Age of Electricity

[Boydstun]

Annual amount of electrical energy produced by countries of the world is here.

Leading source for generation of electric power for each US state, 2001 v 2019. Information used by NYT (10/28/20) in making these maps is from the US Energy Information Agency.

[Boydstun]

 

Advantages of AC

(Clicking on the "power" will bring the equations into the text.)

Edited October 31, 2020 by Boydstun

[Boydstun]

 

Rise of the Steam Turbine

80% of the world's electricity is produced through steam turbines.

[MisterSwig]

So natural gas is replacing coal? Is this a good or bad thing for the country? I guess much of the transition has to do with anti-coal regulations.

[Boydstun]

MS, I gather that natural gas overtaking coal in so many states is mainly due to the greater amount of natural gas that became available with advances in fracking and horizontal drilling, making the price of natural gas more competitive for power plants. We have sulfur-dioxide emission limits, especially, also resulting in less generation by coal-fired plants. Fall in SO2 Emissions 2006-2015. (SO2 in the air is harmful to breathing and reduces visibility.) The States in which wind overtook coal for electrical generation may have been due to increase in number of wind-power generators. The cases in which hydro or nuclear overtook coal may have been possible due to buying power from others, including Canada.

A nuclear fuel pellet the size of a thimble can produce as much steam as 100 box cars of coal. Four boxcars will have been consumed in producing that pellet. However, the procedures and dollars required to ensure the lack of nuclear-power accidents that the US has enjoyed since TMI is enormous, and therefore nuclear cannot make the other types of fuel uncompetitive. It is a good point, of course, to not put all our eggs in one basket, and I'd say good also to not be drastically dependent on importation of fuels for power generation or on importation of electricity.

 

[Boydstun]

Philosophy, Engineering - a life, a mind

Interview of me: 

 

[Boydstun]

 

The interviewer in the preceding is Eiuol.

[Boydstun]

 

Bravo! Japan is Returning to Nuclear Power

(France and America Never Left It)

Edited August 28, 2022 by Boydstun

[Boydstun]

 

Germany hanging onto some nuclear generation a while.

[Boydstun]

France produces 70% of its electricity from nuclear, and it exports electricity to other countries. It can help other parts of Europe fulfill energy needs acutely in short supply for this winter, due to cutback of natural gas from Russia. At present 26 of France’s 56 nuclear reactors are off-line for maintenance and repairs. A huge scramble is underway to get that work buttoned up and get back on-line. President Macron’s administration has submitted a plan to Parliament to build six new enormous reactors in France starting in 2028.

—from NYT 11/15/22

Edited November 15, 2022 by Boydstun

[Boydstun]

 

California foolishly shuttered its San Onofre nuclear power plant after the Fukushima wreck. Although San Onofre was the same sort of reactor as Fukushima, the design basis for the San Onofre plant had been such that it would not have been breached by a tidal wave the size of the one that hit Fukushima. And the emergency diesel generators were elevated at the CA plant and would not have become inoperable, unlike at the Japanese facility.

Recently, the anti-nuclear movement in CA to close also Diablo Canyon, the state' last nuke, was blocked, with the governor's decision to keep it running and putting megawatts on the grid.

[Boydstun]

 

The anti-nuclear Greens in Germany have at last succeeded in ending production of electricity by nuclear fission for their country.

[Jim Henderson]

Have there been advancements in our knowledge of the physics and engineering of nuclear fission that could be employed to defend the continued use of nuclear power?

[Boydstun]

On 4/17/2023 at 7:06 AM, Jim Henderson said:

Have there been advancements in our knowledge of the physics and engineering of nuclear fission that could be employed to defend the continued use of nuclear power?

Nuclear Power in Germany

No advances in types of reactors will dissuade the anti-nuclear political faction from the complete elimination of nuclear generation of electricity. And no advances in design can ensure there are no human-operator errors. The safety of nuclear operations in West Germany and then in Reunited Germany has been superb; no major accidents.* The reactors in East Germany had to be closed immediately, upon reunification, because they were unsafe. There are safe means also for storage of spent fuel and other radioactive waste. The anti-nuclear faction in Germany has along the way gotten the government to halt research on new sorts of reactors in Germany. They have fought the continued operation of existing reactors as well as all plans for dealing with spent fuel. They are just against nuclear power, and there is no level-headed basis for it.*

Fortunately, in the US, after the accident in Japan, President Obama reaffirmed that we are keeping open the nuclear sector of electrical generation.

When we were children in mid-century USA, our dreams of the technological future assumed a lot of work getting done by nuclear means. More than was feasible, given the danger from exposure to radioactive materials. We also dreamed there would be breakthroughs in physics such that means for powering every electrical machine from within the machine itself would be developed. Then central production of electricity would be no longer required, and all of these debated issues today on central generation would be irrelevant. Unfortunately, such a discovery in physics has not occurred, and that of course could be simply because there is no such energy source, waiting to be discovered. Still, for all we know, such a decentralizing breakthrough in the future cannot be ruled out.

