Steel recycling firm considers the use of small nuclear reactors to power its arc furnaces.
A picture is worth lots and lots of words from the article linked below:
Recently an antinuke here suggested that when I use the term "landfill" to describe the fate of wind turbines that become, um, landfill on average less than 20 years after they are built, I didn't know whether they were recycled.
"Recycling" is the big, big, big exercise in hand waving used by proponents of so called "renewable energy," to pretend that the odious mass intensity of this useless enterprise doesn't matter. In fact the mass intensity makes the whole shebang unsustainable. (When I use the word "useless" in this context, I am referring to the address of climate change, something about which antinukes couldn't care less.)
Most antinukes, with minor exceptions, emphasis on "minor," are unfamiliar with the contents of the scientific literature, about which they care even less than they do about climate change.
The following table can be found in a recent issue of Chemical Reviews, The Materials Science behind Sustainable Metals and Alloys Dierk Raabe Chemical Reviews 2023 123 (5), 2436-2608:
The caption:
Note the position of both the critical light and heavy lanthanides (so called "rare earths" ), less than 1% recycling. Both a light lanthanide, neodymium, and a heavy lanthanide, dysprosium, are critical components of the magnets in wind turbine generators, as well as the filthy redundant dangerous fossil fuel plants that are required to back them up. (Note the position of indium, a component of CIGS type solar cells which have also proved useless at addressing climate change.)
The scale of metal demand is also in this review, with the following famous graphic.
The caption:
We are not going to mine our way out of climate change, and certainly not with useless wind turbines and useless solar cells.
The point of the above two graphics is that there is no evidence, whatsoever, that all, or even a significant portion of wind turbines are magically recycled. If there was, the amount of neodymium and dysprosium recycled would not be less than 1%. I definitely follow the literature on closed materials cycles and I'm both amused and disgusted with the handwaving magical thinking of antinukes.
(I have written here and elsewhere about lanthanide recycling, something I regard as a critical exercise.)
However, the point of this, graphically shown in the opening picture is that recycling requires energy, not just process energy but other forms of energy as well, transport, information systems, and the embedded energy of the recycling facilities themselves.
Moreover, recycling metals, in this case steel, whether it is powered by thermodynamically degraded electricity or other sources of heat, currently provided by dangerous fossil fuels although nuclear heat would (and should) work.
Unreliable energy doesn't cut it, because all the heat energy required is lost when the power is shut off.
Wind energy is unreliable. It follows that if the prodigious amounts of steel invested in this junk were recycled, this would be yet another way that the wind industry depends on dangerous fossil fuels, the waste of which is killing the planet.
I frequently appeal, and have done so recently, the the now unmaintained (possibly because it shows the wind industry to be as poor performer as it is) the Master Register of Wind Turbines at the Danish Energy Agency, the maintenance of which ceased in March of 2022 and is conveniently located on the same page as the Oil and Gas operations of that offshore drilling hellhole, Denmark.
Using the data as of 2022, one can find data related to 3,444 decommissioned wind turbines and the 6,296 "operating" commissioned wind turbines. Using Excel logic functions and other functions, one can easily discern that there is good reason for putting "operating" in quotation marks.
To wit:
In the period between 2016 and 2021, 24 Danish commissioned wind turbines produced zero electricity.
In the period between 2016 and 2021, 8 Danish commissioned wind turbines produced zero electricity in six of the seven years.
In the period between 2016 and 2021, 9 Danish commissioned wind turbines produced zero electricity in five of the seven years.
In the period between 2016 and 2021, 31 Danish commissioned wind turbines produced zero electricity in four of the seven years.
In the period between 2016 and 2021, 44 Danish commissioned wind turbines produced zero electricity in three of the seven years.
In the period between 2016 and 2021, 51 Danish commissioned wind turbines produced zero electricity in two of the seven years.
In the period between 2016 and 2021, 179 Danish commissioned wind turbines produced zero electricity in one of the seven years.
