EPA To Reuse Toxic Sites For Renewable Energy 183
Hugh Pickens writes:"The Daily Climate reports that President Obama and Congress are pushing to identify thousands of contaminated landfills and abandoned mines — 'brownfields' that could be repurposed to house wind farms, solar arrays, and geothermal power plants. Using already disturbed lands would help avoid conflicts between renewable energy developers and environmental groups concerned about impacts to wildlife habitat. 'In the next decade there's going to be a lot of renewable energy built, and all that has to go somewhere,' said Jessica Goad, an energy and climate change policy fellow for The Wilderness Society. 'We don't want to see these industrial facilities placed on land that's pristine. We love the idea of brownfields for renewable energy development because it relieves the (development) pressure on undisturbed places. The Environmental Protection Agency and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have identified nearly 4,100 contaminated sites deemed economically suitable for wind and solar power development, as well as biomass. Included are 5 million acres suitable for photovoltaic or concentrated solar power development, and 500,000 acres for wind power. These sites, if fully developed, have the potential to produce 950,000 megawatts — more than the country's total power needs in 2007, according to EPA data."
Won't be all of 'em though. (Score:3, Insightful)
And open pit mine would be a pretty rotten place for a wind farm OR a solar field.
Might make a good site for an orbital solar power downlink rectenna, though.
Re:Won't be all of 'em though. (Score:5, Funny)
You fill it with nuclear waste first, obviously.
Re:Won't be all of 'em though. (Score:5, Interesting)
If one used the spare power to transmute the nuclear waste into useful non-radioactive materials then it wouldn't be "waste" anymore. The concept that the U.S. is power limited is completely false. A recent PNAS paper showed that the U.S. could supply 14x its *entire* electricity production using only high value wind power sites. Use the extra electricity to transmute the nuclear waste and one of the entire arguments against nuclear power disappears [1]. Then it becomes a simple economic discussion as to whether its better to build remote wind farms and superconducting cables to make the power available at distant cities, or build nuclear reactors closer to the cities where one could take advantage of existing transmission infrastructure. If you want to give a gift to ones children start thinking in terms of "free" green energy.
1. Also worth noting is that either laser or tokamak fusion power might come into the mix over the next decade. But that doesn't minimize the advantages in U.S. jobs and infrastructure that would result from building up wind, tidal & solar generating capacity as well as superconducting transmission infrastructure. What is required is to break the coal, oil & gas monopoly mindset. If its taking carbon out of the ground and putting it into the atmosphere it is *not* sustainable. Not unless your definition of "sustainable" involves killing off a lot of species and a fair number of humans.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You misspelled "insignificantly small chunks [noaa.gov]". And we've already taken out not-quite-as-insignificantly small chunks by building billions of houses.
Every method of energy production has an environmental impact. That is a red herring. A useful discussion wil
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
And we've already taken out not-quite-as-insignificantly small chunks by building billions of houses.
This is nothing compared to the opposite effect from all the wind-absorbing trees we've cut down in order to make room for those houses, lawns, pastures, roads, parking lots, etc.
On a windy day, compare walking in a big city to walking in a forest. When it comes to wind abatement, smooth-sided, rigid buildings have nothing on trees, with their nice, fractal, flexible shapes. The same goes for windmills --
Re: (Score:2)
A useful discussion will center around which set of environmental impacts can be most easily tolerated.
Not really. It's a good question - as we remove energy from the wind, it has to have some effect on other aspects of the environment. This is a question that would be valuable to get an answer to.
Oh, and get over the spelling mistakes. They happen all the time on /.
Re: (Score:2)
I believe there have been studies done on wind extraction and don't remember the concerns being very significant. The problem with wind, tidal, photovoltaic, solar thermal, geothermal, space power, etc. is that they all shift the energy flow equation for the planet. However I believe humanity is still such a small part (~16 terawatts) of that equation (and will be until we are at 0.01 x Kardachev-Type-I civilization energy level (which is ~170 petawatts) so that our impact gets lost in the noise. The mos
Re: (Score:2)
If you really understand molecular nanotechnology, then you're from the FUTURE. Nobody alive "really understand[s]" it. Otherwise they would know how to make it.
