Electric Vehicles

[Orangeburst]

I decided I was being unfair in comparing NG generating plants to a couple of cowboys with a couple of old 747 engines hooked up to a generator. Maybe sometimes it's not that far off the mark. Interesting that this jet fuel plant is supposedly pumping out about 160 MW (presumably electric); while Diablo Canyon and most nuclear plants are turning out numbers closer to 1,000 MW electric per unit. Newer plants are over I,000 MW electric per unit.

Just to give a number putting things in perspective regarding generating losses. An 1100 MW (electric) nuclear generating unit is usually in the range of 3400 MW (thermal). The thermal to electric conversion efficiency is probably similar for conventional coal and oil fueled plants and NG plants with boilers (roughly 33% efficient). So add in transmission losses, and then think just how efficient an EV could possibly be before even considering charging and other losses in the car power train itself. Since the actual power generation, transmission, and EV efficiencies are not really my area of expertise, don't just rely on those numbers; but they seem reasonable ballpark figures. And I don't think you'll see EV and climate change proponents giving you that kind of fact regarding losses, but it sure looks like you are better burning fuel in a conventional car than to power an EV ... especially when you consider the infrastructure necessary for gas and diesel applications already exists.

Do you know the Power Transmission losses across HV power lines? I swear many year ago it was like 50%..but keep seeing reports of losses not being that high. Maybe better insulation?

 

[AM64]

Do you know the Power Transmission losses across HV power lines? I swear many year ago it was like 50%..but keep seeing reports of losses not being that high. Maybe better insulation?

No. I do know that the longer the line the greater the loss, but I worked on the nuclear side rather than the power transmission end of things. The closest I got to that was when we had to look into turbine/generator (generally vibration) problems.

 

[Smokey X]

Do you know the Power Transmission losses across HV power lines? I swear many year ago it was like 50%..but keep seeing reports of losses not being that high. Maybe better insulation?

Power loss in transmission lines is proportional to the current flowing through it. The transmission lines are normally made of copper, aluminium or its alloys. The resistance of transmission lines itself contribute the most to the power loss. The power loss in the lines due to resistance is called copper loss or I2R loss. Lesser the current lesser will be the power loss. Hence during power transmission, the voltage is stepped up to reduce current. For transmitting the same amount of power to a distance, the power loss will be more while transmitted at a lower voltage.

 

[AM64]

Do you know the Power Transmission losses across HV power lines? I swear many year ago it was like 50%..but keep seeing reports of losses not being that high. Maybe better insulation?

Funny story. I was driving home one day and took back roads through farmland. I saw a huge flock of birds take off and head across the road where I was headed and thought "Oh crap" ... literally. The "shower" didn't happen, but I watched at least one bird fly between the power lines. There was a great ball of fire and I never saw anything more of the bird. I told my SIL who is an engineer working on the transmission side. She said probably one of those glitches they see and never know why.

 

[Pepe_Silvia]

Power loss in transmission lines is proportional to the current flowing through it. The transmission lines are normally made of copper, aluminium or its alloys. The resistance of transmission lines itself contribute the most to the power loss. The power loss in the lines due to resistance is called copper loss or I2R loss. Lesser the current lesser will be the power loss. Hence during power transmission, the voltage is stepped up to reduce current. For transmitting the same amount of power to a distance, the power loss will be more while transmitted at a lower voltage.

 

[Orangeburst]

Power loss in transmission lines is proportional to the current flowing through it. The transmission lines are normally made of copper, aluminium or its alloys. The resistance of transmission lines itself contribute the most to the power loss. The power loss in the lines due to resistance is called copper loss or I2R loss. Lesser the current lesser will be the power loss. Hence during power transmission, the voltage is stepped up to reduce current. For transmitting the same amount of power to a distance, the power loss will be more while transmitted at a lower voltage.

You know your stuff..
This is the meat and potatoes I want to see being discussed.

So the say CA grid crisis is being discussed..the higher the demand on the copper lines the less efficient..so we are talking about doubling or tripling the entire electrical grid wiring or you are a loser.

 

[Smokey X]

most all newer transmission lines are constructed of aluminum due to cost/availability. Copper would be great but it isn't practical for the quantity required for newer high voltage lines which makes it a bigger issue due to aluminum resistance being greater than that of copper.

I don't know for sure but I suspect that the so called copper loss/I2R loss is a carryover from earlier days.

If you had the need to transmit 1000amps from a generation point to a load center, transmitting over a line rated for 161 KV would result in more losses/less efficiency than if the same 1000amps were transmitted over a line rated for 500 KV.

 

[85SugarVol]

New York Was Wrong to Close the Indian Point Plant

Turn off the power.
People freeze to death.
Blame climate change.