Note that these figures refer to zero. If one looks at poor performers, the situation is even worse. The average capacity utilization of wind turbines in 2021, the last full year recorded at the Master Register shows that the average capacity utilization for all individual wind turbines - irrespective of size - was 21.70%. Wind turbines that fall below this figure, those that have capacity utilization of less than 10% number 479; they are degrading. Of these, 248 have capacity utilization of less than 5%.
In short they are standing landfill or ocean dumped waste.
They are rotting in place.
Nucor is considering making steel recycling climate change gas free:
Steel maker considers use of NuScale SMRs at its mills
Excerpts from the text which features the picture shown at the outset:
As part of the MoU, the companies will evaluate site suitability, transmission interconnection capabilities and capital costs for potential NuScale plants to be sited near and provide carbon free electricity to Nucor EAF steel mills.
In addition, NuScale will study the feasibility of siting a manufacturing facility for NuScale Power Modules near a Nucor facility.
The companies will also explore an expanded manufacturing partnership through which Nucor - the largest steel producer and recycler of any type of material in North America - would supply Econiq, its net-zero steel products, for NuScale projects.
Nucor describes Econiq as "the world's first net-zero steel at scale". It adds: "Econiq is not a single product; it is a net-zero certification, which can be applied to any product from Nucor's steel mills." The company said it achieves net-zero on Econiq products by using electricity from 100% renewable sources and by purchasing carbon offsets.
In April 2022 Nucor - which manufactures steel and steel products, with operating facilities in the USA, Canada and Mexico - committed to a USD15 million private investment in public equity in NuScale Power.
"NuScale is thrilled to take this step forward with Nucor, a company that shares our commitment to sustainability and deeply understands the role of NuScale's technology in delivering clean, reliable baseload power to support the global energy transition," said NuScale President and CEO John Hopkins. "We look forward to determining how our SMR technology can best serve Nucor's sophisticated steelmaking operations and how our companies can work together to drive a more sustainable future..."
Note that currently Nucor is relying on the cheap dishonest accounting trick, "offsets" to claim that it is climate change gas free.
That's marketing; it has nothing to do with reality. This said I applaud their interest in really becoming climate change gas free.
I note that this approach, using thermodynamically degraded electricity to recycle steel, does not define an optimal thermodynamically efficient use of nuclear energy - an efficient process would use nuclear heat directly - but if followed through it will indeed be climate neutral.
Have a nice weekend.
= new reply since forum marked as read
There's probably an animated GIF out there somewhere but couldn't find one in a 3 minute search
There are a number of YouTube videos
https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+video+wind+turbine+red+lights&oq=youtube+video+wind+turbine+red+lights
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/technologyinvesting/lawmakers-crack-down-on-turbine-lights-that-flash-all-night/ar-AA1aydts
(Wall Street Journal 4/30/23) ... For pilots flying over rural America, a string of red lights flashing along the horizon is a warning that there might be a wind farm ahead. But for many residents on the ground, the lights are an eyesore that has ruined their view of the night sky and disrupted the bucolic stillness that defined their counties.
“Imagine…red blinking stoplights…every night, all night long…and not in sync,” Gayla Randel, who can see the lights on more than 130 turbines from her Marshall County, Kan., home, told lawmakers this year.
Kansas and Colorado recently passed laws to limit the flashing lights—by turning them on only when aircraft are approaching. North Dakota approved a similar measure in 2017. A Washington state bill requiring light-mitigating technology was passed by lawmakers but hasn’t yet been signed by the governor.
(more sentences about how they are expensive and ruin the economics of projects on fixed price contracts. They involve radar systems to detect approaching aircraft. - Progree)
Nakila Blessing and her husband built a house on his family’s farm in Schuyler County, Mo., in 2018, on a hill looking out at fields and trees. Two years later, the 175-turbine High Prairie wind farm project was constructed. Ms. Blessing said their landscape is now cluttered with 500-foot-tall turbines and the night sky is polluted with light. Ms. March said the new laws don’t address the litany of other complaints those who live near turbines have levied, including the sound of whooshing blades and the sense that they now reside in an industrial zone. It “has destroyed everything that we built the house for,” she said.
