this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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The memes of the climate
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Think in terms of probability, not absolute. I mentioned flow batteries because I think it's the most promising and developed, but there are several others. If one doesn't work, ten others are being pursued in parallel. Only one needs to work
In a five year time frame, we'll probably have at least one. More likely three or four.
Nuclear, in contrast, has trouble pursuing multiple possibilities at once. It's too expensive. A decade ago, it was the AP1000 design, which was supposed to avoid the purpose-built engineering that bogged down deployments in the past. That was a failure so hard that Westinghouse nearly collapsed permanently. Now it's SMRs, and given the collapse of the project in Utah, it's not looking good.
I'm more interested in sodium ion being produced that while having less density will charge and discharge in a theoretically endless cycle. Flow battery is great, but it needs to be scalable from the consumer all the way up to grid storage.
There are already large flow battery installations on the grid.
https://newatlas.com/energy/worlds-largest-flow-battery-grid-china/#:~:text=The%20Chinese%20city%20of%20Dalian,to%20200%2C000%20residents%20each%20day.
My point was that something that big is unaffordable, and it needs to be scalable.
Guess what else is unaffordable? Nuclear.
Yes, but I was talking about for home installations. Then economies of scale could make it affordable and scalable for everyone