DOE Pumps $126.6 Million Into Carbon Sequestration 489
RickRussellTX writes "The DOE awarded $126.6 million in grants today to projects that will pump 1 million tons of CO2 into underground caverns at sites in California and Ohio. Environmental groups call carbon sequestration "a scam", claiming that it is too expensive and uncertain to be competitive with non-coal alternatives like wind and solar. I just hope nobody drops a Mentos down the wrong pipe."
So... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why can't we do both? Damn environmentalists meddling again. Never wanting to compromise or find some benefits in alternatives.
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Why can't we do both? Damn environmentalists meddling again. Never wanting to compromise or find some benefits in alternatives.
Because the people pushing CCS want to burn coal & then shove carbon into the ground.
Greenpeace wants alternatives, not technology that might arrive in 10+ years, only to prolong the existing energy production system.
I personally agree with you, even though Greenpeace sees the funding as a zero sum game.
You never know how or when knowledge & science, for its own sake, will pay off.
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Because, while I like a variety of forms of renewable energy and think they should be supported far more than they are, I realize that it will take a while before they can provide a substantial fraction of our energy needs. The same is not true of fossil fuels, and is true to a much lesser degree of nuclear plants. I didn't say to ignore alternative options; I was simply pointing out that coal is worse than nuclear in a wide variety of ways. The parent was comparing nuclear and coal, and I added a counterpoint to his argument. I did not feel a particular need write a treatise intricately comparing the pros and cons of all plausible energy sources.
Not everyone who fails to trumpet the virtues of renewable sources in every post is a troll, or even dislikes renewables.
Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEGS [wikipedia.org]
In 2.5 square miles they produce 350 Mega-watts of power
and do it with reflective troughs and heating high temperature
oil to drive a steam turbine.
They store hot oil and get some production even after sundown,
and then switch to natural gas for a few hours til sunrise.
If the uninhabited sections of the Mojave Desert
were used for this system, it would power all of North America.
The Mojave is over 22,000 sq. miles, if 10,000 of it was used
for a SEGs type setup you would get 4,000 times the current
power production ie. 1.41 Tera-Watts rough estimate.
In 2004 it was estimated by scientists that total world
energy usage was 15 Tera-Watts for all types of energy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption [wikipedia.org]
The proposed SEGs expansion would produce almost 10% of that.
We have our silver bullet, it will just be a monster to build.
North Africa could use the Sahara and power all of Africa
and Europe.
The best photovoltaic cells are 20% effective, The best Thermals
have hit 41% per wikipedia, and 60% being theoretically possible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy#High-temperature_collectors [wikipedia.org]
Here in the US we could also use a large part of the 120,000 sq. mi.
Sonora Desert.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonora_desert [wikipedia.org]
Just my 2 cents...
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Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
Breeder reactors, reprocessing facilities and smart management can be used to dramatically reduce the amount of nuclear waste you have to dispose of - the figures I usually hear are somewhere between 95 and 98%. Also, nuclear plants don't constantly release radioactive particles like coal plants do. And they generate a lot of power. And the more modern designs are very safe; even Chernobyl required a risky test in an old reactor design conducted by a night shift crew that was unsufficiently trained.
Green power doesn't quite deliver as of yet. Photovoltaics still has a rather low efficiency and creates toxic waste during production of the panels. Hydro doesn't scale well, apart from dramatically changing the river you're working with. Geothermal only works in certain places. Wind also only works in certain places, doesn't generate that much power and is suspected to disturb bird populations and people living downwind.
The big question is: What do we do now? We can't go nuclear because that would mean we generate a few tons of nuclear waste per year that we have to bury for a few decades, apart from theoretically enabling teh nukes. We can't go coal because apart from CO2 emissions coal generates some nuclear waste as well. We can't go solar because solar doesn't generate enough power for most places and is toxic. We can't go wind and water either because they can't keep up with demand. We can't scale back our energy consumption either because that would be just as unacceptable as nuclear waste to most people.
At some point we do need to make an unpopular choice because there aren't any popular ones. I think that nuclear is one of the better choices we can make.