 

[happy-go_vol]

Were they pulling a 6,000lbs boat and/or 16,000lbs camper?

people will not be using boats or camper. bad for the environment. unless you're one of the communist leaders.

 

[happy-go_vol]

Turn off the power.
People freeze to death.
Blame global warming.

fyp

 

[zeppelin128]

I have been advocating it for years on here, but nuclear power needs to be the backbone of our power grid. Should have been pushed long before I was born, but Three Mile Island caused issues with public sentiment. Hell, the French have it figured out by and large, like 70% of their power comes from nuclear.

 

[Zues1]

Meanwhile in the land of fruits and nuts.....
California’s last operating nuclear plant gets a second life in contentious move
Well duh

 

[Allvols1996]

I have been advocating it for years on here, but nuclear power needs to be the backbone of our power grid. Should have been pushed long before I was born, but Three Mile Island caused issues with public sentiment. Hell, the French have it figured out by and large, like 70% of their power comes from nuclear.

New nuclear doesn’t even use the same fuel. It’s a much safer method.

 

[zeppelin128]

New nuclear doesn’t even use the same fuel. It’s a much safer method.

Cool, lets do it.

 

[Wireless1]

Turn off the power.
People freeze to death.
Blame climate change.

Which will be highly broadcast while there’s crickets about all the generation capability that not only has been taken offline with years of service left but these facilities are being leveled so that they can’t be restarted in a crisis

 

[TOUCHDOWN!!TN]

Which will be highly broadcast while there’s crickets about all the generation capability that not only has been taken offline with years of service left but these facilities are being leveled so that they can’t be restarted in a crisis

San Onefre Nuclear Generation Station is an example of a good plant( power source)
Being a political tool.

 

[Smokey X]

San Onefre Nuclear Generation Station is an example of a good plant( power source)
Being a political tool.

true....but the utility and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries handed the politicians the club which they used to bludgeon the plant to death.

 

[TOUCHDOWN!!TN]

true....but the utility and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries handed the politicians the club which they used to bludgeon the plant to death.

That’s true, sitting on I-5 and all the negativity about nukes plus B. Boxer, D Finestine all the haters.
Mitsubishi built both unit’s steam generators but Southern Cal Edison designed them and redesigned the extra bracing inside the generators. These were placed to separate the tubes, Mitsubishi objected but SCE won out on design and thus the subsequent lawsuit.
Leaking STG tubes from wear due to vibration
Was too much to overcome. Options to move forward were to much, no buyers, unsure if operations license would be granted for future profits, political issues etc.
in the real world, other boilers, fossil power plants etc., leaking tubes would be plugged and start making more steam.
It was only less than a hundred leaking tubes out of 10,000 plus in each generator. And those tubes were on the secondary side of the system. Too many old memories, my bad
Go Big Orange

 

[Smokey X]

That’s true, sitting on I-5 and all the negativity about nukes plus B. Boxer, D Finestine all the haters.
Mitsubishi built both unit’s steam generators but Southern Cal Edison designed them and redesigned the extra bracing inside the generators. These were placed to separate the tubes, Mitsubishi objected but SCE won out on design and thus the subsequent lawsuit.
Leaking STG tubes from wear due to vibration
Was too much to overcome. Options to move forward were to much, no buyers, unsure if operations license would be granted for future profits, political issues etc.
in the real world, other boilers, fossil power plants etc., leaking tubes would be plugged and start making more steam.
It was only less than a hundred leaking tubes out of 10,000 plus in each generator. And those tubes were on the secondary side of the system. Too many old memories, my bad
Go Big Orange

IMO this is a very well written article concerning the SONGS crime..

San Onofre steam generators - honest error driven by search for perfection - Atomic Insights

 

[VolStrom]

Just out of curiosity, did Mitsubishi by the assets of Westinghouse?

 

[AM64]

That’s true, sitting on I-5 and all the negativity about nukes plus B. Boxer, D Finestine all the haters.
Mitsubishi built both unit’s steam generators but Southern Cal Edison designed them and redesigned the extra bracing inside the generators. These were placed to separate the tubes, Mitsubishi objected but SCE won out on design and thus the subsequent lawsuit.
Leaking STG tubes from wear due to vibration
Was too much to overcome. Options to move forward were to much, no buyers, unsure if operations license would be granted for future profits, political issues etc.
in the real world, other boilers, fossil power plants etc., leaking tubes would be plugged and start making more steam.
It was only less than a hundred leaking tubes out of 10,000 plus in each generator. And those tubes were on the secondary side of the system. Too many old memories, my bad
Go Big Orange

Japanese manufacturers like Mitsubishi, Hitachi, and Toshiba have (or did have) licensing arrangements with US manufacturers like Westinghouse and GE to build US designed nuclear generating systems for the Japanese market. When Babcock and Wilcox sold Loose Part Monitoring systems to a utility in Japan, I grabbed the job because I like Japan. The plants were on the northwest coast in Fukui Prefecture, but we needed to assemble the systems in Japan, so that was done at the Babcock Hitachi facility in Kure near Hiroshima. I had the opportunity to look around - impressive. It seems like the Babcock Hitachi plant was one of the first manufacturing plants to have the ability to roll large vessels and weld seems as the assembly rotated.