Re: (Score:2)
Part of the problem is being precise enough. "Molecular nanotechnology" does exist in the form of every enzyme which catalyzes a reaction in biochemistry. All of the DNA polymerases, RNA polymerases and the Ribosome can be considered "limited purpose" nanoassemblers in that they assemble multiple components into larger molecular aggregates which form more complex structures (genomes, ribosomal, messenger and transfer RNA and all proteins). What is missing is a 4-8 million atom complete general purpose mo
Re: (Score:2)
That is an incorrect use of language. "Technology" is, by definition, artificially constructed.
One can understand the vision and understand the path toward achieving it without knowing all of the details. Your argument is nothing more than another way of saying "Everything is easy once you know how to do it."
Nice try, but you weren't talking about
Re: (Score:2)
Has anybody looked into what "harvesting" all this wind is gonna do to the environment?
Yes.
With solar I have much less concern since that sunlight is just gonna hit the ground anyway
That's ridiculous. Either way you're interfering with energy. That sunlight is now not going to heat the ground, which stores that heat energy to a greater degree than some solar panels. If you're concerned about wind, you should be concerned about solar. The amount of energy intercepted and where it's not going are both relevant.
But with all this talk of the entire planet harvesting wind I don't think I've seen so much as a single study on what taking the large chunks of energy out of the wind will do to our planet.
The jet stream is powered by the conveyor which is powered by thermal differentials in ice masses. If the ice melts (as it is doing!) then the conveyor, the single largest ocea
Re: (Score:2)
Has anybody looked into what "harvesting" all this wind is gonna do to the environment?
Yep.
It's about like letting a forest grow. Slows the wind down a little bit near the surface. Eases erosion nearby. Does diddly-squat to the weather. (A little more nucleation and turbulence - far less than building a city on the site.)
With solar I have much less concern since that sunlight is just gonna hit the ground anyway, ...
And maybe half of it bounce back into the sky at the original frequency (depending on the
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Best just to put it in a big hole for future generations.
If it's really that bad it must be more radioactive than plain old uranium ore (since otherwise putting it back in the ground would be a no brainer) and hence it would be a better fuel source.
At least we can leave something for the great-grand children. And nuclear waste piles seems like the ideal gift.
But I was trying to make a joke...
Not quite. (Score:2)
"More radioactive" != "better fuel source". There are plenty of elements "more radioactive" than uranium, but are unsuited as nuclear fuel because they have a poor neutron absorption coefficient, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately another one of the big problems with Nuclear power is the routine release of radioactive isotopes. [slashdot.org]
In the meantime sustainable sources of harvesting energy like solar, wind, geo-thermal and wave/tidal are a necessary development to creating the right mix for meeting energy needs. It is essential that an infrastructure plan is developed for a geologically stable spent
Re: (Score:2)
Fusion power has been "adecade away" for 30 years. Stop counting on it.
Moreover, nuclear waste cannot be broken down, you have to wait an eon or two for it to transmute into something else (aka wait 3 half-lives or more). Of course, it could be recycled in breeder or CANDU reactors [wikipedia.org], but I digress.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Seems like it could make a heck of a foundation for a solar concentrator mirror array...
Re: (Score:2)
I think it's a great idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Using already disturbed lands would help avoid conflicts between renewable energy developers and environmental groups concerned about impacts to wildlife habitat.
I used to work in toxics cleanup and I think that's a brilliant idea. A lot of hazardous materials are more risk to dig up than just leave alone. That would put the land to some practical use and restore value to the surrounding communities, many of which were blighted by the proximity to the contamination (whether justified by actual exposure risk or not). And, oh by the way, turn that otherwise unusable ground into jobs and non-polluting energy.
So whatever led to the consideration of these sites, it's a winner. The fact no one will seriously be able to challenge the site selection on environmental grounds will simply speed getting the shovels into the ground.
This is a great idea. Whoever thought it up should get a prize.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Yes, it's a great idea.
2) PLEASE do not call it "brownfields."
We don't need doublespeak. It's a good idea, don't hide it behind some useless term like "brownfield."
Call it a "contaminated site," people can get behind that. Don't create more battles for yourselves, and don't give your "opponents" words they can throw back at you.
But most definitely, do it.