Re:So... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
If we run off of U235 plants, we'll run out of cheap uranium poste haste. The only way we know of to extend our nuclear fuel supply is to reprocess the U238 transmuted to plutonium (or thorium to U233) into additional fuel. However, this is readily achievable.
Conveniently, this sort of breeder reactor also has the ready potential to result in much more *complete* burning of nuclear fuel, resulting in much further reacted, and generally much shorter half-life products. The half life of breeder reactor waste can be as low as 100 years, and as the 95% of the enriched uranium that is U238 becomes viable fuel instead of being discarded as plutonium, the amount of waste per unit power drops by many orders of magnitude
Right now, India is the only country I am aware of that does extensive breeding (they're not in the Non-proliferation treaty, and don't have natively mined uranium, so they transmute thorium into fissile material) although France does some as well. The US doesn't do it because of proliferation concerns (which makes no sense to me, but whatever). However, since switching to a full nuclear power system requires going to breeder reactors anyway, it will also result in massively less waste (probably way less than coal power, and better contained), and shorter-lived waste.
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And several more are being built. Breeders are not cheap and easy to build compared to common reactors, that's why there's little demand for them right now. It's easier to mine U-235.
Re:So... (Score:4, Informative)
Not quite, but you were on the right track. Basically in spent nuclear fuel you have three component groups. Leftover uranium, fission fragments and transuranics (heavy nuclei like plutonium formed when uranium absorbs neutrons ).
In a breeder reactor you constantly recycle the uranium and the actinides, so that the only waste product is fission fragments and activated reactor components. It is a lucky coincidence that virtually all the fission fragments that cannot be easily destroyed through recycling have either very short halflives ( less than 30 years ) or VERY long ones ( hundreds and thousands of years ).
The short lived ones decay to bellow uranium ore levels of radioactivity within about 300 years, while the long lived ones decay so slowly that they are less radioactive than the uranium from which they were made.
In spent fuel from traditional reactors you also have to worry about the actinides, and these cause trouble because they have half lives that are somewhere in between. This makes them radioactive enough to be much more toxic than uranium ore, but still long lived enough that they would have to be stored for hundreds of thousands of years. Breeder reactors split these into fission fragments that have characteristics very similar to the ones mentioned above, and therefore the waste decays to uranium levels within a few hundred years.
Also, in general it is worth noticing that if something has a halflife of X years then half of it will still be left after that time ( that is the definition of the radioactive halflife ). This is why it takes up to 300 years for the Cesium and Strontium components of fission fragments to decay bellow uranium radioactivity even tho their respective half lives are just a few decades.
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It would be far more efficient if it was nuclear waste.
Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)
Nuclear waste doesn't allow for huge amounts of enhanced oil recovery or coalbed methane recovery.
The capital costs are very high, but if used for a purpose, CO2 injection can pay for itself. CO2 injection in the US alone has the potential to recover ~100-400B barrels (restoring old, "used up" fields like the East Texas Field, plus injection into all of the large fields we're currently tapping and the ones we haven't started tapping yet). That's 10-40 trillion dollars at $100/barrel -- a couple times the size of the US GDP. There's not as much money in coalbed methane recovery, but it's still substantial.
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We're going to burn all the coal and oil eventually anyway.
What difference does it really make how fast we do it?
If we can shove some of the carbon back underground where we got it, that's a good thing.
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Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Why can't we do both?
Why should we? Sequestration has only been proven effect in labs, and the coal industry accepts that it won't be completely up and running by 2030. Wind and solar have been proven to work now. Entire cities and even states in some countries are being run on renewable technologies. It's proven, it works, it's emission free. Carbon sequestration doesn't get rid of the fact that we're un-sustainably mining the earth, creating vast amounts of CO2 and then *hoping* that when we bury it underground there won't be any negative consequences.
"Never wanting to compromise or find some benefits in alternatives."
This is less a compromise and more the coal and mining industry refusing to accept their imminent demise, and instead of looking to the REAL future like some companies (BP?) they'd rather try and flog of unproven and, even in theory, ridiculous ideas to the public.