Steam Generators (SG) are large heat exchangers with primary coolant on one side of the tube and secondary water on the other. The tubing is one of the boundaries between water that flows through the reactor (primary) and water that flows through the turbine/generator (secondary). With a SG tube leak, you have leakage from the primary to secondary loop because of the differential pressure. Westinghouse and Combustion plants use a U-tube configuration, so the primary coolant enters one side of the tube bundle at the bottom and exits at the other side of the tube bundle at the bottom of the SG. B&W uses Once Through Steam Generators (straight tubes in a counterflow design); primary coolant from the reactor enters the SG at the top and exits at the bottom - secondary coolant enters from the bottom and exits at the top. THE OTSG design allows for boiling along a larger region in the SG and for superheated (dry steam above the vapor point) steam to the turbine driving the generator. That makes it more responsive to load - it also make it easier to get things wrong if secondary flow to the SG is interrupted like at TMI. Like the difference between driving a sports car vs a bus.

Tube cracking and denting first showed up in the U-tube SGs - the first I remember was in the mid-late 1970s. The problem was basically flow induced vibration causing fretting and wear - movement of the tubes in the supports; denting was caused by the buildup of deposits in the spaces between the tubes and tube supports causing the tubes to impact the buildup rather than move as intended - some tubes were "necked" down with some flow restriction. The problems didn't show up in OTSGs until a few years later. The industry then responded by retubing or replacing steam generators. I've never seen it done, but it's a huge undertaking. Steam generators are massive and space inside containment (especially the Westinghouse ice condenser types) is limited.

Flow induced vibration is a problem anytime you have moving flow. There is a large body of work concerning tube lengths in heat exchangers, how tubes are supported and restrained, etc - that's all coupled with decades and decades of experience; but vibration never goes away when there is flow of liquid or gas. It's a lot harder to measure vibration in a heat exchanger than vibration of piping or other components subject to flow induced vibration. In the testing I did over the years, we used specially built accelerometers that were placed inside the heat exchanger tube and then the tube was blocked at each end; the accelerometer signal cables were metal coaxial types - center conductor in generally something like a SS outer conductor with a mineral oxide dielectric. A very expensive and time consuming process to figure out what went wrong.

 

[VolStrom]

Japanese manufacturers like Mitsubishi, Hitachi, and Toshiba have (or did have) licensing arrangements with US manufacturers like Westinghouse and GE to build US designed nuclear generating systems for the Japanese market. When Babcock and Wilcox sold Loose Part Monitoring systems to a utility in Japan, I grabbed the job because I like Japan. The plants were on the northwest coast in Fukui Prefecture, but we needed to assemble the systems in Japan, so that was done at the Babcock Hitachi facility in Kure near Hiroshima. I had the opportunity to look around - impressive. It seems like the Babcock Hitachi plant was one of the first manufacturing plants to have the ability to roll large vessels and weld seems as the assembly rotated.

Steam Generators (SG) are large heat exchangers with primary coolant on one side of the tube and secondary water on the other. The tubing is one of the boundaries between water that flows through the reactor (primary) and water that flows through the turbine/generator (secondary). With a SG tube leak, you have leakage from the primary to secondary loop because of the differential pressure. Westinghouse and Combustion plants use a U-tube configuration, so the primary coolant enters one side of the tube bundle at the bottom and exits at the other side of the tube bundle at the bottom of the SG. B&W uses Once Through Steam Generators (straight tubes in a counterflow design); primary coolant from the reactor enters the SG at the top and exits at the bottom - secondary coolant enters from the bottom and exits at the top. THE OTSG design allows for boiling along a larger region in the SG and for superheated (dry steam above the vapor point) steam to the turbine driving the generator. That makes it more responsive to load - it also make it easier to get things wrong if secondary flow to the SG is interrupted like at TMI. Like the difference between driving a sports car vs a bus.

