We've had this discussion here on lemmy a few days ago: practically all electricity generation is by making turbines spin.
Hydropower means river makes turbine spin. Wind power means wind makes turbine spin. Coal/gas power means combustion makes turbine spin. Nuclear means hot steam makes turbine spin.
However, that doesn't mean that all electricity sources are spinny things.
- solar cells have no mechanically moving parts
- batteries utilize chemical energy directly
solar cells have no mechanically moving parts
ironically, large grid tie systems are starting to "emulate" the spinning mass behavior of turbine generators, since there's an exponential failure issue waiting to crop up if you aren't careful, as texas has already learned, a very significant part of your solar generation can just, go offline, if it decides grid conditions aren't suitable, which can lead to LARGE drops in power production and frequency, which is likely to kill even more generation.
So the solution is to make it emulate the physical mass tied to a turbine, or at least, more generously provide power in fault like conditions, to prevent this sort of exponential breakdown of the grid. You could of course, use a large spinning flywheel to regulate grid frequency, as is being used in a few places right now. I'm not sure how popular that is, outside of wind energy. It's likely to get more popular though.
weird little side tangent, but the frequency of electricity on the grid is essentially directly tied to the rotational speed of all turbines currently on the grid, meaning there is a very large inertia in the grid frequency, it's weird to think about, but makes perfect sense, and it provides for an interesting problem to solve at large scales like this.
Batteries are really fucking cool btw, the fact that you can just chemically store electricity, and then use it, is really fucking crazy. The fact that it's the most accessible technology is also insane to me. But maybe it's just the adoption being the way it is.
I think people underestimate the value of intertia in power generation. I liken it to the way capacitors regulate voltage changes or coilovers absorb bumps and vibrations.
The inertia of the generators connected to the grid helps stabilize frequency changes caused by blackouts, power plant issues, etc. by resisting and thereby slowing down frequency decline. It buys time for grid operators to find a way to balance loads in a way that doesn't weaken or disable the grid as a whole.
Here's a great NREL report explaining how this all works, and what other systems we use to stabilize grid frequency.
Most of our power generations comes from "make water hot, hot water boils into steam, steam spins magnet"
Nuclear power is just a different source of heat.
Only alternatives that I'm aware of:
- solar cells (converting photon energy into electricity)
- acid batteries (converting chemical energy into electricity)
- peltier devices (converting heat differential energy into electricity)
- induction (converting electrical energy into electricity on a different circuit)
- bioelectricity (using biochemical energy to produce electricity)
- static buildup (using friction between various materials to produce a voltage differential)
I think there's a way to use lasers to generate electricity, too.
Piezo converting pressure or vibration to electricity
I think it's note-worthy that while the list is long, only 3 of them are practical to supply/regulate electricity on a large/industrial scale: solar, spinny things, and acid batteries.
We use all three of them in today's and in the future's electricity network.
I think there’s a way to use lasers to generate electricity, too.
i've read some really cursed direct photonic conversion theory from nuclear energy. It's uh, novel. Definitely a pipe dream though.
It's all variations of "make things spin."
Either by heating up water so steam makes thing spin, using wind to make thing spin, or moving water to make thing spin.
I am willing to bet if you watched photo cells on solar panels under a microscope, the light would make something spin.
I am willing to bet if you watched photo cells on solar panels under a microscope, the light would make something spin.
Nope, solar cells are solid state devices. ;)
Other examples of solid state electronic devices are the microprocessor chip, LED lamp, solar cell, charge coupled device (CCD) image sensor used in cameras, and semiconductor laser.
Electrons are suspiciously close to spinning dynamos, so even just moving electrons might be considered spinning something.
So. When I was in my junior year of college, the dorm I lived in was built more like a high occupancy apartment rather than a college dorm room, it had a living room and a kitchenette. No built-in stove but we were allowed to have a hot plate, so I went to K-Mart and bought a double burner one.
For some reason, one of my roommates had a cereal bowl that was in the shape of a saucepan. It was made of plastic, but it was black and had a handle. One day I walk into the apartment to an ungodly chemical smell and exactly the image above.