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Where on earth are you getting this data? Please provide at least some reference to any accumulation of people that is self sufficient on solar and wind. Unless of course you are playing loose with definitions and "renewable technologies" includes geothermal, trash-to-steam, etc.
I have a coworker that is very interested in living
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"Unless of course you are playing loose with definitions and "renewable technologies" includes geothermal, trash-to-steam, etc."
I did say "renewables". Including Hydro.
"As much as he wanted solar, he couldn't afford it. Why? The payback period (without subsidies) is 100 years!"
You'd be very stupid to take an economic argument on this topic. You think burying all our CO2 is going to be cheap? You think it's going to get rid of all our emissions? No and no. I'm sure the calculations he made did not factor in
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Way to dodge answering his original question and disregard his point about emissions being released to produce and maintain equipment for wind and solar technologies.
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Coal + sequestration is still *significantly* cheaper than solar and will be for the next 20 years at least.
And dont mention Hydro.
The greenies hate that because it destroys habitats.
You cant win against them.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Coal + sequestration is still *significantly* cheaper than solar and will be for the next 20 years at least.
That's because coal is subsidized and external costs are passed on the everyone, whether they use coal or not. If coal plants had to make it on their own and pay for their Externalities [wikipedia.org] electricity costs would be a lot higher. Heck, even the Nuclear Power Industry [nci.org] uses coal's external costs as a selling point.
And dont mention Hydro. :)
The greenies hate that because it destroys habitats.
Some don't like hydro because frequently dams do not live up to their promise [dams.org] or the costs out weight the benefits [pdf] [panda.org]. "World Commission on Dams Report vindicates unjustifiability of large dams" [unep.org].
FalconRe:So... (Score:5, Interesting)
(looks aruond the house) Um, they are.
It used to cost me $11,000/yr to run this place. I spent $5K on stuff and now my operaqting cost is zero.
No, you don't get to keep your electric dryer. Changes must be made. You will make them sooner or later, I just happen to be done now.
Pumping co2 into the ground is the dumbest idea since Bush entering politics.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
They will do anything possible to be environmentally friendly as long as they dont have to change their habits, spend money or essentially do anything at all.
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Any advice you can offer to someone thinking about doing this ? Where to start, what works, what doesn't ... that sort of thing.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
~Rebecca
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Do you honestly believe that once we have one option we should stop researching alternatives? and do not forget that the coal fired power plants are still running right now, is it not a good idea to try to get them as clean as possible until we're self sufficient otherwise?
What's with the tunnel vision here, this amount of money is a small amount for us to be able to know more than we do. You complain about how carbon sequestr
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Use more wind turbines? Is this a trick question?
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Where on earth are you getting this data? Please provide at least some reference to any accumulation of people that is self sufficient on solar and wind. Unless of course you are playing loose with definitions and "renewable technologies" includes geothermal, trash-to-steam, etc.
While I agree about cities being self sufficient in renewable energy, the only place I can think of is Iceland and to a degree Hawaii using geothermal as they are, but there are plenty of people who's house is energy sufficient,
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, I think we are on the same team here but I refuse to believe, in the face of hard evidence, that wind + solar + geothermal + hydrodynamic + tidal energy will be sufficient to meet domestic US demand for the foreseeable future. Even the most aggressive energy efficiency plans won't kick in in earnest for a decade (cars turn over roughly 10 years, home appliances every 25, homes every 50 and the more you impose, the more costs go up and the slower the turnover happens).
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On the demand side, I'm pretty certain that Americans will not tolerate any changes that reduce their perceived standard of living. Efficiencies like better cars, appliances and houses are a fantastic idea but take a long time to materialize due to slow turnover in those areas. Grander plans like better urban design so you don't have to drive ****ing everywhere and creating situations where you can live near where you work will take even longer. Support
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IMHO the answer is a mix of different technologies and something to offset the existing plants that will be running for a few more decades.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Damn environmentalists?