Re:I think it's a great idea (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a technical term that sets off the property rights wingnuts. These are the "it's my property and I can do whatever I want to it, even if it causes cancer for 10,000 years" people. Those people often are behind fixing "contaminated sites" but when they hear brownfield, they picture someone spilling 8oz of diesel in their strip mall parking lot and having to pay $15,000,000 to tear out the parking lot, remove 20ft of topsoil and then replace the parking lot... and pay lawyers.
Re: (Score:2)
They have a shorter name: liberatarians.
Re: (Score:2)
The flip side of this, is those that profited by polluting the land in question will inevitably use lobbyists to inflate the price paid for the land where it matches the value of adjoining unpolluted and leave all that pollution behind. Either the contaminated land is already government land or the polluters pay to clean it up. This just sounds like another greedy arsholes dream to dump worthless land onto the taxpayer at enormous profit.
Let's see wind farms, ridge line and cliffs, both places generally
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The reality a whole bunch of polluted land not really suitable for wind or solar farms
Except ya know: "National Renewable Energy Laboratory have identified nearly 4,100 contaminated sites deemed economically suitable". I think the whole, "economically suitable" thing means it is... economically suitable for solar and wind.
Re: (Score:2)
Except once the toxic waste starts leaching off the, now government owned site and they have to dismantle the solar/wind farm in order to clean up the site, all at public expense of course. So environmental impact statement to prove the pollutants will not leave the site through natural processes, be it wind or ground water movement, second the property should have a nil or negative value to take into account it's true non-existent value, thirdly if the property is only borderline and there are substantial
Re:I think it's a great idea (Score:4, Informative)
The fact no one will seriously be able to challenge the site selection on environmental grounds will simply speed getting the shovels into the ground.
You should look into the rehabilitation of contaminated sites before stating anything quite so strongly. The undesirability of contaminated land can make it environmentally valuable and worth protecting. Environmental grounds for legal argument aren't nearly as limited as you're pretending.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not a "good idea". It's a "been there, done that".
Obligatory wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_Winds [wikipedia.org]
Although it it true that those turbines are not on the most contaminated portions of the old Bethlehem steel.
Interesting Idea (Score:3, Insightful)
All in all it may be a good idea or may not. I hope it turns out to be economically beneficial for all.
Re: (Score:2)
These brown sites will by nature of them be farther way from existing infrastructure resulting in higher costs to send both materials and labor to the location.
Actually, there are quite a lot of urban sites as well. In fact, I drove past one [epa.gov] just last week. Remember, too, that infrastructure spreads to follow and/or lead suburban sprawl. Yesterday's isolated dumping ground is today's fashionable gated community.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
These brown sites will by nature of them be farther way from existing infrastructure resulting in higher costs to send both materials and labor to the location.
Precisely the opposite. If you RTFM, you'll see that the listed benefits include: power transmission lines are often already available on site (leftover from the site's previous use), and the sites are often located in areas with depressed economies (read: readily available labor from nearby towns, that used to be employed by the old site)
Also the
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, but... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Pay a good wage, and people will come.
There are people lining up to work at oil drilling sites/refineries, nuclear plants, paper mills, all kinds of shitty places.
And its go boys go
They'll time your every breath
And every day in this place your two days near to death
But you go
Well a process man am I and I'm tellin' you no lie
I work and breathe among the fumes that tread across the sky
There's thunder all around me and there's poison in the air
There's a lousy smell that smacks of hell and dust all in me hair
We
negates a selling point of renewable energy? (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as we aren't dodging the issue of leakage (Score:4, Interesting)
Building on top of a brownfield might do little to stop its contents from percolating into groundwater. (Actually, it might do something at that, simply by diverting rain that would otherwise fall onto and into it.)
I'm all for putting otherwise-unusable land to good use, but we'd need to have legal structures to protect everyone involved, so (for example) the company building the energy installation isn't suddenly on the hook for everything lurking under it.
Re: (Score:2)
Not in my backyard! (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, this is great! (Score:2)
Now Melvin Ferd [wikipedia.org], the C.H.U.D. [wikipedia.org] and the Turtles [ninjaturtles.com] will have free, on-site power now!
And who knows? Maybe even real jobs.
