Power plant in space by 2035

[CarlBar]

5 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

Of course space got weather. 

 

 

it's not just semantics either. of course it's not the same as on earth, but it wouldn't be difficult to imagine space weather could influence such "energy transmissions"?  

you know the same stuff starlink has been shown to be susceptible to.

 

Or maybe not, but there's definitely "space weather" according to NASA. and they also check this constantly.  

 

https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/

 

"Tuesday kp2"  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Tell me you know nothing about communications without telling me you know nothing about communications.

 

The reason space weather is a problem, (outside of LEO atmosphere expansion issues), is that it can blast out enough energy on the same frequency as the communication to overwhelm the ability of the receiver to tell the incoming signal from all the noise the sun is putting out. Power transmission doesn't care about deciphering anything. it just takes all the energy on the designed frequency that strikes it and turns it into power. So all the suns blasting away would do is fractionally increase the amount if power being generated, (Fraction of a watt per square meter).

 

Yes the sun can have a lot of weird and wonderful effects and i'm sure some of them would cause real issues, but the majority of what it does really doesn't matter for the purposes of a solar powersat transmitting and generating solar energy.

 

Hell, technically build a suitable satellite for reflecting rays and you could link the US and European power grids together using Microwave power beaming. And it absolutely would be a lot more efficient than an undersea cable across the entire Atlantic.

[pythonmegapixel]

6 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

agreed. pretty much every house here seems to have solar panels (country side, so lots of houses with actual roofs)... but theres always space for them in big cities too i guess, just lacks the will, and i guess people think solar panels are kinda ugly maybe? i don't think so, actually they look kinda cool. 

They're no uglier than typical roof tiles anyway, as far as I'm concerned!

[Mark Kaine]

3 hours ago, CarlBar said:

Tell me you know nothing about communications without telling me you know nothing about communications.

 

 

I did not talk about communication. 

 

3 hours ago, CarlBar said:

outside of LEO atmosphere expansion issues

thats what happened to that starlink constellation right? I don't exactly know what it was,  just that the sun messed up their orbit.

 

Anyways i was just saying there is space weather and there might be unforeseeable issues with that (but it'd be probably rare)

[Mark Kaine]

2 hours ago, pythonmegapixel said:

They're no uglier than typical roof tiles anyway, as far as I'm concerned!

yeah, i think it looks better actually,  plus it looks like some additional protection,  even though thats probably just an illusion lol. 

[leadeater]

9 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

it's not just semantics either. of course it's not the same as on earth, but it wouldn't be difficult to imagine space weather could influence such "energy transmissions"?  

you know the same stuff starlink has been shown to be susceptible to.

Well the problem here is you're implying that the affects are comparable when they are not. In winter on a bad day my production can go from 18 kwh to 0.5 kwh, space weather is simply not going to do that here in this situation.

 

It may have an affect on operating environment of the equipment but it's basically non-relevant to energy production and transmission. 

 

All these space weather issues are affects around communications and electronics like navigation and positioning. Communications is not a problem here and positioning is less affected on larger satellites than on smaller ones, particularly ones that are small and low orbit.

 

When we're talking about solar energy production and weather we're talking about affects on energy production. Weather causes things like clouds and rain etc, direct causes of reduction in received sun energy on the solar receiver. So does space weather actually do the same? Probably, nay confidently no. These are the things already factored in and considered by these scientists, it's not like the would just "miss" that sort of thing.

[leadeater]

6 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Actually the biggest reason why nuclear energy has gone to the wayside in the US is because of regulations that require energy providers to provide energy as cheap as they can and unfortunately nuclear is just plain more expensive than natural gas and wind/solar. That being said nuclear is much better in terms of stable output of energy compared to wind and solar while also being cleaner than natural gas. 

