US Pulls Plug on Low-CO2 Powerplant Project 360
Geoffrey.landis writes "The administration announced plans to withdraw its support from FutureGen. FutureGen was a project to develop a low CO2-emission electrical power plant, supported by an alliance of a dozen or so coal companies and utilities from around the world. The new plant would have captured carbon dioxide produced by combustion and pumped it deep underground, to avoid releasing greenhouse-gas into the atmosphere. It had been intended as a prototype for next generation clean-coal plants worldwide. Originally budgeted at about a billion dollars, the estimated cost had "ballooned" to $1.8 billion, according to U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman."
Who cares (Score:0, Insightful)
Money well spend? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd like to note (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, it's not a pancea - but it might be able to give us the time figure out how to exploit renewable energies cheaply and safely enough..
Big Nuclear Fusion Reactor to Provide Free Energy (Score:2, Insightful)
No big deal. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you can't / won't do it NOW, then the long emergency will get longer. And Darker. No, it's not the end of the world. It's just a new world we won't recognise, and one that won't likely permit 7 billion people shitting all over it.
You can buy a shit load of grid tied windmills for 1.8 billion dollars...
RS
Re:1.8 billion?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No big deal. (Score:5, Insightful)
- RG>
Sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
Please go away and actually do some research into the costs of the various energy options, and you might appreciate why research into carbon capture and storage is money well spent.
Re:No big deal. (Score:3, Insightful)
Burning Fossil Fuels = pumping CO2 from underground.
So what's wrong with putting the extra CO2 back where it came from? Assuming we have an effective method for doing so, of course.
Re:No big deal. (Score:4, Insightful)
I must say you have a very good point there.
I wonder why they don't find something more constructive to do with all that CO2? Plants use water and sun to split CO2 and release O2, why can't we either make something that does that, or use plants to do it for us? I don't know, something like a giant version of what looks like a waste treatment plant. (with the large covered pools)
Is the rate of absorption too slow for that, where they'd need an unreasonably large biomass, or what's the problem?
Pumping CO2 undergound to get rid of it is about as forward-thinking as landfills. Burying it doesn't make it go away, it just makes it resurface well after you're dead. (and your elections are over)
Stop-gap (Score:5, Insightful)
Shifting reliance from oil to coal would "Make America safer!" because the US is like the Saudi Arabia of coal
China is building powerplants like crazy, and guess what they're using? COAL
Storing CO2 underground is a temporary solution, but it would buy us some more time to develop means of converting it into something in another physical state (gas or liquid). Then perhaps we could begin to fill up those oil fields we've been draining for the past hundred & some odd years.
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who cares (Score:2, Insightful)
Modest Plea: stop abusing WHATCOULDPOSSIBLYGOWRONG (Score:1, Insightful)
Then it was "I welcome our ___ overlords"
Then it was the three step profit thing.
Then it was soviet union jokes.
Now the latest trend seems to tag everything "whatcouldpossiblygowrong." You know what? Every technological venture entails risks. If it weren't for risk takers, there'd be no pure silicon, no transistors, no fabs, no chips and our industry wouldn't be around. There'd be no cars, no rockets. There'd be no wheels even. So stop tagging everything with this anti-tech message. It's stupid.
Re:Money well spend? (Score:2, Insightful)
YOU FIRST! (Score:5, Insightful)
As of NOW.
Have a nice day.
Re:Who cares (Score:0, Insightful)
I mean come on - You can put it into the atmosphere now, in which case the damage happens instantly. Or you can sequester it, and in the extremely unlikely event of a leak, a small portion ends up in the atmosphere, and does a fraction of the damage later.
What's next? Advocating throwing innocent 10 year-olds in adult prison because they *might* break the law in 8 years time?
Re:Sure... (Score:3, Insightful)
Those two tired-old bullshit arguments won't matter until there is more solar capacity online than we can use in real time, which won't happen for two decades under even the most favorable set of assumptions.
Cuba and Renewable Energy (Score:2, Insightful)
Now, oddly enough, Cuba is the only western civilization to have passed peak oil (Brazil could also be a candidate depending on your definition). When the Soviet Union collapsed, the cheap oil flowing into the country stopped almost overnight, and they were forced to transition from a car-based, petrochemical powered agriculture industry to human powered travel and (by necessity) organic, renewable farming. It's one of the reasons Cubans live far longer than Americans.
