
By the way, a little anecdotic thought on your conclusion. It reminds me a bit if this science fiction film when the remainders of society where living under a small dome, and to keep sufficient space people had a life countdown clock implanted in their hand. It was meant to be a horror scenario, but in the near future, we can be happy if we manage to implement such human way of degrowing the 8 billion human society. The biggest challenge will be that decisions will have to be taken on who can live and who can't.
Of course less energy means less food but also less healthcare, so that at least in western societies the elderly (ie. At the time it comes to that the likes of Simon & myself...) will have the good taste of just dying of COVID or the then epidemic instead costing huge amounts of energy to be saved for a couple of month or years at best.
Keep smiling and keep working on having people face the real problem of Energy! Thanks again guys!
Theres that talk again about scalability and ignoring restructuring into more localised self sufficient communities.
One more kick at the can on nuclear technology. The buildout would not be X plants per year, but more like Y%/year where the number of new plants built each grow steadily over time, as industry capacity and capability grows with that demand. And of course if people think that this is important you can front-run that investing the areas that would be a bottleneck to exponential growth ahead of time.
Yes.
The costs of 'fixing' it will only get more and more and more expensive, the longer we leave it... So it's going to be cheaper to commit soon, and fully.
And to repeat the much used example, we just need to do a 'France'... 10-15 years and you've decarbonised all electricity grids, with all countries doing this concurrently... And everything speeding up as the industry and technology grows, develops... By the time we really do have functional SMRs, mass producable, then it's simply a case of setting up lots of factories around the world, pumping them out...
in 5 years we might only see a few npps come online, but after that, it absolutely will be GWs, then10s of GWs and 100s of GWs...
We just need to commit.
Also... we will probably still see the old dogs refusing to learn new tricks... countries, oil & gas companies, etc, refusing, lobbying to keep the status quo... But you only need one country (china, india) to suddently start selling lots of reactors abroad, or a middle east oil company going all in on nuclear power synfuels, and you'll start to see a lot of piss and panic as everyone then rushes to catch up.
The wonderful economics and practicalities of doing nuclear properly (smrs, fleets, chp, industrial) i forsee will just make them the bleeding obvious way and everyone will run with it, and everything will be better...
As someone who had to study geology and ecology as part of his studies (carthography) I can say that anyone with any knowledge of the topic already knew nuclear was the only solution - 15 years ago.
Solar MIGHT eventually be an alternative after we greatly improve the efficiency (which is very slowly improving so in 30-40 years assuming no breakthroughs we'll get there) and create a working energy storage system (which is nowhere on the horizon).
@@HontounoShiramizu Indeed.
Solar has a slight little problem though... The hard limits... Only 1kw of solar energy lands on a square meter of earth when the sun's directly above and the atmosphere is clear... There's no way to get more than this.
Then there's the single layer limit of about 33%, and the multilayer limit of 66%, assuming infinitely thin, perfect layers, such that it can get all the wavelengths possible...
All these theoretical limits are hard limits... nothing will ever exceed this, unless something really bad happens with our atmosphere!!!
Many people think that most technologies, including wind and solar, are gonna also scale up like semiconductors have, following Moore's Law, doubling every 18 months...
This simply will not happen...
We're already in the 20s percent wise with solar panels... any future gains are gonna get smaller and smaller each time...
Yeah, the cost and materials need might get really really low, but we'll still be left with the unavoidable need for a ginormous surface area needing covering... and that lots of people live fairly far north, so just don't get much sun, and don't get much at all when they actually need more leccy...
I foresee solar remaining a very useful niche technology, but it'll disappear from grids... And rooftop solar will only really work out if it is the tiles, shingles themselves... but the cost and effort installing them might still just be huge compared to being plugged into a grid full of nukes...
Deffo want it on my desert island tho!
Only one.....historically proven solar event that destroys satillites, power transformers/sub stations/emergency back-up generators...and all those non-functiong nuclear plant reactors will poison Earth forever...,,look at Fukashima for that type of outcome multiplied by a thousand.....got it now?
Besides....there is only at best a 20-30 year supply of uranium if everyone in the world went nuclear....back to the same old problem. So....how do you plan to dispose of all us useless eaters (old dogs?) and who will make those choices?...ultimately the elite will be forced into the Mad Max plan/solution. MY BEST ADVICE....dont have children/grandchildren unless you plan to die before witnessing them suffer horrendously....but remember...many still will.
1:19:00 We went from a CO2 reason for coming off fossil fuels to a running out of fossil fuels reason. I didn't see any justification for saying we are running out of fossil fuels or nuclear fuel anytime soon.
There are a lot of lies in 'proven reserves' numbers due to companies and state governments needing to keep up appearances, but more importantly there is a rising EROEI on liquid fossil fuel extraction that is mostly hidden from the stats on reserves and projected production numbers. EROEI on liquid fossils is declining and will be at unsustainable levels far sooner than depletion of reserves, leading to collapses in the monetary system which will destroy energy demand if we haven't run out first, which leads to declining or perhaps zero investment in developing new fossil energy extraction.