Tube cracking and denting first showed up in the U-tube SGs - the first I remember was in the mid-late 1970s. The problem was basically flow induced vibration causing fretting and wear - movement of the tubes in the supports; denting was caused by the buildup of deposits in the spaces between the tubes and tube supports causing the tubes to impact the buildup rather than move as intended - some tubes were "necked" down with some flow restriction. The problems didn't show up in OTSGs until a few years later. The industry then responded by retubing or replacing steam generators. I've never seen it done, but it's a huge undertaking. Steam generators are massive and space inside containment (especially the Westinghouse ice condenser types) is limited.

Flow induced vibration is a problem anytime you have moving flow. There is a large body of work concerning tube lengths in heat exchangers, how tubes are supported and restrained, etc - that's all coupled with decades and decades of experience; but vibration never goes away when there is flow of liquid or gas. It's a lot harder to measure vibration in a heat exchanger than vibration of piping or other components subject to flow induced vibration. In the testing I did over the years, we used specially built accelerometers that were placed inside the heat exchanger tube and then the tube was blocked at each end; the accelerometer signal cables were metal coaxial types - center conductor in generally something like a SS outer conductor with a mineral oxide dielectric. A very expensive and time consuming process to figure out what went wrong.

You have just proved that California can never have another nuclear power plant forever. Their populace is dumb as a box of rocks and are incapable of operating a nuclear power plant. Once again I refer back to the best movie made, "Idiocracy"

 

[Orangeburst]

Japanese manufacturers like Mitsubishi, Hitachi, and Toshiba have (or did have) licensing arrangements with US manufacturers like Westinghouse and GE to build US designed nuclear generating systems for the Japanese market. When Babcock and Wilcox sold Loose Part Monitoring systems to a utility in Japan, I grabbed the job because I like Japan. The plants were on the northwest coast in Fukui Prefecture, but we needed to assemble the systems in Japan, so that was done at the Babcock Hitachi facility in Kure near Hiroshima. I had the opportunity to look around - impressive. It seems like the Babcock Hitachi plant was one of the first manufacturing plants to have the ability to roll large vessels and weld seems as the assembly rotated.

Steam Generators (SG) are large heat exchangers with primary coolant on one side of the tube and secondary water on the other. The tubing is one of the boundaries between water that flows through the reactor (primary) and water that flows through the turbine/generator (secondary). With a SG tube leak, you have leakage from the primary to secondary loop because of the differential pressure. Westinghouse and Combustion plants use a U-tube configuration, so the primary coolant enters one side of the tube bundle at the bottom and exits at the other side of the tube bundle at the bottom of the SG. B&W uses Once Through Steam Generators (straight tubes in a counterflow design); primary coolant from the reactor enters the SG at the top and exits at the bottom - secondary coolant enters from the bottom and exits at the top. THE OTSG design allows for boiling along a larger region in the SG and for superheated (dry steam above the vapor point) steam to the turbine driving the generator. That makes it more responsive to load - it also make it easier to get things wrong if secondary flow to the SG is interrupted like at TMI. Like the difference between driving a sports car vs a bus.

Tube cracking and denting first showed up in the U-tube SGs - the first I remember was in the mid-late 1970s. The problem was basically flow induced vibration causing fretting and wear - movement of the tubes in the supports; denting was caused by the buildup of deposits in the spaces between the tubes and tube supports causing the tubes to impact the buildup rather than move as intended - some tubes were "necked" down with some flow restriction. The problems didn't show up in OTSGs until a few years later. The industry then responded by retubing or replacing steam generators. I've never seen it done, but it's a huge undertaking. Steam generators are massive and space inside containment (especially the Westinghouse ice condenser types) is limited.

Flow induced vibration is a problem anytime you have moving flow. There is a large body of work concerning tube lengths in heat exchangers, how tubes are supported and restrained, etc - that's all coupled with decades and decades of experience; but vibration never goes away when there is flow of liquid or gas. It's a lot harder to measure vibration in a heat exchanger than vibration of piping or other components subject to flow induced vibration. In the testing I did over the years, we used specially built accelerometers that were placed inside the heat exchanger tube and then the tube was blocked at each end; the accelerometer signal cables were metal coaxial types - center conductor in generally something like a SS outer conductor with a mineral oxide dielectric. A very expensive and time consuming process to figure out what went wrong.

When you think about it..it is just Steam Technology aka 1850...with a danger side.

 

[MG1968]

Cool, lets do it.

Start voting for people who aren’t in the back pocket of the Sierra Club and other environmental pressure groups.

 

[marcusluvsvols]

Yes..."Idiocracy" was meant to be satire...but ended up a documentary as some astute poster had previously stated here. Also, great post AM64. Thanks for sharing that bud. Love learning from you gentlemen, as well as McDad.