[Boydstun]

On 4/17/2023 at 7:06 AM, Jim Henderson said:

Have there been advancements in our knowledge of the physics and engineering of nuclear fission that could be employed to defend the continued use of nuclear power?

On the US Horizon

[Boydstun]

Trisco Nuclear Fuel

Delivery to NASA

Nuclear Fuel Cell for Moon Colony

Rolls Royce Reactor

Edited September 4, 2023 by Boydstun

[Boydstun]

 

PERSERVERANCE Mars Rover

[Boydstun]

 

Race for Small Nuclear Reactors

[Boydstun]

 

Trash to Steam

[Boydstun]

 

Small Nuclear Reactors Getting to Work in USA

[tadmjones]

I have a hard time seeing electrical generation and transmission as a purely market driven ‘for profit’ industry/enterprise. Mostly based on my own skepticism that can border on cynicism at the extremes, lol.

‘The power company’ is about the only entity in my voluntary economic relationships that has been actively trying to incentivize me to use less of their product. Coke and Pepsi never suggested that I would be satisfied by consuming less than the packaged amount. Even though recently soft drink companies have changed their packaging of servings to smaller amounts, those cute little cans, but I suspect that may be from the expectation that ‘one isn’t quite enough’ and ‘two may be a little much’ and that overall I will purchase and use more product ‘in the long run’.

Conversely, the electric company and regulations of manufacturing specifics for electric consuming machines have seemingly all trended toward an overall reduction in ‘product consumption’.

 

[necrovore]

3 hours ago, tadmjones said:

I have a hard time seeing electrical generation and transmission as a purely market driven ‘for profit’ industry/enterprise.

It started out as a private business with Thomas Edison in 1880. There's an old movie that shows Thomas Edison and his companies lighting up one city at a time, after the light bulb was invented, replacing gas lights. He had to take the financial risks himself in order for the cities to allow it. The movie is probably "Edison, The Man" (1940).

It is still possible to trade electricity; cloud companies are now contracting with startups that will try to make various kinds of nuclear power generators, because the utilities cannot provide the power they need.

[tadmjones]

Pretty sure JP had a hand in that , when was the Fed established ?

[Boydstun]

On 10/15/2024 at 9:12 AM, tadmjones said:

I have a hard time seeing electrical generation and transmission as a purely market driven ‘for profit’ industry/enterprise. . . .

Government-Owned Utilities

In the US, the constitutional clause of Eminent Domain is usually invoked to obtain land for transmission lines.* Early on the power company for northern Illinois, for whom I worked, had gotten the land by sending out individuals posing as buying land for themselves, though in fact they were buying for the company. As I recall the story, the cover was blown, and the company had to switch to Eminent Domain. Utilities in the US are private companies, legal monopolies, and regulated in many economic decisions by State agencies.

In the case of nuclear-power generation in the US, there is naturally a close connection to the federal government, not in economic decisions, but in regulation for public safety of plant construction and plant operations. That is an independent oversight beyond the internal requirements for safety, which are intense. My father mentioned to me once that the federal government considered having nuclear generation to be simply run by the federal government. But they opted for private generation under regulation by a federal agency, the Atomic Energy Commission. Additionally, Congress passed a statute limiting overall liability for any nuclear accident at the generating stations. Responsibility for spent fuel rods was given to the Department of Energy. Our operations benefit greatly by hires out of the Nuclear Navy; their training there is superb, and they do well at passing tests required to become a Senior Reactor Operator.

The AEC was not only regulating for safety but was promoting the expansion of nuclear generation in the US. After the nuclear accident at the Three Mile Island plant, a new agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Agency, replaced AEC. The NRC's mission is only public safety (and we have a damned good track record since then), not promotion of nuclear generation. During completion of the plant where I worked (which was the last plant built in America, though new, additional reactors are being added to a plant in Georgia) we had these standing jokes: "We can't make steam until the weight of the paper equals the weight of the plant." "Making the world safe for coal power." Making nuclear operations ultra-safe is very expensive, and I think that is why nuclear did not, as had been expected in my youth, take over from the other ways of making steam for the turbine. I still remember the day I arrived at the plant under construction (no fuel on site yet) and the young man from nuclear navy (attack sub) giving me a tour of the facility. When we walked into the containment building, I was in awe and thought "this is something from Star Wars." When I see the fabulous constructions in science fiction movies to this day, I think of what it actually takes to build such things were they for real and what it takes for safe operations and how astronomical would be the cost.

My coffee mug for each morning many years now is a memento of our achievement of initial criticality for the first of two reactors at my plant. I see printed on the mug that Initial Criticality was reached 29 May 1987, 10:39 p.m. That was a lot stress, teamwork, and dedication (and damage to family relations because of the hours). It was like we were in a war, ultimately because so much money was on the line with passage of more time. I was the first person to be allowed to leave the plant without leaving the company, due to my lover in Chicago getting AIDS, a death sentence at that time. What good people in that company.

In a long vista, Tad, this interlacing of private endeavors with government, especially the defense function in government, is a continuation of what began in Mesopotamia thousands of years ago.

Edited November 5 by Boydstun