I'm not so sure they are cheaper, not over 50+ years. I think nuclear is cheaper but the design and operating life is so much longer it's a massively hard sell given the other factors also. It's a lot cheaper to build something else, run it for X time, tear it down and replace with newer better etc and eat overall cost increase as you've spread the difference over decades and lots of things change over those time scales anyway.

 

Quote

Nuclear energy averages 0.4 euro cents/kWh, much the same as hydro, coal is over 4.0 cents (4.1-7.3), gas ranges 1.3-2.3 cents and only wind shows up better than nuclear, at 0.1-0.2 cents/kWh average. NB these are the external costs only.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/uploadedfiles/org/info/pdf/economicsnp.pdf

 

Coal/Gas/Oil are literally the worst in terms of specific energy production cost.

[Mark Kaine]

12 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Well the problem here is you're implying that the affects are comparable when they are not. In winter on a bad day my production can go from 18 kwh to 0.5 kwh, space weather is simply not going to do that here in this situation.

Sorry if it seemed pedantic but I just wanted to point out that yes,  there is indeed space "weather" = )

Also I think it's not just our sun causing such things, it could be more distant stars as well (super novaes or whatever) but it's seemingly quite rare for sure.

 

15 minutes ago, leadeater said:

All these space weather issues are affects around communications and electronics like navigation and positioning

yeah, that's what I was hinting at... there might be issues they dont account for, like the thing that happened to starlink, I think that was also rather unexpected... I don't actually know how that "energy beaming" technique works, so its just speculation... apparently there are several ways to do it though? 

 

But my gut feeling tells me this is just an experimental thing anyways? I mean do we know how much energy this "plant" is supposed to produce?  I kinda just expect a tiny satellite not doing much lol...

[mr moose]

23 hours ago, pythonmegapixel said:

Well, we could, but that comes with its own set of problems. In particular it's not great for the energy security of individual nations as uranium mines only exist in a few places. It also can't be scaled rapidly to cope with peaks in demand, so you would need either storage (and if you're going to need that, why not just use renewables anyway) or other sources to supplement it.

You don't need batteries for nuclear power, it's an on demand system.  The only way it wouldn't scale up is if the entire government and power companies together ignored future projections and decided not to build when required.   With regard to security, that is hardly a problem, if opposing nations have been able to reliably source Uranium over the last 40 years then there is no danger of it suddenly becoming a problem. 

 

 

20 hours ago, thechinchinsong said:

Nuclear in most places is gonna take 10 or 20 years to build cause of regulations and pushback depending on where you live. Solar and Wind for all their faults are much quicker to get online. At this point it's still relatively cheap, relatively "eco friendly", and relatively quick to build so I can see why governments choose these instead of nuclear. If you have the ability to plan long term like China though, you can afford to build lots of nuclear as they have been and continue to do. Too bad in other places we got NIMBYs and nuclear scaremongers and a lack of financial incentive to do it so it never gets done.

 But also much dirtier to build and requires way more rare earth materials.   The problem with nuclear is not how long it takes to build but the fact they are not even starting to build. There are plenty of case studies showing nuclear to be the most profitable of all energy generation long term,  us the least natural resources, produces the lowest CO2 and has the lowest mortality rate per KWh produced.   IF the environment was in the serious danger they claimed it was 10 years ago then they should have started building them back then.  Because right now every country with the ability to build nuclear would have already reduced there co2 multitudes beyond any target they are aiming for by 2050.

 

To bad those NIMBY's do get how basic the issue is; where if Nuclear is not the answer then the environment (both CO2 and rare earth mining) is not the problem.  

[mr moose]

11 minutes ago, leadeater said:

It's a lot cheaper to build something else, run it for X time, tear it down and replace with newer better etc and eat overall cost increase as you've spread the difference over decades and lots of things change over those time scales anyway.

 

 

 

That's exactly why power companies love the gas fired backup service they provide for wind and solar.  it is cheap to build and produces a profit within the first few years, unlike nuclear which runs at a loss for something like 5 years.   Nuclear makes way more money long term, but investors are only interested in short term profit.  

