[mlyle]

> Yes, you all are engaging in the "nothing can be invented" argument.

No, we're engaging in the "this has been resistant to being invented so far, so let's not bet everything on it showing up tomorrow" argument.

> Uranium quickly runs out if the world is powered by burner reactors and known uranium resources

You could quadruple the present rate of uranium use, representing in a major contribution to mankind's energy use, and have 35 years of supply, just using known reserves and no breeding.

And if you were using that much uranium, more reserves would be quickly proven. Do you think we've found all the uranium we'll ever find, even if market prices go up significantly?

And breeding is possible, and understood. Yes, there's proliferation concerns, but that's not the end of the world.

And seawater extraction is practical without much increase in cost.

No one is saying "no renewables" or "no battery storage" or "no pumped storage". Or "no power to gas to power". We need all of these things. And we need the diversity of having nuclear in the mix, too.

[pfdietz]

Not at all. The technology for hydrogen energy storage is (with the possible exception of cheap electrolysers) is off the shelf. It's not widely used not because it's not available, but because natural gas is cheaper to store and burn when there are no CO2 taxes. But the CO2 taxes will be raised enough to push natural gas out, if we're going to control global warming.

[mlyle]

When the largest electrolyzer we have in the world is 10MW... and hydrogen storage hasn't been demonstrated at anywhere near the scale you're talking about... it's a tad of a stretch to talk about it being "off the shelf." Particularly when you point to nuclear fuel reprocessing and breeding as nonexistent in the same thread.

[pfdietz]

We can run electrolysers in parallel to scale to any desired output level. There might be economies of scale to make them even larger, or there could be economies of manufacturing scale of making smaller ones at higher volume. PV and wind are examples of technologies that work well with large numbers of not so large units, replicated as needed. This is a nice place for a technology to be.

[mlyle]

A few prototype / demonstration units at 10MW scale and lower is not proven, off the shelf technology. Fullstop.

[philipkglass]

Electrolytic hydrogen plants of up to 250 MW were constructed in the 20th century by the use of smaller electrolysis units in parallel. All of them were for producing ammonia from hydrogen. See table 3-2 on page 99 of this NASA report from 1975:

"Survey of Hydrogen Production and Utilization Methods"

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19760008503/downloads/19...

250 MW, Rjakon, Norway, built 1965

170 MW, Kima, Egypt, built 1960

125 MW, Nangal, India, built 1958

90 MW, Trail, Canada, built 1939

25 MW, Curco, Peru, built 1958

[mlyle]

??? Those are input powers of terrifically inefficient and expensive electrolyzers. That 250MW plant put out 17MW of hydrogen -- (120 (megajoules / kilogram)) * ((0.000236 kilograms) / (cubic foot)) * (2 200 000 ((cubic feet) / hour)) = 17,306,667 Watts.