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Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

> Why bother? This is like paying off a debt with low interest early.

Quite the contrary. Once a solar panel is built, you never need to invest into fuel for it, only a tiny bit for maintenance during its lifetime. The energy is provided virtually for free by the sun, gravity or by the aftereffects of Earth's creation many billions of years ago.

A fossil plant, even a nuclear plant, in contrast will require continuous purchases of fuel, of which quite a lot comes from countries that ... aren't really aligned with our Western values.

Reducing CO2 emissions is just a nice side effect.

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> Quite the contrary. Once a solar panel is built, you never need to invest into fuel for it, only a tiny bit for maintenance during its lifetime. The energy is provided virtually for free by the sun, gravity or by the aftereffects of Earth's creation many billions of years ago

You still need to maintain a relationship with the largest solar panel producer, which most certainly doesn't align with your Western values.:)

On the other hand, going nuclear will only have you deal with Tokayev and Trudeau.

When I think of the implications of solar panels I think possession is 9 tenths of the law. Defaulting on loans used to buy solar panels means you still have the panels and the energy they produce. If you can't afford to import oil and gas you're at the IMF's mercy.

One other thing if you can use electricity to produce hydrogen for fertilizer you're also more firewalled when the world banking industry mucks up again and the vultures come out.

I'm sure uranium mining releases some CO2 - unless someone invents electric mining trucks (those things are just mammoth and drive slowly, maybe it can be made to work).

But a little bit of spicy rocks give off such a ridiculous bounty of 24/7 energy that it's just a no-brainer.

We should do solar, wind, and nuclear; in the meantime we can replace a lot of coal and oil with the much cleaner natural gas.

> unless someone invents electric mining trucks

That part's fine; some even charge just from regenerative braking because the ore is at the top of a hill.

As for "nuclear?", energy density only matters in a few specific ways like making it easier to tidy away the waste, what most people care about is cost. Good luck to all the teams trying to make nuclear cheaper, but for now that means PV and wind.

Until you price in storage / making up the numbers with coal and oil at night

Wind operates at night.

Wind and PV are usually good hedges against each other.

A 1Ω global power grid is a political rather than technical or economic problem.

Batteries are cheaper than you think, and their production is being scaled up rapidly (cars need more than all fixed electricity users).

Nuclear isn't too terrible compared to batteries a few years ago, but the current price and forecasts for future prices of each are currently biased towards renewables being cheaper.

> We should do solar, wind, and nuclear; in the meantime we can replace a lot of coal and oil with the much cleaner natural gas.

Agree on using nat-gas as a bridge to take down coal (especially as peaker plants to cover for low-wind+low-solar conditions) - oil plants are rare anyway and mostly are used as emergency units or to provide district heating.

Hard disagree on nuclear though. All major projects for central power plants have massively ran over time and financial budgets - a NPP needs >>20 years of planning and construction, and an additional 20-30 years of decomission/teardown (more if it ends up fucked over like Fukushima or Chernobyl). So, even if we start new projects now, they're politically untenable outside of the US and Australia who have enough place to just dump NPPs hours away from civilization, and by the time they're done we will either have working nuclear fusion or geothermal+chemical storage of renewable power generated during daytime. Decentralized/small modular NPPs are a complete dream at the moment, there hasn't been even a technology demonstrator yet that shows that it is possible to contain high temperature molten salts.

> But a little bit of spicy rocks give off such a ridiculous bounty of 24/7 energy that it's just a no-brainer.

The discard from mining said spicy rocks is another very problematic issue. While Canada and Australia at least pay lip service to regulations, that cannot be said at all about countries like Kazakhstan [1], Uzbekistan [2], Russia [3] or even Eastern Germany [4]. Reprocessing fuel has also been fraught with contamination issues like in Sellafield [5] or La Hague [6].

The sooner we get rid of nuclear power, the better.

[1] https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/what-are-health-and-environm...

[2] https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Clean-up-work-begins...

[3] https://www.rferl.org/a/1081934.html

[4] https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/uran-erzgebirge-kosten-...

[5] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/05/sellafield-...

[6] https://www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of-advanced-studies/publicat...

> unless someone invents electric mining trucks

Mine trucks seem to be among the easier kinds of vehicles to convert to fully electric drive, since they already use a power transmission system where the engine drives a generator which in turn drives electric motors that drive the wheels, like the Lohner–Porsche of the early 1900s[1]. This can lead to misunderstandings like of the phrase "The Cat® 794 AC electric drive truck"[2] -- where the "electric drive" means the transmission, AIUI.