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

I don't actually know how that "energy beaming" technique works, so its just speculation... apparently there are several ways to do it though? 

It's in the article, its just microwave transmission, and no not like your kitchen microwave 

 

Microwaves is not a "microwave" hehe.

 

 

As you can see the Microwave frequency band is actually huge and even the tiny slice represent above and expanded is itself huge.

 

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

yeah, that's what I was hinting at... there might be issues they dont account for, like the thing that happened to starlink, I think that was also rather unexpected...

I don't think it was "unexpected" I think it was more "unknown" as in unquantifiable effects. As I said I doubt they haven't already factored this in, plus we could well be talking about the difference between hitting a balloon and hitting a brick in terms of "force impact reaction". Like to be more clear and less confusing position and guidance disruption and affect on something this large at it's orbital distance could be 0.5% deviation where as for starlink it could be 5%, random BS numbers out my ass.

 

Anyway if it really were such a big problem the iSS or Hubble would have crashed in to earth by now, since they haven't I think this will be fine.

 

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

But my gut feeling tells me this is just an experimental thing anyways? I mean do we know how much energy this "plant" is supposed to produce?  I kinda just expect a tiny satellite not doing much lol...

It's huge and bloody expensive, so may never get built. I'd have to read the article again but it's something like 35 heavy lifter space launches to build it, not just a single launch of a tiny satellite just to try out the concept. The minimum viable to do this is so large you have to actually commit to doing it "for real".

 

So high chance the idea is DOA, at least for now.

[leadeater]

16 minutes ago, mr moose said:

reliably source Uranium over the last 40 years then there is no danger of it suddenly becoming a problem. 

Says the guy living in one of the largest natural mineral reserves of Uranium hehe 

 

Seriously your country needs to get in on that action, wtf.

 

P.S. Giant long ass power cable to my country please.

[Rauten]

15 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Seriously your country needs to get in on that action, wtf.

I think one of their largest reserves is in the hand of a native that's like "NOPE! You ain't digging that poison out of the ground!" and has actually turned down multi-million offers for the land?

Was mentioned on a documentary Veritasium did around Uranium.

[mr moose]

8 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Says the guy living in one of the largest natural mineral reserves of Uranium hehe 

 

Seriously your country needs to get in on that action, wtf.

 

P.S. Giant long ass power cable to my country please.

 

You would not believe the opposition I face every time I even suggest it.   People are just so indoctrinated with fear over the issue.  

 

The Latrobe valley is prime location for it,  It's already the centre of the states power grid, has existing ponds dedicated to power station cooling, is very well serviced by rail and road, is sufficiently far enough from the hippy morons in the city that don't know the basics of science and building there would solve a decades old employment/economy problem. 

 

Also I believe it's only about 2000Km from the LV to queenstown NZ.   Not sure what the losses are on that distance, but we could setup a microwave link (that would also have the advantage of deterring Chinese fishing vessels ).

[leadeater]

4 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Also I believe it's only about 2000Km from the LV to queenstown NZ.

Who cares if it's like half lost, even if the cost is effectively doubled it is still half the cost of Gas power based on the EU figures I posted and I know for sure our Gas isn't as cheap as theirs.

 

Also sadly the Earth is not flat so we'd have to build pretty damn high to do a microwave transmission, I guess the up side for your country is you'd have a long range self defense beam weapon that would make planes fall out of the sky and boats get lost.

[Mark Kaine]

46 minutes ago, leadeater said:

don't think it was "unexpected" I think it was more "unknown" as in unquantifiable effects. As I said I doubt they haven't already factored this in, plus we could well be talking about the difference between hitting a balloon and hitting a brick in terms of "force impact reaction". Like to be more clear and less confusing position and guidance disruption and affect on something this large at it's orbital distance could be 0.5% deviation where as for starling it could be 5%, random BS numbers out my ass

yeah, they knew this could happen i think,  they just didn't expect it to be this bad, basically yolo'ing it lol.

