Retired engineer. Interested in clean hydrogen as energy currency, economic systems where endless growth isn’t a built in requirement, and areas of science, archeology and technology where new discoveries and new data are contradicting established narratives.
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2026-07-14T18:50:13+02:00 Event JSON
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Last Notes npub1r544kqeatlr6jnsqqwr73x6j4hl7sc68zafle40lmvlzqa89vrqsd99asx Icanbob Wonder if it would work in CANDU reactors. I seem to recall that India did some Thorium work in their CANDUs some years ago. npub1r544kqeatlr6jnsqqwr73x6j4hl7sc68zafle40lmvlzqa89vrqsd99asx Icanbob Yup. Pretty much what my analysis of several publicly available datasets show. Using my concept of a virtual wire we can do much better. Ie. 10x more CO2 savings. npub1r544kqeatlr6jnsqqwr73x6j4hl7sc68zafle40lmvlzqa89vrqsd99asx Icanbob Why not just redirect all those renewable electrons away from the impossible task of balancing seasonal deficits on a JIT grid and do things that actually amplify the climate benefit like green steel. npub1r544kqeatlr6jnsqqwr73x6j4hl7sc68zafle40lmvlzqa89vrqsd99asx Icanbob Moltex reveals some interesting test results on recycling used CANDU fuel. If these result prove out it is a breakthrough IMO. npub1r544kqeatlr6jnsqqwr73x6j4hl7sc68zafle40lmvlzqa89vrqsd99asx Icanbob My analysis for Ontario shows that maybe thinking about electrical storage with H2 is solving the wrong problem. Green H2 is a much more valuable climate fighting chemical than as a battery. npub1r544kqeatlr6jnsqqwr73x6j4hl7sc68zafle40lmvlzqa89vrqsd99asx Icanbob I wrote this piece recently about Ontario. My conclusion was Ontario should crash build both renewables and CANDU. However to optimize for climate 100% of renewables and all excess CANDU should be vectored to green steel and e-methanol destined for serial plugin hybrids. npub1r544kqeatlr6jnsqqwr73x6j4hl7sc68zafle40lmvlzqa89vrqsd99asx Icanbob We need to get units straight. The fuel is a measure of energy not power, which on the electrical input side is TWh not GW. I know you just assumed 24/7 and multiplied to get equivalent but it would be better to talk TWh. The main reason is if we chose to divert 100% of our variable renewable -> produce eJet fuel the aggregated TWh are what matter not the renewable nameplate GW. npub1r544kqeatlr6jnsqqwr73x6j4hl7sc68zafle40lmvlzqa89vrqsd99asx Icanbob I also doubt this claim. Here is the California solarPV for 2024 from my study. Also the graph for last 31 days with loads of nat gas generation. npub1r544kqeatlr6jnsqqwr73x6j4hl7sc68zafle40lmvlzqa89vrqsd99asx Icanbob How much of US per capita decline can be attributed to outsourced manufacturing to other countries? The climate only “cares” about the total absolute global number. npub1r544kqeatlr6jnsqqwr73x6j4hl7sc68zafle40lmvlzqa89vrqsd99asx Icanbob We have to treat these stories with caution. Aggregate renewable electrical generation stats by themselves are problematic. The relative timing of electron supply and electron load is much more important. npub1r544kqeatlr6jnsqqwr73x6j4hl7sc68zafle40lmvlzqa89vrqsd99asx Icanbob In my part of Ontario radon in basements is an issue. I tested mine. While it is below the Heath Canada limit, it is not zero. The concept of zero radiation exposure is not even possible to attain where I live. What happens to all the radon that co exists in the ground with natural gas? Ans. It is simply emitted when gas is combusted. npub1r544kqeatlr6jnsqqwr73x6j4hl7sc68zafle40lmvlzqa89vrqsd99asx Icanbob I agree with the idea that we need to move toward the highest density energy source which is nuclear. However I’m not convinced that we can get there fast enough (from a climate perspective) with existing nuclear technology. Hence I believe we need to climate optimize the deployment of all our energy technologies. At the moment we optimize on price/profits which won’t get us there. npub1r544kqeatlr6jnsqqwr73x6j4hl7sc68zafle40lmvlzqa89vrqsd99asx Icanbob Deployment of renewables in Ontario are not optimized for climate goals. We have a very large CANDU nuclear fleet followed by a close second in gas. Currently we dump all our renewables onto the grid allowing gas to follow that. My calculations show that a better climate optimization would be to match renewable production in real