this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] cynar@lemmy.world 116 points 6 days ago (32 children)

Just checked the numbers, for those interested.

A gas power plant produces around. 200-300kWh per tonne of CO2.

Capture costs 300-900kWh per tonne captured.

So this is basically non viable using fossil fuel as the power. If you aren't, then storage of that power is likely a lot better.

It's also worth noting that it is still CO2 gas. Long term containment of a gas is far harder than a liquid or solid.

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 35 points 6 days ago (16 children)

Who says you power that thing with fossil fuels? The real way to do that is via giant nuclear reactors or reactor complexes.

Fission power can be made cheaper per MW by just making the reactors bigger. Economies of scale, the square cube law and all that. The problem with doing this in the commercial power sector is that line losses kill you on distribution. There just aren't enough customers within a reasonable distance to make monster 10 GW or 100 GW reactors viable, regardless of how cheap they might make energy.

But DACC is one of the few applications this might not be a problem for. Just build your monster reactors right next door to your monster DACC plants.

[–] uniquethrowagay@feddit.org 6 points 5 days ago (4 children)

Good luck building enough capacity in nuclear power to do that. Nuclear plants tend to be a lot more expensive and take a lot longer to build than anticipated.

[–] yunxiaoli@sh.itjust.works 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

Literally only in the US and Europe. Remove the profit motive and don't keep on inefficient construction companies and it's a quick process.

[–] Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca 4 points 5 days ago

There's no profit motive for large scale carbon capture anyway, so big CC plants and big nuclear plants would need the same political will.

[–] uniquethrowagay@feddit.org 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Can you point out a nuclear project that was a quick process? How would removing the profit motive make it quicker?

[–] yunxiaoli@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 days ago

Sure, China. You can build a nuclear power plant from dirt to operation in 6 months. Not 10 years plus infinite overages, 6 months.

If there's not a perverse profit motive at every stage and instead people are rewarded for getting the job done and getting the job done right, you end up with high quality fast engineering.

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