But since the electric drivetrain is already there, "all you need to do" is swap the engine and generator out for a battery. May 29, 2023: Australia’s largest miner, BHP, is about to test run heavy-haul trucks with electric motors charged by renewable power"[3]. (Seems to be a Caterpillar.)

A company called Anglo American seems to be doing the same. Feb 13, 2020: "This Mining Truck Will Be the World's Largest Electric Vehicle"[4], and 6th May 2022: "Anglo American has launched its nuGen™ hydrogen-battery hybrid 290 t class mining truck at the Mogalakwena open pit platinum mine" (in South Africa)[5]

Komatsu also talks about their "electric drive tech"[6], but that's also serial-hybrid IIUC. But their distributor in Switzerland,[7], apparently converts them to battery power: "Kuhn Schweiz AG ... Batterien der Lithium Storage GmbH..."[8].

Liebherr also use the diesel-electric drive concept[9]. But they're also being converted by Australian iron ore firm Fortescue Metals (June 16, 2022)[10]. Jan 13 2023: "WAE Technologies, which was acquired by Fortescue in March 2022, completed and delivered the battery system to Fortescue’s workshop in Perth"[11]. January 16, 2023: "Fortescue has taken delivery of a 1.4-MWh prototype battery that's heading for a 240-tonne electric mining haul truck developed in partnership with Liebherr"[12]. The first trucks were apparently delivered in the week of 21st October 2023, to be converted to "Fortescue’s proprietary-owned battery electric and battery electric-fuel cell electric power systems". Seems they're buying a fleet of a whopping 120 units[13]!

Just over a month ago, 2024-01-24: Apparently threre is a "collaboration between Hitachi Construction Machinery and ABB’s Traction division to create a fully electric dump truck for heavy duty mining operations"[14].

For underground use, where the emissions from a diesel-electric system are as bad as those of a mechanical drive combustion-engined one, Sandvik of Sweden already manufactures two models[15]. And Epiroc -- until recently, Atlas Copco, also (at least originally?) Swedish -- one truck and a slew of drills and loaders[16].

So, yeah... The electric mining truck seems to be pretty well invented already.

_____________________________

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohner%E2%80%93Porsche

[2] https://www.cat.com/en_US/products/new/equipment/off-highway...

[3] https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/monster-movers-bhp...

[4] https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a...

[5] https://im-mining.com/2022/05/06/nugen-mining-truck-a-smart-...

[6] https://www.komatsu.com/en/products/trucks/electric-drive-mi...

[7] https://www.kuhn-gruppe.ch/en/building-machines/products/kom...

[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qlwplwfvr8

[9] https://www.liebherr.com/en/int/products/mining-equipment/mi...

[10] https://www.mining-technology.com/news/fortescue-liebherr-tr...

[11] https://electrek.co/2023/01/13/this-240t-electric-mining-hau...

[12] https://newatlas.com/transport/fortescue-williams-prototype-...

[13] https://im-mining.com/2023/10/21/first-of-liebherr-t-264-min...

[14] https://new.abb.com/news/detail/111869/hitachi-construction-...

[15] https://www.rocktechnology.sandvik/en/products/equipment/tru...

[16] https://www.epiroc.com/en-uk/innovation-and-technology/zero-...

Pretty sure most solar panels are also sourced from countries that are not aligned with western values, while Australia is one of the largest producers of Uranium ore and nuclear powerplants are built locally.

Ironically despite Australia being a major producer of uranium, its current Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, constantly denigrates nuclear power [1]. But that's par for the course in Australian politics ("Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck").

1: https://www.google.com.au/search?q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Ftwit...

> Pretty sure most solar panels are also sourced from countries that are not aligned with western values

That's purely a pricing reason, and a bit of a "let's outsource the environmental pollution to China" as well (anything involving silicon tends to use quite nasty chemicals, there's a reason like half the Silicon Valley is a Superfund site). Germany for example used to be the worldwide leader in manufacturing solar panels thanks to a massive subsidy program that kickstarted the industry.

Should China decide to cut us off, it's trivial to establish domestic production again - essentially, a solar panel is a bunch of decently purified sand. That stuff is available everywhere on the planet, unlike gas, oil or uranium.

> while Australia is one of the largest producers of Uranium ore and nuclear powerplants are built locally.

It took the US almost two years to ban the import of Russian uranium [1] despite the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Besides, Australia and Canada are the only two stable, clearly Western-allied democracies out of the 10 top uranium producers and only account for ~18% of worldwide production. The rest is either too neutral for my taste (Namibia, India), failed states (Niger), an active warzone (Ukraine) or some sort of autocracy (the rest). With these circumstances alone, it's beyond foolish to rely on nuclear.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-house-passes-bill-bannin...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_p...

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