this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
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I don’t know why this is constantly criticized as a method of energy capture. Liquids allow for maximum surface area contact, creating more efficient heat transfer from the irradiated rods.
Armchair nuclear physicists should release an improved model before being so critical of the most effective and reliable method of energy generation we currently have.
I'd not that it's criticized, it's just kinda funny that everything comes back to steam engines
Oh for sure. It’s like a desire path or evolution’s crab in that way. I think I just misunderstood people’s criticisms as belittlement of the process without them understanding why it’s still the standard.
Fair enough, I'm sure people DO criticize it but it's mostly a joke.
On a side note, are there any theoretical energy sources that DON'T involve steam? I'm not well-versed
Solar (photovoltaics), wind turbines, and hydroelectric are a few non-steam energy sources in use.
As for theoretical sources, some of the pulsed-power fusion concepts use the electromagnetic pulse from fusion to directly induce electrical power. But none of these have been demonstrated yet.
There's also natural gas turbines
I would throw all turbines into one group, steam or otherwise. Your spinning a thing in a magnetic field to create electricity. PV is particularly cool because it doesn't do that. It's a totally separate technology.
Excluding things that still involve moving fluid through a turbine or piston engine mechanically driving a dynamo or alternator while simply swapping out the steam for another fluid (too obvious), here's all the ones I could find:
Also not well versed, but last time I saw this topic come up, someone mentioned towers that wiggle in the wind and generate energy via the wiggles, apparently interacting with liquid at no point.
edit: Also maybe this YouTuber's creation? https://youtu.be/BSxK5VagSb8
Yup. There are reed-like wind capture devices that generate piezoelectricity from compression. The same technology is being implemented in some nations to capture pressure energy on roadways and paths.
Ah yes, the next solar frickin' roadways. No this isn't implemented on any scale and it's right next to perpetuum mobile's in terms of magical thinking needed.
Dave is that you? 😏
The one from eevblog? Unfortunately not. But I did watch a few thunderf00t videos before he dove right into the "anti-sjw" scene 12(?) years ago
Same, this is such a common tale. "I used to watch TF, until he radicalized himself." Man, he made some good content back then and completely crashed it when he dove head first into Gamergate BS.
His favoured enemy now is Elon Musk btw., the new content might be worth watching. I'm just a little apprehensive this might drive the algorithm to present me with anti-sjw videos I don't want to watch.
That makes sense.
Besides that, does solar power use steam? I would assume not, at least not directly.
Photovoltaics do not. But here are solar powered steam generators
https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/article/69/11/17/415388/Solar-steam-generator-needs-no-lenses-or-mirrorsA
On the nuclear side there are also alpha voltaics, beta voltaics and gamma voltaics that take radiation and generate electricity. Alpha rely on alpha particles ionizing usually a gas, Beta voltaics rely on beta particles which are electron or positron emissions and gamma voltaics take photons in the gamma region and use them to excite electrons to generate electricity.
Overall though heating water is significantly easier to do, more efficient, and more robust
Thermo-electrochemical cycles.
The idea is simple: the favorability of a chemical reaction is a function of temperature, some reactions are more favorable at high temperatures, some at lower. For electrochemical reactions (e.g. batteries) this means a change in voltage at different temperatures. Some reactions have higher voltages, some lower. By choosing a pair of redox reactions such that the direction of charge transfer can be reversed within a specified temperature envelope, one can create a thermal engine that directly converts heat to electrical energy without requiring a turbine.
There's lots of research on this, sometimes called the 'omnivorous' flow battery.
Oh, there are many. I was referring specifically to finding a more efficient way to convert the heat from irradiated rods to electrical energy.
Steam engines are the crabs of power generation.
I don't think it's a criticism? It's more about highlighting the slight absurdity of super-high tech power generation still using the same method that has been used since the very start of electricity generation. A turbine spun by evaporated water.
Hey now, sometimes it's a turbine spun by falling water!
Easy there future man.. One life-changing generation method per century
What about a turbine spun by the convection of evaporation from a large body of water being pulled toward a dry landmass?
That's madness
Behold...the future of green power. No steam or water needed at all!
Also an excellent workout, good for cardio.
Well seeing as any and all cells in our body are powered by something you could very reasonably call an electron/charge turbine I think it's fair to say turbines are really frickin great though!
Also, water is an amazing coolant. At the molecular level its hydrogen bonding contributes to a bulk property called heat capacity that ends up much higher than most other substances, meaning it can soak up a ton of energy per unit volume (and later release that energy, e.g. into a turbine). And there's even more of that heat capacity in the phase transition from liquid to steam and back. It's crazy good.
It's also super cheap and abundant. The main reason water isn't the coolant for nearly everything is that it can be corrosive. Also steam can be quite dangerous due to all that energy it carries.
The heat of vaporization is also a huge negative of using water as you need to condense the water and then reboil it which wastes a bunch of energy
If we were a smarter species, we'd consistently use further heat exchange to use that waste heat for something else, like heating homes. The Blue Lagoon in Iceland uses it to heat a massive outdoor spa.
We do sometimes do that! The problem is the condenser water is usually in the mid 100Fs which by the time you pump that somewhere it cools even more and then most people don’t like living near power plants so the cost of running the pumps and the piping is generally more than the energy saved. Iceland has a lot of geothermal heat that people are much less opposed to living near vs O&G or nuclear
Water desalinization projects sometimes do. Most of them use reverse osmosis because it's less energy intensive, but boiling the water can work if you have something else that produces a lot of waste heat. Also, the water on the cooling side of the desalination path can help warm up the incoming water through a heat exchanger.
Not only that, but we're harnessing the humble yet awesome power of phase-changing matter. The same phenomenon breaks mountains down to rubble, constantly chews apart our infrastructure, and keeps our homes and food cool. It makes a lot of sense to use that same phenomenon to do work.
They would, but there are limited options for directly generating electricity. Outside of manipulating magnetic fields with kinetic motion, all we have are betavoltaics, photovoltaics, and thermocouples. And they're all kind of awful in terms of efficiency. Even chlorophyll is awesome at converting air, light, and water, into... sugar, which then has to be oxidized (burned) to be useful.
There’s plenty of room for advancement in alternative energy for sure. My comment about critics was referring more to the method of capturing and converting irradiated rod heat to electricity. Water vapor is still the standard for a reason. It’s like being critical of a jet engine because it’s basically just a compressor.
I mean it does seem kinda weird that running a heat engine to run a generator is more efficient than using a thermoelectric generator with no mechanical inbetween step.
Thermodyanmics in practice is weird like that. You would think solid state peltiers would be more efficient than a machine. Solid state usually is in any other application. Just this once, no, pelts kinda suck. They've been around for two centuries now and nobody has made a significant breakthrough to improve them.
Diagram please?
The problem that I see is that unless that magic semiconductor is 100% efficient, turning all the heat energy into electrical energy, then there's gonna be some left over, and things are gonna get too hot too fast too furious. So you'll need to cool the thing, or part of it, maybe similar to a TEG using the Seebeck or Peltier effect?
I have a few of these kicking around somewhere. They work, just not super efficient, at all, with current technology.
My point is I feel like no matter what you're gonna need extra parts to cool the thing. Water pumps etc etc. Why not just use steam? 🤷♂️
Edit: nice diagram though!
where does hotty water go. If hotty water always hot can we always use the same water
are there no reactors that convert particle interactions into photons and capture it with photovoltaics?