Close to populated centers (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Water turbines are run at a given speed to produce a given voltage and frequency. But all this other stuff is not. Every other kind of generator is typically regulated to produce a given voltage and frequency. Solar produces DC, so you have to convert to AC for transmission (or HVDC, but let's set that aside for the moment) and you just gang panels to get the voltage you need. This is truly a non-issue; these power plants ALREADY put out power at a fairly steady voltage. Only the current falls. Learn more,
What About The Connected Landowners? (Score:4, Insightful)
"The Daily Climate reports that President Obama and Congress are pushing to identify thousands of contaminated landfills and abandoned mines -- 'brownfields' that could be repurposed to house wind farms, solar arrays, and geothermal power plants. Using already disturbed lands would help avoid conflicts between renewable energy developers and environmental groups concerned about impacts to wildlife habitat. 'In the next decade there's going to be a lot of renewable energy built, and all that has to go somewhere,' said Jessica Goad, an energy and climate change policy fellow for The Wilderness Society.
That's all well and good for the ducks, but what about landowners who have invested good money and hosted dozens of elbow-rubbing parties over the years to develop a relationship with congresspeople and senators? How are they supposed to get the government to buy their $60 per acre swampland for $2500 per acre? Reusing land the government has already paid for severely depresses the corrupt real estate deal market, with nothing more to show for it than reduced public spending.
Won't somebody please think of the well-connected?!?
Brownfield? (Score:2)
But: Think of the mutants! (Score:2)
Those sites aren't dead, you know! They are the breeding grounds for all kinds of different mutations, including the six-legged common redneckus monstrosius and the beautiful giant caterfly.
How can you just sit there and plan building power plants on the homes of those poor mutants?
Good news? (Score:2)
Dirty Secrets of the Environmental movement (Score:2)
There are two dirty secrets that the environmental movement does not like to talk about or engage in because either it is not politically correct among the politically correct or they do not gain much in the way of donations and support for it.
1. Population control. God for bid we would encourage people to have less Children as a way to help the environment.
2. Cleaning up a place that is already spoiled (not talking about picking up trash in the national park). Yes, there is some of this that goes on, but f
Re: (Score:2)
1. Population control. God for bid we would encourage people to have less Children as a way to help the environment.
You are a liar. I am from Santa Cruz, which is one of the most hippie'd up towns in All Creation. The environmentalists have been preaching zero or negative population growth since before I was born.
2. Cleaning up a place that is already spoiled (not talking about picking up trash in the national park).
You fight battles you can win. There are many such sites right in the middle of populated areas [nytimes.com] which are not being cleaned up because they are not being designated superfund sites for economic reasons, and selfish bullshit ones at that. But that's not the fault of the environmental movement, and they do in fact
Cool purpose for a national brownfield register (Score:2)
I remember putting forward a thesis in an old GIS class that was a bit too grand for the time I was able to spend flwshing out the particulars, but it was essentially to start creating a map layer for the North America (yes Canada and Mexico too, cuz pollution travels no?) that we could then query for whole categories of pollutants and land use restrictions. One purpose was to make the data saleable to insurance industry for rate adjustments (yes they screw people over for where they live, but they pay good
I am starting to like this guy more and more.. (Score:2)
Obama is doing good, he is coming up with ways to save money and is showing he has more brains then the last 3 presidents put together....keep it up Mr.President!
Nyanza Superfund Site (Score:2)
We have one of the original Superfund sites in my town of Ashland, Massachusetts. The Nyanza dye factory dumped all sorts of waste products for decades before being shut down. Now there's a huge field where they've sealed in most of the waste, and the owner of the property is looking at putting in a solar farm on the cap with wind turbines along the perimeter. It seems like a perfect site for that sort of development, and there's not much else that can be done with the property.
Repurposing toxic waste sites (Score:2)
Re:Superfund (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of these places could never be truly cleaned up. You'd essentially have to ship the top 500 feet of soil and rock of the entire areas to China or India, but even that's just moving the problem away from the USA.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I live in a brownfield. Please do not deport me. Thank you for your call sir and have a nice day.
Re:Superfund (Score:4, Insightful)
Some of these places could never be truly cleaned up. You'd essentially have to ship the top 500 feet of soil and rock of the entire areas to China or India, but even that's just moving the problem away from the USA.
