Making hydrogen fuel cells 'less precious'

[NNadir]

8. A Zealot? Really? Is that because I'm not whining about melting glaciers while waiting for a fusion miracle?

I've been attending lectures at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab with lots and lots and lots and lots of zeal, so there's that.

It's this series: The Ronald E. Hatcher Science On Saturday Lecture Series

The talks can be viewed going back for many years using the archives although I'm not sure they go back the 15 years I've been attending these events. My son was in junior high school when I first took him there, and now he's finishing up his Ph.D in, um, nuclear engineering, specifically nuclear materials engineering.

(He's no rube.)

Every year there is at least one, sometimes three or four about the coming miracle of fusion energy discussed in the roughly 10 talks offered each winter there, although this year, somewhat unusually, there only seems to be one such lecture.

This year is the 75th anniversary of the Princeton Plasma physics lab, founded by Lyman Spitzer to develop fusion energy, beginning with the stellarator, parts of the original on display in the lobby of the Lyman Spitzer building.

In the lecture two weeks ago, Dr. Laura Berzak Hopkins gave us a wonderful overview of the 75th year, including the fact that it was founded in the Rabbit Hutch where the first stellarator was built.

Science On Saturday: Celebrating 75 Years of Powering Possibilities at PPPL

It was a very nice lecture. A self declared "balanced" person who thinks it's just fine to pretend to give a fuck about the collapse of the planetary atmosphere while waiting for nuclear fusion plants to be built in New York, being sure to acknowledge the fission advocates Kharecha and Hansen with ersatz admiration while doing so, might profit from watching the lecture when it comes up in the archives.

One of the new features of PPPL lectures was that Dr. Berzak Hopkins, who is the assistant director of the laboratory, was careful to not bad mouth fission, but rather to praise it as being clean and safe, at one point noting that the name of the lab she directs is not the Princeton Fusion Physics Laboratory, but rather is the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

I'm an atheist, but nonetheless all I can say is, "Bless her beating heart."

In this, developments in plasma physics, and in other areas, the lab is a success. But no, they do not have much beyond the faintest idea of how to transform fusion plasmas into exergy, nor they really know how to handle 14 MeV neutrons, an order of magnitude more energetic than fission neutrons.

(I have wonderful zealot chats with my son on this topic, high energy particles impinging on matter.)

In the 23 years I've been at DU, zealing away in zealot heaven while over in smuggle heaven, there are "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes handing out abstracts of papers, and complaining that people don't build nuclear reactors, although over 100 were built in this country by engineers largely relying on slide rules for day to day stuff, using computers less powerful than a modern cell phone, or even a wrist watch, while producing the lowest cost electricity price in the world.

Of course, now we learn that what has already happened is impossible.

By the way, in the 23 years I've been here listening to honest antinukes and "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes prattle on about so called "renewable energy" and how wonderful it is compared to nuclear - they don't give a rat's ass about fossil fuels - the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste has risen, as of last week, the week beginning February 1, 2024, by 55.42 ppm to 428.10 ppm.

From my perspective, this says something about how realistic it is to lace every wilderness with wind turbines and solar cells.

And while acknowledging that the reactors exist, as is typical for all of the "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes who pass through here, year after year after year while the rate of the planetary atmospheric collapse accelerates, needs to share this little bit of cutting nonsense:

Still waiting on those Gen-IV reactors which were "just around the corner" back in 2000…

Could there be a reason that we lost 25 years of nuclear reactor development that has nothing to do with the skills of nuclear engineers?

How about, "nuclear energy is too expensive?"

As a zealot, I happen to think the collapse of the planetary atmosphere is very expensive, far more expensive than building thousands of fission reactors, but of course, I'm not a "fair and balanced" energy commentator. I'm a zealot.

How about, "Nobody knows what to do with nuclear waste" a mantra of people who can't actually identify anyone killed in this country by the controlled containment of used nuclear fuel, a chant by people who can't tell the difference between the neutron capture cross section of ⁹⁹Tc and ²³⁷Np, "fair and balanced" types who argue that it's OK for millions of people to die each year from fossil fuel waste just so long as no one ever can be imagined to die of a leaked fission product ever?

By the way, since we're whining about predictions made in 2000 about Gen IV reactors, which did not, regrettably, have trillion dollar investments in solar and wind as predicted in 2000 replaced fossil fuels?

As for the obsession of "I'm not an antinuke" with things claimed thusly...

Passenger cars, buses, freight trucks, trains and even airplanes. None of these are especially well suited to nuclear power.

...they always want to tell me all about their fucking cars, the "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes around here.

In fact heat is as close to a primary energy source as one can get. If one were to seriously open a science book, and learn something about chemical physics, one might - although it takes some zealotry for considering energy issues in the primary scientific literature - understand that heat can drive chemical reactions, that basically, with hydrogen and carbon dioxide, one can manufacture any product found in petroleum, and in fact, once can make synthetic graphite.

You know, I'm an old man, facing the end of my life, considering the dying planet my generation left for all other to follow, and so I no longer give a flying fuck when people whine at me thinking I'm a rube.

I know who I am and what I'm about, and what I'm about has nothing to do with magical thinking.

By the way, a fucking natural gas "peaker" plant is an obscenity, and I'm really not all impressed with bourgeois types with poor educations carrying on about their fucking batteries and their "solar credits" as if they have a magic electron sorter on their electric meters. There isn't enough cobalt, or for that matter, enough fluorine to make batteries to cover months of Dunkleflaute in Germany, never mind the world.

Oh, and I was amused by the crocodile tears about trifluoroacetic acid. Just the other day I came across this paper:

Thermal Destruction Pathways and Kinetics for NTf2 and Longer-Chain Bis(perfluoroalkanesulfonyl)imides (Bis-FASIs) Jens Blotevogel, Wenchao Lu, and Anthony K. Rappé Environmental Science & Technology Letters 2024 11 (11), 1254-1259

From the first two sentences in the paper:

Bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide (bis-FMeSI), also known as NTf2 and bistriflimide, is the organic anion in the ionic liquid lithium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide (LiTFSI or HQ-115), which is used in lithium-ion batteries. (1) Other reported uses of bis-FMeSI include as an antistatic agent in polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) composites, (2) as lubricant in the petroleum industry, (3) and for various purposes in the photovoltaic and semiconductor industries.

I added the bold and italics.

So then, what is fate of the trifluorosulfonic acid (triflate) ion, and whence the heat to decompose it flowing out of billions of batteries for when that so called "renewable energy" miracle that did not come and is not here saves the world, despite trillions of dollars thrown at it?

As it happens, I happen to know a great deal about persistent fluorinated alkyl species, with triflic acid being the simplest example of sulfonated species. I go through every issue of Environmental Science and Technology and every issue, like the current one linked, contains 5 to 10 papers on the subject. That may be a reason that I regard "green batteries" (along with "green hydrogen" ) as appalling doublespeak.

I may be a zealot, but I'll take a break from zealotry to state that I do have an opinion of what an "environmentalist" might be, and also what a "rube" might be.

From my perspective, anyone who knows so little about energy and energy science, specifically thermodynamics, as to think storing energy from unsustainable mass and land intensive junk is a good idea does not qualify for describing themselves as the former, but to my mind but, if only in my opinion, certainly qualifies for the latter.

Thank you for your kind one word opinion of me and my personality. I'll consider the source, with an appropriate level of amusement to be sure.

Have a nice hump day tomorrow waiting around for that fusion miracle and all those 14 MeV neutrons that are sure to save the world, this while ignoring that while we wait the world is burning now.

JFC.