I think it's funny that the embargo has actually helped Cuba far more than being a part of our sphere of influence. Our decision to try to ostracize them for being independent has only made the advantages far more obvious, otherwise it would have been turned into another Puerto Rico, and they'd be facing far more challenges in the future as a result.
Re:Money well spend? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, so the funds are going to the iraq war and we all looooove to hate it. But here's some news for you: money's fungible; it'd all have to come out of the same taxes anyway. (From a quick glance at the numbers, $1.8 billion is somewhere between $3 and $6 out of my pocket. That's as much as whole bag of grapefruit, you know. And I like grapefruit.)
Re:Money well spent? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Money well spent? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Who cares (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Modest Plea: stop abusing WHATCOULDPOSSIBLYGOWR (Score:3, Insightful)
For example?
This makes my blood boil (Score:4, Insightful)
And spend close to a trillion dollars on a war over fossil resources in the Middle East.
The US energy policy is fucked. Totally, completely, totally fucked. Utterly utterly mindbogglingly stupid.
Re:Why it was cancelled (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it says much about the success of the social conditioning of the American people. After all else is said and done, one can measure the effects of mind control simply by looking at the end results. I think this was even noted somewhere in the bible using an agriculture analogy concerning fruit.
-FL
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
'Clean coal' is an oxymoron. It doesn't work. It's been touted here (Australia) by the last government as a way of keeping our coal power stations running too, but that was by a right wing, environmental hating government. When anyone looks at it seriously, it's all bunk.
Rather than investing in technologies to actually make energy without the horrendous environmental cost (solar, window, tidal etc. etc.) WHY on earth would you prefer them to invest money in continuing to use the horror that is coal, but just shove the waste underground?
How does that at all sound like a good idea to you?
"you're saying that because there is a tiny, remote chance that Co2 might leak into the atmosphere, that we should just put it into the atmosphere first"
Is exactly the wrong way of thinking. The options are not pump it underground and hope it stays there, vs. pump it into the air. The options are create vast amounts of CO2 and worse, OR produce power in an ACTUAL CLEAN MANNER.
Good riddance to the plan, and it would be great if it were just stricken from the worldwide stage overall... stop building coal plants, you can make the energy in so many other ways.
Re:Who cares (Score:2, Insightful)
So, if the soil isn't sealed perfectly, it will escape and form a nice layer on the ground (heavier than air, right), exactly where most land creatures live.
Re:No big deal. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sure... (Score:4, Insightful)
I live in Australia. I have solar panels on my roof at home. The installation costs were subsidised by the Federal Government. My panels generate more power than I actually use, and the excess is fed back into the grid at a credit, so the power company ends up owing me money at the end of the year.
You were saying?
what is the themodynamic efficiency of this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Money well spend? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Money well spent? (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason for the US not doing this is quite simple: there has been no new nuclear power plants built, very little if any money into research, and a general lack of interest in regards to nuclear energy aside from military use. Progress has stagnated; the amount of money required to bring everything up do date and allow reprocessing to be possible is more than what congress is willing to spend.
However, recent reports [rense.com] suggest there may be a renewed interest in this area. The main advantage being that the spent fuel is much less dangerous several orders of magnitude faster.
Re:Money well spent? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I'd like to note (Score:1, Insightful)
There are two ways to calculate the cost of a military aircraft. One way is to take the entire cost of the program and divide it by the number of aircraft produced. This is a useful number for things like budgets, but it does not tell you anything about the cost to produce and purchase another copy, because all of the research and development costs are included in this number. In general it is considered to be less meaningful when talking about the individual unit costs of a plane, because if you wanted to go buy another plane, that's not how much it would cost. The $2.2 billion number for the B-2 is this number.
The other way is to simply take the number which represents how much money you would have to hand over to the manufacturer to get another airplane. For example, if the Air Force crashes an F-22 and they decide to replace it, this is how much it would cost. (Never mind that they don't do that.) This is a much more meaningful number when talking about an ongoing program of aircraft purchases, because the R&D costs are already sunk and you'll never get them back. If you're looking at cutting 50 aircraft from the purchase, this is the number which you must multiply by 50 to see how much money you save. Using the other number in that calculation will make it look like you're saving a lot more money than you really are, which is why the other number is much beloved of people who wish to cut back aircraft purchases. The $727 million number for the B-2 is this number.