Why clean them up either? At least this policy abandons the idea that every bit of land should be returned to some sort of pristine state.
Re:Superfund (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe they'll make a new island and turn it into a Disneyland to draw attention away from the obvious.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
New sources of radiation scares people to an irrational degree.
Look at the amount of people living in areas where radon is likely. They still object to a nuclear power plant.
The short answer: (Score:2)
It's the same answer as for why nuclear power in general hasn't taken off. It's not all that cost effective. I can't find the link now, but I read about a study that concluded that a new nuclear power plant would produce electricity at roughly twice the cost of conventional plants. Of course, solar and wind energy really need subsidies to be cost effective too, but given that a nuclear plant would be politically far more difficult to push through, I think the decision to do solar/wind/etc is pretty reasonab
Re:Superfund (Score:4, Informative)
Number of deaths in the US from Commercial nuclear accidents: 0
Number of deaths from the bursting of a molasses storage tank in Boston [wikipedia.org]: 21
Anything can blowup and kill your family.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Superfund (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
> We're talking billions of tons of contaminated soil, water,
> radioactive waste, old landfills. What do you propose is done with it?
Why not build on the concept of the space elevator and "elevate" this stuff into
orbit on a trajectory into the sun? Seriously - why leave it on earth at all?
The technology seems to be developing to make something like this plausible.
Re: (Score:2)
Never know what might be useful down the line. There are projects right now to 'mine' the methane in landfills for use in energy production.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Their shoes would also walk in material, exposing any children. The the 15-25 year exposure time adds up.
But its not mommy or daddy who started work at 35 yo.
Start counting from 0-3 years and its lump or blood time around 20-40 yo.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
By God! I have a solution! Buy them extra pairs of shoes.
(What I really mean here is that you can manage the clean up in such a way that the people doing the work clean themselves up before they leave the damn site, part of that is having them wear protective equipment)
Re:Superfund (Score:5, Interesting)
Superfund site cleanup already typically includes protective clothing, i.e. bunny suits and respirators effective against organic solvents and heavy metals. You can buy the bunny suits (made of tyvek) for about $8 apiece, galoshes are about $30 per wearer and can be rewashed, respirators are $20 and last about three to six months. This is a totally solved problem, and you are ignorantly or maliciously spreading FUD. Either way, stop. You're only making an ignorant ass of yourself.
If we slide much further towards another depression, we might see some of these projects carried out as public works. It is in the interest of national defense to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Every industrial site factors this into the design of the site. By having showers and laundering work clothes on-site to contain contaminants on site.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Superfund (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been in the environmental remediation field for over 20 years. I'm somewhat tired of hearing of talk about "new technologies" to clean up waste. Despite the marketing hype, there really isn't much "new" that can be done, based on the basic physics/chemistry/biology, although improvements can and have been made.
Basically, if you have organic contamination, you can either destroy it by oxidation or reduction, remove it and put it somewhere else (preferrably in a more concentrated/lower volume form) or isolate it so nobody can be exposed to it.
For inorganic contamination, it's pretty much the same options, except the "destroy" part is fairly limited since metals are elments (but you can do things like changing hexavalent chromium to less toxic trivalent chromium for instance).
That's it.
Now, of course, there have been improvements in the destruction technologies, better ways to oxidize organics than simply burning them, for example. Chemical oxidation has come a long way, but it's still just oxidation. Reduction has seen great strides in anaerobic bacterial growth promotion, and the one truly new approach over the 20 years - zero valent iron to reduce chlorinated ethenes. And thermal technologies have been getting better and better in the "remove the stuff from the ground" category.
But these are all just improvements to the basic categories that have already been identified. And the basic challenge remains that for any of these to work (other than isolation), you have to get whatever magic dust you have in contact with the contaminants or it does nothing - that is almost always the toughest part.
Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of innovation going on and to be done to improve these technologies, and they are being used more and more, and successfully I might add, in site cleanups. But thinking in terms of waiting for "advances in technology would make it feasible to clean up said billions of tons of contamination" just isn't considering the basic science.