(The money-energy relationship is a separate topic but super simply: energy is the true universal currency of all life and all systems including societies, money is therefore a claim on the expenditure of energy and debt is a claim on future energy expenditures, governments can print all the money they want [by, of course, generating debt] but they can't print more energy so, eventually, as energy production becomes more expensive in EROEI terms and production of energy declines or at best only expands linearly the ballooning exponential increase in debt [exponential because debts need repayment in a percentage of principal] becomes unsustainable leading to a series of monetary collapses, crises and eventual decline of the economy).
See the work of Arthur Berman for more info on fossil fuel depletion. Nate Hagens for the money-energy relationship.
@kurtniznik8116 how convinced are you of the EROI numbers? It seems ver contentious issue. And some peer reviewed papers atm to aye that renewables have EROI numbers comparable to hydrocarbons. From a thermodynamic perspective it makes sense that more energy dense sources would be more efficient and more profitable. But maybe I'm just a pessimist.
@@kurtniznik8116 some would define money as now based on commodities .Those commodities that are required to get the Energy.
@@user-nx6ji9tk8i Those folks have it backwards. Energy is required to get the commodities, as with everything. Energy is the universal currency, this is a law of nature.
@@kurtniznik8116 ok. Agreed! I think I,d heard Simon Michaux coin the phrase. Or was Nate Hagen or any of those others. And above and beyond the mining issues here, Putin,s supposed PhD tells us it,s all about an energy grab.
The economic growth that comes from the green transition will be amazing. Dunno why so many people are against this. Plus there will be less heavy metals in drinking water.
Hopes and prayers.
This guy is closest to the actual reality next to maybe Charles Hall in explaining the problem itself. The solution of course is a moral and logical course correction that requires a change in consumption and expectation.
The only question is how much of that will come down to sheer force and natural law vs free will.
Not true. We have enough fossil fuels to last hundreds of years even at greater consumption rates. No need to force people to live like cavemen
As the world's population becomes richer it will require more transport, homes , and infrastructure to exist.
The choice for mining and resource collection is whether to design a reliable renewable system or replicate the current methods of use and waste.
The living standards of richer countries will need to fall , and the poorer countries will need to rise. More energy and mining will be required to release the tension of living standard inequality
around the world and reduce migration.
Yes, but can you imagine the wealthy countries voluntarily reducing their standards of living to help standards rise in poor countries? I can't.
@@gibbogle No, the rich will not, but as living standards rise for the poor less will be available for the rich. A reduction of commodity use will naturally happen and the wealthy will become less wasteful and resource intensive. Renewable energy technologies will make everyone less poor and less needy as a steady state of energy price and use is achieved. We have all been fascinated by the super rich , but they are a small group.
@@robinwhitebeam3955 What I call "rich" you probably call "middle-class". All North Americans and Europeans are rich in global terms. I can't understand why you think the billions becoming less poor will result in a reduction of commodity use. As their standard of living rises their use will be more like ours. I am certainly not fascinated by the super rich, and they are irrelevant to this discussion.
I am familiar with the views you express, and I think they are best summed up as "hopes and prayers".
Great enlightening discussion - thanks. Also - sure all battery electric mining equipment is impractical with the exception of the dump trucks which could be hybrid with electric motors providing variable torque and speed while the diesel engine runs at its optimal revolution charging the suitably sized battery pack and able to use regenerative braking when tripping downhill in the mine?
On nuclear fuel cycles and storage of spent nuclear fuel. Tomorrow's tech will be different to today's tech. As we get to nuclear reactor designs that burn 100% of the heavy metal we put into them, we then start burning down the spent nuclear fuel accumulated from earlier designs, leaving only fission products behind. If that technology takes another two or three decades to emerge, there's still plenty of time and uranium and storage to go around.
Well I was pretty interested in everything they were saying as I thought it made sense until I heard big batteries pack is going to take longer to charge. Doesn't matter if you're charging a little cell or many cells 20 minutes is kind of the standard to go 80% proven by all the electric cars on the road right now. Most of the stuff they're talking about I don't really know the details but this one point that was stated makes me question everything else that was said. Something to remember when you're talking don't say something that's wrong after you've said many things that might be right because people that know are going to question everything you just said because of that one wrong statement. All in all this was a very good conversation and I'm glad I listen to it, lots to think about.😊
We burn a cubic mile of oil every day, we will run out in the next few decades unless we build several hundred nuclear "waste" burning thorium reactors
a week (please do the math). We currently spend about 1/4 of the oil we make getting tankers fueled to MOVE the oil to where we need it, so if we
built a few dozen nuclear powered oil tankers that would help.
A strong opinion against the transition. How should we deal with global warming, what is your plan?