Sounds more like you're describing industry and government. They are only interested in milking fossil fuels for all their worth - and then getting government contracts to "clean up" their output. If they listened to environmentalists, emissions could be cut for a fraction of the cost (or for a profit) - but that's not what the men who run powerful industries care about. It's all about the gravy train of massive infrastructure projects (which often cause more problems than they solve).Better solution exists (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Better solution exists (Score:5, Funny)
If I made such a machine I might call it 'The Real Easy Extraction' machine
Re:Better solution exists (Score:5, Insightful)
And then as you plant more of them, and get a forest that looks like a tree farm [flickr.com], fire becomes a larger risk.
And then your carbon sequestration devices are threatening surrounding communities.
A huge issue across the US is overpopulation of forests because we have been preventing forest fires for so long, so there is definitely no shortage of trees in many areas.
Other than that small detail, yeah, plants are one way to easily store carbon.
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Seriously, there is debate over the environmental benefits of paper recycling. This debate may even have some merit, unlike the "well, we really don't know if global warming is occuring" pseudo-debate. By some measures, the process of recycling paper may use more fossil fuels than the harvesting and pul
Re:Better solution exists (Score:5, Interesting)
Trees are great but I heard that a lot of the world's oxygen comes from aquatic plants so I did a quick fact check and found this:
Which means that a lot of CO2 is consumed by these plants right? I'm now wondering, if these marine plants only have access to dissolved CO2 in the water would it help to diffuse CO2 into the water? Wouldn't this be a good alternative being that there are so many "Easy Extraction" machines in the seas? These are also not susceptible to forest fires AFAIK.
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Who cares where the carbon comes from? Instead of trying to capture carbon, we should simply bury the same amount of almost pure carbon in easly obtained forms. In a gas, CO2 is common. As a so
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First, to point out the blindingly obvious -- there are really only two places to inject carbon - into used-up coal mines and into the deep ocean. And as any fifth grader knowns, the warmer a liquid gets, the less gas it can dissolve. (If you don't believe me, go pour some pepsi in a pot, boil it, and see what happens to all the fizz). So if you inject into the ocean, global warming is going to bring it right back out again
Safety? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Safety? (Score:5, Informative)
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Why not worry about water shooting out of wells? (Score:3, Interesting)
that's why all the plans involve putting it down somewhere. I'd oppose sequestration in huge towers outside of major metropolitan areas, but putting it deep down in the ground makes a lot of sense.
--MarkusQ
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Personally I'd like to know if an earthquake or shifting in an inconvienent place would cause CO2 leakage.
Re:Why not worry about water shooting out of wells (Score:5, Informative)
If it was stored in gas form at atmospheric pressure, it wouldn't be a problem (it would just be silly). The problem is that if it's stored in highly compressed or solid form, then if something goes wrong and it goes back to gas, it *will* go up and escape, potentially killing anyone in the area.
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Gas at atmospheric pressure in air is only one possible solution. For another, consider that at higher pressure, CO2 is denser than water under the same conditions [technologyreview.com]. Thus, if sequestered under the sea it would
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That and I don't understand why they can't just make use of it. I'd expect a biodiesel plant would love to be piped into that, making good use of all that CO2 to increase their yield.
This whole idea is basically the same as a landfill. Burying a problem never makes it go away, and almost a
Re:Safety? (Score:5, Interesting)
CO2 has sometimes been pumped down oil wells to provide pressure to lift out more oil after the hole goes "dry" due to loss of natural gas pressure while there's still oil available.
On at least one occasion such a well has leaked, creating a large bubble of CO2 on the ground that displaced the air and caused human fatalities. (Not oil workers, either, but sleeping neighbors.)
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Besides, carbon sequestering doesn't solve any problems, it just postpones it for a future generation to deal with. We could exert ourselves now and work at carbon-neutral energy generation, but we'll have to fight against fossil-fuel power
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That's the main problem with environmental groups (Score:2, Insightful)
That's the main problem with environmental groups. At their core, many of them are just as immune to rational argument and unwilling to consider proposals that don't line up with their pre-conceived notions as the fossil fuel industries and their pet politicians.