In other words, the B-2s cost $727 million each. When you take into account the cost of R&D in the B-2 program, the average cost per unit is $2.2 billion. Both numbers are correct, but to say that an individual B-2 costs $2.2 billion is somewhat misleading.
Re:Who cares (Score:3, Insightful)
etards like you would be the first to log on from their imac down at the local starbucks, and start complaining about all the power black outs and how you can't afford your expreso enemas anymore because your power bill is $20000 a year.
I don't own a mac, hate starbucks and know how to spell espresso. Also I love how you pulled a value like $20K out of your butt.
tidal power is limited by geography and solar is a JOKE when your talking about powering a country.
Tidal may be limited by geography, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be used, you use ALL available energy collection means... which goes the same for solar, it's one of the tools to use. Oh, and I like how you've just ignored wind power... Also, you're not necessarily looking at solar in the right way at all... you're looking at it from the point of view that energy creation is still the job of large companies who make stupid amounts of money for doing so. What about if the government actually ponied up some money to subsidize solar panel installations (like, Australia does, although needs to go way further with this), so that each individual dwelling can have their own solar panels... and then also solar hot water (not using solar electricity, but rather heating water via piping on the roof, very efficient, used all over the place) to further reduce the reliance on electicity, and you're further reducing the load required on any large scale installations. SPREAD THE POWER GENERATION AROUND. If everyone has solar panels on their homes, if wind generators, tidal, etc are installed where viable, then the NEED for huge, monolithic power stations is GREATLY reduced.
and before you start calling me a right wing environmental hater, how many solar installations have you done? because i've done 3 large ones and i actually know how much solar costs.
I'm not going to call you a right winger or anything of the sort, because, well, I'm not rude like you. However I will state that based on my last paragraph you are barking up the wrong tree and still seeing it in the old terms of there needing to be centralized power generation, rather than distributed.
our realistic options for power generation as things stand in the next 5 years are : - coal, nuclear. anything else is an expensive joke.
Not if money was actually invested in it, not at all. It's the energy companies who want to keep things the way they are, as they want to keep reaping the huge rewards. It's also governments not wanting to spend a bit of money on shoring up the future. Trim just a tinsy, tiny bit off defense budgets and you could easily fund this sort of investment. To say it's expensive is just missing the point when it comes to matters like polluting the earth... if the budget on the defense force is allowed to increase by BILLIONS why the hell can't the environment get the same sort of investment... a MUCH GREATER payoff is waiting for those who do so.
Re:Why it was cancelled (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, yeah - the Illinois site wasn't the actual selection - the industry jumped the gun and announced the Illinois site prior to the DOE's final decision. All 4 sites were still under consideration when Illinois and the industry tried to present the DOE with a fait accompli by announcing the site and passing laws to make things go smoother.
Of course, none of that could possibly be true, as the current president is like some satanic octopus, with his evil tentacles manipulating everything invisibly behind the scenes. Invisible, that is, to the select few who see clearly - aren't we lucky to have people like them?
Re:Money well spend? (Score:4, Insightful)
Your question is impossible to answer because variable costs are measured over a plants lifetime and thus they are strictly speaking not defined for any plant that is still operating. Many costs ( repairs, refueling , service, etc
If we were to answer your question by taking the costs incurred by a plant up until today and average it over the time it has been in service the estimate would likely be too low because more repairs are necessary towards the end of its life. Similarly if we were to take the variable costs associated with a plant that has already been decommissioned then the estimate would be too high because technology has improved over the years. Your question is similar to the problem of estimating how long it will take to download a file. You can't answer it with certainty until after the file has been downloaded, because you don't know what will happen to your download speed before it is done. What you CAN do is to make a reasonable estimate based on previous based on previous experience and the knowledge at hand. This is the estimates that are quoted in most reports ( among others the one I gave above ).
Now, I don't expect you to accept this answer, because I've seen you argue this point before only to reject every reply you get when you don't like it, but simply put there is no way to know the life-cycle variable costs of ANY power source until after it has been decommissioned, and that is not something that applies merely to nuclear, it applies to Solar, Wave, Coal etc
Re:Why it was cancelled (Score:3, Insightful)
Please link to the source of this fact. Or, consider the possibility that it's just a bunch of shrill nonsense being passed around by someone suffering from classic BDS. Read up a thread or two, and consider the fact that the notion of this approach has already been completely eclipsed by other developments.
Re:YOU FIRST! (Score:3, Insightful)