It is annoying to me, but not really surprising, how often people react to the presentation of facts about the material requirements of the energy transition by seeing it as arguing against the transition. Both the speakers accept the need to react to global warming, but they both like to deal with reality.
Sounds like yet more hyper planned economy solutions. "Getting absolutely everyone to understand" sounds a bit like gun to our collective heads cause nearly everyone has different needs.
Everyone needs energy. And everyone wants cheap energy. The only difference is what that energy is used for.
The modern style of interviewing, it seems, consists in asking a series of questions, with little reflection on what was said.
"I felt outside the silence, yet had my fingers in all the silence."
"Tell me about blowing things up".
Hmmmmm.
Hey Brad: You said nuclear is not transportable. Doombcoff yes it is. With a molten salt thorium reactor it is cheap enough to make transportation fuel. Have ya'll never heard of diethyl ethane. Diesels can run perfectly with this liquid.
YA right, blackouts will get us off computers and allow for quality family time... Here in Alberta, and everywhere, when the power goes out, we drop into survival mode. That's the time you find out about the quality of your family.
The best thing we have with easily available materials is concentrated solar power. Focusing solar rays into water or oil to drive turbines. The heat is transmitted to a tower or by fluid conductors to a generating station, and the heat can be stored too. Such a station I wouldn't be surprised being ale to operate for min 50 years. That's important, because the life span of these green techs are far to low
Been tried Failed
How many of these power stations have been built and are running?
If you have abundant nuclear energy you don't need load following and it can help with the other stuff. At minimum we should be building a LOT of it, and by the way most of nuclear's "issues" have either been solved for decades (like what to do with waste, deep borehole disposal though we think in future we might be able to use the waste and keeping it handy might be a good idea which is why nobody is too fussed about it), and building at scale - well you mass produce reactors in a factory (Rolls Royce, GE, others have been building small reactors with decent output, incredible safety records that don't need refuelling over a 25 year plus lifespan for a long time, lets do something with _those_ reactors - fun fact Rolls Royce and GE are and it is essentially just a licensing matter). Certainly, if you're one of these climate folk and you're not arguing fission first, you're doing it wrong - we have a generation of fission reactors then fusion energy will be plentiful by the time they're end of life.
Don't store the nuclear waste use it in molten salt reactors; it's valuable.
@@owenshaifer7031molten salt reactors are never going to be an actual _thing_ - grossly overengineered and overpriced way to solve a solved problem. Next up: triangle wheels and whatnot. We don't need fuel we have breeder reactors and reprocessing, we don't need molten salt because we have competent engineering.
We do not have enough copper and coal to build the renewable infrastructure. It is that simple
The spent nuclear fuel heat removal really is a non-issue, we should be using that low grade heat for CHP/district heating systems instead of wasting in into the environment though. I think a new Czech company has a patented technology to do this? Another thing, he criticises the EROEI/EROI methodology due to the discrepancies of what's included within the system boundaries of the model (i.e. energy inputs for transmission lines, the energy to power the construction vehicles to install said transmission lines, the energy to produce the vehicles etc.), which I agree with him on, but if you look closely at various papers from various authors, some define their systems inputs and outputs very precisely and clearly - only this way the EROI can be an extremely useful tool. Really interesting content nonetheless guys!
The 1st Law of Thermodynamics is: Energy cannot be created or destroyed.
computers _do not get cooked_ from brownouts. IF they get damaged, it is because all the safety precautions fail _and_ the power supply is of _low quality_
Re: the technology to store power generated by wind and solar for weeks at a time - what about pumping water uphill into a reservoir and then releasing it into turbines when it’s needed? Why is or isn’t that a feasible solution?
It is feasible. There are thousands of sites already identified by Satellite imagining. The issue is transmission lines, which in turn takes government eminent domain and financing.
There are places where it's feasible. There are many more places where it's not.
Reality will hit the fan and we will realise, that our decarbonisation dreams are just that, pipe drams. Humanity will be burning hydrocarbons for a long time to come. They will eventually be replaced, where feasible, but not everywhere.
electrical power is not a need. our real physical needs: clean air and water, healthy food, cooking, comfy shelter, and plenty of sleep and exercise
You're so smart.
Do all of that without electricity. Then come back.
So - as a farmer you know all about the escalation in energy costs! But cooking over an open fire - not for me. Ah - in a house - built by hand in the dark with cob walls off your own land. Amazing.Glad you don,t have to do the washing as well.
the giant fusion reactor in the sky has energized the whole planet for billions of years until the temporary recent addition of fossil fuels. if homo sap is as smart as he thinks, we can do it again.
At 26+m. "we wouldnt need the buffer". How?
Many engineers are on the government payroll and do not rock the boat.
Many engineers are excited buy their expertise being in demand in a huge expansion.
OK not that I think mining methods are changing any time soon but let's say it did and to elictric, trucks batteries would be changeable to keep those trucks moving eg 2 or 3 batteries for every truck. But again mining methods will be the last thing to change low lighting fruit first.