[tuatoru]

> expect to see a lot of anhydrous ammonia long-term storage. Also, hydrogen, and liquid nitrogen.

This is wishful thinking. These are very much research projects at present.

> Also, hydrogen, and liquid nitrogen.

Hydrogen makes no sense as energy storage. The energy costs of compression (and liquefaction, if you do that), and the risks, are just silly. Liquifying and regasifiying nitrogen are energy-expensive too.

It'd be better to combine hydrogen with air-captured carbon to make medium-chain hydrocarbons. We can store those at room temperature and pressure safely for season-long periods of time, as demonstrated by hundreds of millions of motor vehicles and tens of thousands of fuel depots.

Leaks of liquid hydrocarbons are much less likely to kill people than leaks of ammonia.

[ncmncm]

A GW ammonia plant is under construction in Norway. Little hint: nobody builds GW-scale anything that is just a "research project".

Hydrogen storage will be mostly underground, at low pressure. So, no compression or liquification needed. But, for transport it will be liquified and shipped just like LNG is today.

Liquifying nitrogen is extremely mature technology. A 100MW LN2 storage plant is under construction in Chile. Little hint, again: [ ... ]

"Re-gasifying" liquid nitrogen needs only ambient air, which (little hint) is all well above the boiling point of nitrogen.

If you think liquifying hydrogen takes a lot of energy, wait until you find out how much you need to synthesize hydrocarbons. Little hint: you will need a lot of hydrogen stockpiled. And, a lot of carbon with all the oxygen picked off.

[Retric]

> nobody builds GW-scale anything that is just a "research project".

Plenty of experimental GW scale nuclear reactors have been built, just look at the history of CANDU design for an example. That’s just the scale this stuff operates at, you need real world data to demonstrate it’s actually cost effective at scale and actually building stuff still requires actual R&D. Further, you don’t want to just build one you want multiple examples to see what costs look like when people building the thing have relevant experience.

[ncmncm]

We will need hundreds of GW-scale ammonia synthesis plants. Thousands, maybe. Fortunately, there are no impediments to operating them at any required scale. You just add on more units.

Nuclear reactors have very difficult engineering problems unknown in most other technologies. For a nuke, you might actually need to build a GW-scale pilot plant to discover the failure modes that show up there. Not so, most things. A bigger dam just needs more turbines. A bigger wind farm just needs more wind turbines. A bigger solar farm just needs more panels. A bigger ammonia plant just needs more catalyzer units. You can start it running after the first one, and add more at leisure.

That is a thing that makes renewables + storage so much more attractive than nukes: You are guaranteed no unpleasant surprises, and no existential disasters. That it is also radically cheaper, and starts working immediately, is icing on a very nice cake.

[Retric]

Everything you mentioned ran into new issues at scale.

Scale always brings new problems. The difference between hosting a website from your personal internet connection and building TickTock’s infrastructure isn’t simply writing a bigger check to someone.

How many people know how to build X. Where do you get the raw materials or parts etc, all to often the answer is you build a factory or a mine. Many basic assumptions break down with scale. You don’t use even close to the same equipment to connect your houses solar panels to the grid as you would a 1GW solar farm.