 

Also the data they got should help to prevent it in the future. 

 

46 minutes ago, leadeater said:

It's in the article, its just microwave transmission, and no not like your kitchen microwave

hmm, well I still don't really understand how it works , but apparently they tested it...

 

One thing the article mentions is something i didn't think of... this should work 24h/day so there would be less need for energy storage (which currently seems the biggest issue with current tech) so *if* that works "cross continental" that would solve a lot of issues. 

 

 

48 minutes ago, leadeater said:

It's huge and bloody expensive, so may never get built. I'd have to read the article again but it's something like 35 heavy lifter space launches to build it, not just a single launch of a tiny satellite just to try out the concept. The minimum viable to do this is so large you have to actually commit to doing it "for real".

 

So high chance the idea is DOA, at least for now.

oh, ok, i was just skimming the article,  and they said something about small satellites i think - anyways yeah, this doesn't strike me as particularly well thought out or presented... maybe they should start off with a tiny one instead, proof of concept kinda thing.

[mr moose]

7 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Who cares if it's like half lost, even if the cost is effectively doubled it is still half the cost of Gas power based on the EU figures I posted and I know for sure our Gas isn't as cheap as theirs.

 

Also sadly the Earth is not flat so we'd have to build pretty damn high to do a microwave transmission, I guess the up side for your country is you'd have a long range self defense beam weapon that would make planes fall out of the sky and boats get lost.

Excellent, we can fund it from the defense budget and present a surplus in the energy sector. 

[Rauten]

5 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Excellent, we can fund it from the defense budget and present a surplus in the energy sector. 

And in case of famine, just point it at the emus!

[Mark Kaine]

19 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I guess the up side for your country is you'd have a long range self defense beam weapon that would make planes fall out of the sky and boats get lost.

Thats all i can really think of,  especially regarding the demonstration pictures presented...  "death lasers" ... : D

[Donut417]

8 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Actually the biggest reason why nuclear energy has gone to the wayside in the US is because of regulations that require energy providers to provide energy as cheap as they can and unfortunately nuclear is just plain more expensive

That and the fact anytime someone wants to build a plant a shit load of people show up to protest. DTE has a permit from the NRC to build a new reactor as the Fermi power station, but people protested, so they backed off. People seem to be scared of the atom. 

[Needfuldoer]

47 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

That and the fact anytime someone wants to build a plant a shit load of people show up to protest. DTE has a permit from the NRC to build a new reactor as the Fermi power station, but people protested, so they backed off. People seem to be scared of the atom. 

They'll just endlessly screech "Chernobyl! Three Mile Island! Fukushima! Waste that's dangerous for all eternity!" and wave around photos of mushroom clouds and scary-looking condensing towers until the powers that be shelve the project. 

 

We needed to go all-in on hydro and nuclear 40 years ago.

[Brooksie359]

4 hours ago, leadeater said:

I'm not so sure they are cheaper, not over 50+ years. I think nuclear is cheaper but the design and operating life is so much longer it's a massively hard sell given the other factors also. It's a lot cheaper to build something else, run it for X time, tear it down and replace with newer better etc and eat overall cost increase as you've spread the difference over decades and lots of things change over those time scales anyway.

 

http://www.world-nuclear.org/uploadedfiles/org/info/pdf/economicsnp.pdf

 

Coal/Gas/Oil are literally the worst in terms of specific energy production cost.

These were existing nuclear power plants that were shut down due to them being more expensive. It could be that it was more expensive because the thing was old and was using older tech or maybe gas was much cheaper than it is today 

[leadeater]

52 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

These were existing nuclear power plants that were shut down due to them being more expensive. It could be that it was more expensive because the thing was old and was using older tech or maybe gas was much cheaper than it is today 

These what? Most that do get shutdown are due to not being able to get funding required for upgrade/retrofit for new safety requirements and reactors of new design. They don't get funding because of public perception and negative pressure for actually spending money on nuclear so it's a huge uphill battle to keep the ones that exist running regardless that they are, as shown over countless times, the cheapest form of reliable and sustainable energy only losing out to unreliable renewable sources.