The arguments against sequestration are (so far as I've seen) just as bogus as the anti-nuclear waste disposal arguments. I'm glad that these groups recognize when there are problems with any given technology, I just wish their response to any a
Re:That's the main problem with environmental grou (Score:5, Insightful)
"many of them are just as immune to rational argument"
Your statement hinges on the fact that coal industry has indeed given any rational arguments to support the burying of CO2 (A very literal way of 'burying your head in the sand', don't you think?). Let's step back and look at the problem. The main issue we have the moment is global warming being caused by an excess of greenhouses gases, predominantly CO2 in the atmosphere. We need solutions. Renewable energy is a solution. Cutting back on energy usage is a solution. And yes, even sequestration is a solution. However, what are the best and most effective solutions to take? Cutting back our usage can be done now and it can have significant effects in the area of reducing CO2 output. Renewables are already a proven technology and lack only significant funding to make them more common. That said, in many countries and states funding is significant and renewable energy targets are set to be met. Now let's look at sequestration. Is it proven? Only in laboratories. Which if you consider the scale and possible ramifications of the process is a fairly useless sticking point. Is it safe? Well you decide for yourself. Pumping millions of tonnes into underground caverns? Versus building windmills, hydro plants and solar farms. Does it solve our problems? In the short term it prevents CO2 from immediately going into the atmosphere but burying it can't continue indefinitely, and it does nothing to reduce our reliance on coal - a finite source.
The idea virtually is a scam, it's the coal industry asking for grants and subsidies all across the world to support a dying business instead of looking the facts in the face and realising that renewables are the way of the future. No amount of exaggeration (Moonbeams?) on your part will change that.
Please be honest (Score:2, Insightful)
What you really meant to say is that massive depopulation of the earth is the solution, since at this point we can only reduce the rate at which energy consumption grows, not the overall rate at which energy is consumed.
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Hundreds of years if our current consumption levels don't increase. Since energy consumption increases exponentially...
We also don't have enough "underground caverns" to fit hundreds of years worth of CO2. In addition searching and mining for more and more coal resources is going to have detrimental effects on the environment as a whole. All my points still stand.
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That's exactly the sort of thing I mean. Carbon sequestration is an idea. There are arguments for and against it, and each of these arguments will have some degree of merit and applicability. If you are being rational, that's all that matters. I am making no assumption whatsoever about where the arguments c
Moonbeams are the ones that are anti-coal (Score:2)
The fact of the matter is that right now there is no alternative energy technology that competes with coal. If there were, people would be using that. But it doesn't exist. You can say that coal has a future, b
Re:That's the main problem with environmental grou (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:That's the main problem with environmental grou (Score:2)
In my opinion, a solid is much more compatible with storing carbon in the Earth than a gas, but even if we are to store a gas, it does not make a whole lot of sense to use up what capacity there may be on burning coal. Coal is already nicely sequestered.
1986 Disaster (Score:2, Informative)
The USA (Score:2, Funny)
Progress? (Score:2)
What exactly is the point of this endeavour?
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It makes the people doing it feel good. That's all it does and all it needs to do.
WTF? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Informative)
Bamboo (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Bamboo (Score:4, Funny)
I think you misspelled the word "Coal."
Methane (Score:2)
Greenpeace... *ahem* (Score:3, Interesting)
As we all know, they're the kind of people that we can have a good intelligent discussion with, right? Of course, anyone that doesn't fall in line with their philosophy is some sort of heretic, even if they happen to be one of their own founders [washingtonpost.com] that disagrees with a long-standing platform of the organization.
I'd have a lot more respect for them if they also condemned Al Gore and his pimping of useless carbon credits [newsbusters.org] that happen to fatten his own pockets...
Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder if Greenpeace realizes the choice isn't between coal plants with sequestered carbon and windmills. In reality, barring some fortuitous breakthrough in solar power, as oil gets more expensive the choice will be between coal plants with this technology and coal plants without it. I believe Greenpeace has completely overestimated the average person's willingness to make lifestyle sacrifices for the sake of atmospheric carbon reductions.