Yup meltdowns happen sometimes. AND there’s the century-long legacy of radioactive waste!
Oh joy, I get to bust out these bad boys again! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhHHbgIy9jU
There's also that one guy who touched the hot part and is now using that tiny blister to conduct a decades-long smear campaign against the kinds of pots used at Three Mile Island.
How’d you get a photo of my stove top from tonight?
And that pot looks iron!
to be fair ; its both.
It is not the top one in the typical usage of the word "nuclear energy." Sure, it is nuclear energy, but that normally refers to electrical infrastructure, not nuclear weapons. Nuclear electricity is pretty much always just heating water up in a safe and controlled manner, and using that to spin a turbine.
That's just another way to turn heat into electricity. Those thermocouples could also be used on a campfire.
This exists, but it's generally only used in spacecraft.
Most terrestrial uses of RITEGs have resulted in tragedy.
Humans only have one good way to turn hot into lightning.
Spicy rocks make water hot.
i mean... This is how most electricity production works.
Hydro, solar, wind...
hydro works in the exact same way, just with water instead of steam, solar works using PV technology, so it's fairly novel.
And wind is basically the same thing, just using the air, instead of steam.
It's all mechanically the same at the end of the day, excluding solar. The primary difference is that we don't burn fuel for heat to make steam, we use potential, or kinetic energy from our environment instead.
Also to be clear, if we're being pedantic and nitpicky, when i say most i mean percent of production. The vast majority of production globally is through coal, oil, and natural gas. All using thermal processes. And some nuclear, though not as much as solar/wind though.
Project PACER:
If it hasn't been already said: the issue is public perception. If you ask any American in the street what they relate to nuclear power the majority will tell you: Chorynobyl. Even though anyone that's looked up anything knows that technology is leaps ahead of that disaster, that's the fear mongering that everyone jumps to.
The half life of fall-out from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs was a couple of decades.
The half life of nuclear waste from powerplants is anywhere from thousands of years to millions of years, depending on the mix of isotopes.
anywhere from thousands of years to millions of years
only in a strictly thermal reactor environment, if you're using a fast reactor, something like the SSR that is currently being worked on in canada, it can both burn waste, and reduce it's lifespan to a much more reasonable length.
As always, development is the problem, if we had more energy being focused on this, we would be farther along, but such is scientific development.
Don't feed the troll. It won't come back, it's too expensive.
fission is bad for us
"sHoW yOUr WoRK!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runit_Island#Runit_Dome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accidents_by_country
The first light bulbs ever lit by electricity generated by nuclear power at EBR-1 at Argonne National Laboratory-West, 20 December 1951.
That is a lot of "accidents" for an energy source less than one 80 years old. We only have so many places to store the waste. And the accidents.
Yeah, but keep in mind that nuclear waste has some time left to do damage. It’s not like a hydro plant is going to come back and haunt you in a 100 years from now. That’s what worries me with nuclear, aside from the fact that it’s too slow to build to be a solution to the climate crisis.
Solar, wind and hydro should be top priority in my opinion.
Edit: Want to add energy storage to top prio as well, as that is needed to balance the grid.
Oxygen is bad for us, but it's a lot better than the alternative.
fukushima was entirely a skill issue, just don't
TMI was entirely a skill issue, and didn't even release any significant radiation as far as we can tell. Didn't even breakthrough the PCV, so this probably shouldn't even be on the list.
chernobyl was a bad design, and a skill issue, plus a few other skill issues.
the runit dome was from atomic bomb testing right? Not even real nuclear power, it may have been a fission bomb, but i'm not looking into it far enough. Weird that you don't mention nagasaki or hiroshima in that case.
the hanford site, i'm not familiar with, but im guessing this is a development plant? And probably just procedural skill issues? There have been a number of smaller accidents, most of which are due to people being stupid.
I mean, there's barely any difference between the heating of the earth's mantle, i.e. geothermal, to the heating by fission. We are just kind of doing the process manually on the surface of the planet where a tiny mistake will cover it in contamination.