 

Run the numbers 5 ways from Sunday, nuclear is always cheaper, if you allow it to be.

[CarlBar]

@Mark Kaine Sorry if i was a bit snarky. this is a subject I've had an interest in ever since i picked up a paperback of the link i gave earlier back in my teens from a charity shop.

 

As far as starlink. Space X knew the solar storm was coming and would cause the atmosphere to expand, but it expanded more and faster than they where expecting. They don't actually put their starlink satellites into their final orbits straight from the launch rocket. they drop them off lower down so they can distribute themselves and have the satellites own very low power thrusters push them upto their final orbits over a long period of time. the lower the orbit the rocket drops them in the more they can send up on a single launch. They'd been really pushing the limits of how low they could drop them off, and the storm producing a bigger and earlier effect than expected caught them when they where at a much lower orbit than their operational orbit. That combined with some minor related factors in the countermeasures space X took left a bunch of the satellites in an unrecoverable state that resulted in them burning up. But it only affected some of the satellites and none of the ones in oporational orbits.

 

A potentiol powersat would need to orbit at even higher altitudes, (you want an orbit that is almost never obscured from the sun by the earth), so this specific problem is even less relevant as a low parking orbit can still be high enough to be well outside the earths atmosphere.

 

Like i said there's probably somthing that could cause grief that the sun could do, (stuff from outside the solar system is even less relevant, the total intensity is way lower even if individual particles can be way higher energy). The link i provided earlier has a chapter on the radiation threats in space which covers virtually everything in solar weather. it;s focused on human habitation, but with the provision electronics and the like need way less protection than humans it's still useful for an overview of the threats. In fact here's a direct link: https://space.nss.org/colonies-in-space-chapter-12-the-shell-of-the-torus/

[Mark Kaine]

11 hours ago, CarlBar said:

Like i said there's probably somthing that could cause grief that the sun could do,

honestly my take wasnt really scientific,  probably more philosophical,  but its true the sun's effects are generally predictable,  and that's what people typically call "space weather" i guess. 

 

11 hours ago, CarlBar said:

A potentiol powersat would need to orbit at even higher altitudes, (you want an orbit that is almost never obscured from the sun by the earth), so this specific problem is even less relevant as a low parking orbit can still be high enough to be well outside the earths atmosphere.

well, can you explain a little how this is all supposed to work?  the example graphic used really leaves a lot to desire..  i dont even see a connection between the satellites?

 

And how is this "beaming" tech actually supposed to work?

 

They use microwaves... ok, but what's the receiver?  And what exactly gets transmitted or transferred? Just.. microwaves?

 

And yes, indeed what happens to planes etc that get hit by these microwaves?

 

I mean 2035 seems far out,  but they obviously have some kind of concept,  oh and whats the power/ kw or whatever to be expected from this one plant? 

 

(yeah, i know a lot of questions)

 

[tikker]

48 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

They use microwaves... ok, but what's the receiver?  And what exactly gets transmitted or transferred? Just.. microwaves?

Yes, just microwaves. The physics behind it (accelerated charged particles create radiation) works both ways: you can use power to generate radiation and you can use that radiation to generate power. A transmitter is basically just a receiver "in reverse" (and vice versa). As for the physics: in case of a transmitter, an AC current will constantly accelerate the electrons, due to which they start radiating at some frequency. In case of a receiver the opposite happens. Incoming radiation accelerates the electrons and induces a current.

48 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

And how is this "beaming" tech actually supposed to work?

It does, many things from radio telescopes listening to space to your good old FM radio or telecommunications operate on the principle. In the end it's all just an electrical signal on one end generating EM waves that get converted to an electrical signal again at the other end and interpreted.