time with solid oxide electrolysers with the H2 deployed to heavy transport. npub1r544kqeatlr6jnsqqwr73x6j4hl7sc68zafle40lmvlzqa89vrqsd99asx Icanbob Not disagreeing with this. Question remains; how can we achieve this extra energy in a climate neutral manner? npub1r544kqeatlr6jnsqqwr73x6j4hl7sc68zafle40lmvlzqa89vrqsd99asx Icanbob What is your “vision” for a climate optimized energy system? npub1r544kqeatlr6jnsqqwr73x6j4hl7sc68zafle40lmvlzqa89vrqsd99asx Icanbob In Ontario the chasm that seasonal storage of renewables has to bridge is huge. This is why I’m beginning to lean towards a different climate optimization for our renewable resources: smart grid loads exactly matched to renewable supply in real time. Best example of such a load I can think of is a solid oxide electrolyser. My quick analysis appears to show this is often better than dumping renewables onto a gas peaked grid. npub1r544kqeatlr6jnsqqwr73x6j4hl7sc68zafle40lmvlzqa89vrqsd99asx Icanbob There are better fission technologies out there like molten salt reactors that can “burn” much more than 0.5% of potential in the fuel=way less waste per kWh. I grew up near an Aluminum smelter and know what permanent chemical waste discharge can do to a pristine environment. Unlike our nuclear waste which decays away over time, the mercury in the Saguenay River mud is there permanently=no more shrimp industry ever again. npub1r544kqeatlr6jnsqqwr73x6j4hl7sc68zafle40lmvlzqa89vrqsd99asx Icanbob I agree. Costs need to come down. I just don’t think we will have a choice not to do seasonal thermal storage. Renewables and heat pumps, while in theory low carbon, don’t actually match load->supply in Ontario. npub1r544kqeatlr6jnsqqwr73x6j4hl7sc68zafle40lmvlzqa89vrqsd99asx Icanbob Seasonal storage of heat (and cool) will be an important tech for climate mitigation. In Canada they used to cut blocks of ice from Hamilton harbour and put them in sawdust insulated ice huts for summer refrigeration. Drake Landing demonstrated what is possible with seasonal storage design in Canada. npub1r544kqeatlr6jnsqqwr73x6j4hl7sc68zafle40lmvlzqa89vrqsd99asx Icanbob 2024Aug14 was lowest daily wind total yet. As a result my 1GW 24/7 model had to resume a storage drawdown. We are now at 390GWh storage required to navigate this summer wind slump all at a time when Ontario’s air conditioning demand has driven gas generation to yearly highs. npub1r544kqeatlr6jnsqqwr73x6j4hl7sc68zafle40lmvlzqa89vrqsd99asx Icanbob Looked like wind in Ontario was coming out of the slump for last few days, but 2024Aug13 was lowest daily wind production yet. npub1r544kqeatlr6jnsqqwr73x6j4hl7sc68zafle40lmvlzqa89vrqsd99asx Icanbob Wind slump in Ontario continues. My 1GW 24/7 model now needs 375GWh of storage to level out this slump. Since 2024 July1 there have only been 5 days where wind production exceeded 24GWh in a day. Since my model prioritizes storage refill when there is “surplus” we get the flat line portion in the graph below. npub1r544kqeatlr6jnsqqwr73x6j4hl7sc68zafle40lmvlzqa89vrqsd99asx Icanbob Check out Ontario’s massive CANDU retrofit project which is coming in on time and on budget. Shows that with good project management tools nuclear can be done without overruns. The group below was almost single-handedly responsible for reversing our Pickering CANDU plant shutdown in favour of a retrofit. npub1r544kqeatlr6jnsqqwr73x6j4hl7sc68zafle40lmvlzqa89vrqsd99asx Icanbob What is needed IMO is a carbon free alternative to the nat gas turbine generator. In Ontario, as in many other places, we have renewable-gas marriage. It is lower carbon than gas alone, but can never reach zero. In some cases it can be “climate stupid” where in Ontario we burn gas to air condition. Hot weather=no wind. npub1r544kqeatlr6jnsqqwr73x6j4hl7sc68zafle40lmvlzqa89vrqsd99asx Icanbob Wind slump in Ontario is now a month old. It is now taking 285GWh for my 1GW 24/7 model to navigate this slump. npub1r544kqeatlr6jnsqqwr73x6j4hl7sc68zafle40lmvlzqa89vrqsd99asx Icanbob The wind slump in Ontario continues. It is now taking 245GWh of storage to allow 1GW 24/7 to navigate this slump. Weather continues to be hot with very little wind so Ontario is air conditioning with nat gas. npub1r544kqeatlr6jnsqqwr73x6j4hl7sc68zafle40lmvlzqa89vrqsd99asx Icanbob Wind slump continues in Ontario. My model now requires 210GWh to hold 1GW 24/7 through this slump.