Last edited Sun Jun 4, 2023, 08:15 PM - Edit history (2)
Closing the Infrastructure Gap for Decarbonization: The Case for an Integrated Mineral Supply Agreement Saleem H. Ali, Sophia Kalantzakos, Roderick Eggert, Roland Gauss, Constantine Karayannopoulos, Julie Klinger, Xiaoyu Pu, Kristin Vekasi, and Robert K. Perrons Environmental Science & Technology 2022 56 (22), 15280-15289
The caption:
Figure 3. Materials needed for different forms of power generation. Figure based on data from U.S. Department of Energy Quadrennial Energy Review 2015.
Taken from: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143004710#post7
I don't think this is sustainable either.
===================================================
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/14/bill-gates-concepts-to-understand-the-climate-crisis.html?&doc=107178583
Land use efficiency, watts/square meter:
fossil fuel: 500 to 10k,
nuclear: 500 to 1000,
solar: 5 to 20,
wind: 1 to 2 -- that's 1 to 2 MW per square kilometer
Last edited Sun Jun 4, 2023, 10:56 PM - Edit history (3)
The most recent release by the International Energy Agency shows solar and wind produced just 12 Exajoules on a planet consuming 624 Exajoules per year.
Taken from: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143033959#post14 (scroll to bottom half of post)
I did a little math exercise to see how much the WEO's "stated policies" scenario (shown in the above table) would reduce fossil fuel use by 2050, the last year in the table.
Fossil fuel supply from IEA WEO 2022. 2021 and 2050 under stated policies scenario, ExaJoules (EJ).
Subtracting "abated with CCUS" and subtracting non-energy use oil (since the table is titled World ENERGY Supply):
2021: 146 - 0 + 183 - 31 + 165 - 0 = 463 EJ . Total energy supply: 624 EJ. % of total energy that is fossil: 74.1%
2050: 147 - 3 + 197 - 42 + 111 - 1 = 409 EJ . Total energy supply: 740 EJ. % of total energy that is fossil: 55.3%
Total fossil supply for energy, % change in EJ from 2021 to 2050: -11.7%, or -12% rounded
So unless the world goes beyond what they project in the above table (a 7.5 fold increase in wind and solar exajoules), we'll reduce fossil fuel consumption by only 12% in 29 years (counting from 2021).
I think we're going to hit some serious resource limits before we get to 7.5-fold increase in solar and wind, and even if that is achieved (see #19 above in the resource intensity ), it only makes a small dent (12%) in the fossil fuel problem as explained just above.
See also a hint at the amount of storage required and its resource intensity to break away from fossil fuel back up. And that doesn't include the amount needed for electric vehicles.
Edited to add 1030p ET: another example is the humble metal nickel:
EV Makers Confront the 'Nickel Pickle' 6/4/23
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016353383
Large amounts of the mineral are needed for electric car batteries ((and presumably batteries for any large-scale storage purpose such as grid storage -Progree)), but getting it out of the ground and refining it often requires clearing rainforests and generating large amounts of carbon.
In the electric-vehicle business, the quandary is known as the nickel pickle.
To make batteries for EVs, companies need to mine and refine large amounts of nickel. The process of getting the mineral out of the ground and turning it into battery-ready substances, though, is particularly environmentally unfriendly. Reaching the nickel means cutting down swaths of rainforest. Refining it is a carbon-intensive process that involves extreme heat and high pressure, producing waste slurry that’s hard to dispose of.
... The challenge is playing out across Indonesia’s mineral-rich islands, by far the world’s largest source of nickel. These deposits aren’t deep underground but lie close to the surface, under stretches of overlapping forests. Getting to the nickel is easy and inexpensive, but only after the forests are cleared.
And then there's the water requirement of lithium mining, often in arid areas...
But I guess only a "snowflake" worries their pretty little heads off about such matters.