I wish organizations like this would try to be part of the solution instead of just trying to limit our options. You can't accuse the coal companies of proposing a technology that isn't economically feasible on the one hand and then propose wholesale conversion to technologies that are even less economically feasible.
We wouldn't even have this problem if the very same people hadn't killed the nuclear industry through scaremongering and excessive litigation.
What a crock (Score:3)
This is no different from Wile E. Coyote's electric fan-powered sailboat.
Or the ethenol believers who conveniently neglect the big fire they have to put under that still.
That's a sustainnable business model (Score:2)
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You have to put a big fire under oil too, to refine it, and that works out ok. Duh.
Besides, you would use nuclear power to run the still.
Not generating the CO2 Vs research value (Score:3, Interesting)
A coal powered plant would produce 300000 Tons of CO2 a year to generate this power. Three years of operation would mean 1M tons of CO2 not released into the atmosphere.
For a gas-powered plant, it would be 6 years. For an oil powered plant, 4 years.
A 38MW plant is not really much power, and is a drop in the bucket. On the other hand the research benefits from this project are not easily quantifiable. So I'd go with the research on this one!
References:
http://www.seen.org/pages/db/method.shtml [seen.org]
http://www.windpower.org/en/tour/econ/index.htm [windpower.org]
Wood (Score:4, Insightful)
Terrorism and Future Technology (Score:3, Informative)
On the other hand, from wikipedia [wikipedia.org] "To further investigate the safety of CO2 sequestration, we can look into Norway's Sleipner gas field, as it is the oldest plant that stores CO2 on an industrial scale. According to an environmental assessment of the gas field which was conducted after ten years of operation, the author affirmed that geosequestration of CO2 was the most definite way to store CO2 permanently. [4]
"Available geological information shows absence of major tectonic events after the deposition of the Utsira formation [saline reservoir]. This implies that the geological environment is tectonically stable and a site suitable for carbon dioxide storage. The solubility trapping [is] the most permanent and secure form of geological storage." [4]"
This sounds pretty exact-opposite of what the greenpeace hippy terro... activists are saying.
Carbon Gas -vs- Carbon Solid (Score:3, Interesting)
Imagine:
coal --> energy + diamonds
That's not a bad formula! Or:
coal --> energy + carbon (bricks, fibers, nanofibers, etc.).
We could use that for building materials. No problem there. But:
coal --> energy + high pressure gas buried in an old mine shaft underground waiting to escape
is not a good idea.
This was a plot form the Beverly Hillbillies!!! (Score:4, Funny)
http://www.tv.com/the-beverly-hillbillies/the-pollution-solution/episode/72982/summary.html [tv.com]
Jed: This fellow's gonna drill a tunnel through the San Bernardino Mountains, put in a great big fan, and draw all the smog out of Los Angeles.
Drysdale: Why, that's a preposterous idea.
Jed: Yeah. We like it too. (edit)
Good episode
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That sounds like the kind of problem that needs to be solved. If it can be sequestered, it can be processed. If we can just make it into something useful without blowing up the planet at the same time it will be good.
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Either way, if someone can find something useful to do with CO2 it would dull the pains we currently are having with it, and that was my point.
Re:What Could Possibly Go Wrong? (Score:5, Funny)
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yeah right, solar is what, $10 per watt still? (Score:3, Informative)
Citation please. Heck, I'll provide one. MIT's "Tech Review" [technologyreview.com] says "Solar power cost about $4 a watt in the early 2000s". That's less than half of what you say.
FalconOnce again some basic math. (Score:3)
There's so many problems here I don't even know where to begin.
China now exceeds the USA in CO2 emissions. Part of this is economic growth, but a surprising share is because of a massive coal seam fire that is expected to burn for at least another 50 years. The coal fire alone already produces more emissions than all US cars combined.
Re:Once again some basic math. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sequestration is no panecea, no cure-all - it is at best an impefect solution to an intractable problem - there are no magic bullets. Using it to justify increasingly relying on coal is idiocy at it's finest.