Some days I wish I were in the semiconductor business. There, it truly seems that advances in technology are almost magic. Not so in environmental remediation.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, it's OBVIOUSLY better to pave over some pristine wilderness for the power plants and leave the polluted waste dumps accessible, in case at some future time the technology and multi billions of dollars are found to clean them up, so they can replace the pristine w
Re:Superfund (Score:4, Insightful)
Because cleaning them is next to impossible or just too costly. We humans can fuck things up really well, so well that we can't always fix them afterwards.
Seems a better idea than cleaning them to whatever the maximum contamination level is by todays standards and then building houses on top. Ten years later the standards have been changed due to new research/etc and you have an entire suburb at above safe limit contamination.
One big drawback of lots of these alternative energy methods is space - you can build a nuke plant or a coal plant to provide the same amount of energy with a much smaller amount of space. Using land that is otherwise unusable seems a good idea.
And of course I'm sure the people/companies who own that worthless (in some cases negative worth since the cleanup costs dwarf the value) making lots of campaign contributions also helped.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
But that lead had to come somewhere.
Outside of a few rare e
Re:Superfund (Score:5, Informative)
They're putting the windmills in post-cleanup, big boy. Sites have to be cleaned up, but people don't necessarily want to build on them. This is using the sites after they've been cleaned.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh ffs why was this hidden by the posting system? I've got it set to not filter or hide ANYTHING and yet it still insists on FORCING me to be unable to see hidden posts until I click "parent" on an orphan post, and it won't let me move the "#full||#hidden" slider to unhide any.
Wtf slashdot?
Re:Superfund (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhhh - you're trying to pretend that Obama has money to clean up all those sites, after several administrations have passed the buck, and done nothing? Get real. BTW - a lot of those sites are being cleaned up naturally anyway. Bacteria, nematodes, wildlife, sunshine, rain and wind all work to decompose and recycle a lot of the waste that has gone into the ground. Putting up something like a windfarm will tend to isolate those areas until nature has finished cleaning up our mess.
Re: (Score:2)
Heavy metals, PCB's ect?, they did not all just vanish in the dot com boom.
Better just to mix in good top soil, pave, take a few safe clean samples and build green tech on top.
Any workers on the site would be see as disposable as the original workers- long term staff, mechanics, engineers.
Residents are all ready gone or in cancer cluster.
National sacrifice area lite for you.
Clean up is good for a lower middle clas
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If effect, the Obama admistration is trying to take some things that are nearly, or in some cases absolutely, hopeless, and turn them to good.
If you want to look at how "cleanup" has progressed at superfund sites, you can. The information is available on the net. Be prepared for a very depressing day.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Do the clean, renewable energy project get to pick up the bill for the clean up?
You mean: "do the taxpayers pick up the bill for the cleanup?" Renewable energy is not economically feasible so it's already a taxpayer burden in the first place.
Re: (Score:2)
Do the clean, renewable energy project get to pick up the bill for the clean up?
You mean: "do the taxpayers pick up the bill for the cleanup?" Renewable energy is not economically feasible so it's already a taxpayer burden in the first place.
So when the oil and uranium runs out we're all dead, right?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
conventional energy (Score:2, Insightful)
Conventional energy is tax payer funded as well-to make it more "economically feasible" for private energy companies, if you look at the whole stack. Cherry picking just some of the costs results in skewed figures that just make it seem to be cheaper. Thousands of miles of seized land for transmission towers and natgas pipelines, with no recompense for the private party land owners that these lines and pipelines cross, decades of uranium research run by the taxpayers or subsidized into academia and private
Re: (Score:2)
Well, here in Germany there are lots of wind farms, and to be honest they have almost no personnel on them. Windmills and solar parks have very low maintenance costs - the only real personnel you would need full time would be perimeter guards (which the current sites need anyhow). From what I gather, this plan would be best on sites where clean-up is nigh impossible, like the toxic landfills. Places where the only real solution is to let them go fallow, or where even after clean-up remain unwanted, so why n
Re: (Score:2)
Found a new cause, have we, Serdar [wikipedia.org]?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
One cannot know for certain that a given plan is economic until it is tried, sometimes things go better than
Re:Eminent Domain bonanza!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Man, they are good at graft and bribery in Chicago.
My God, what are you still doing here man? Don't you know that the evil New World Obama Administration can infect your mind through your Internet connection? Quick, log off now, run to the basement, and put on your tin foil body condom, before they turn you into a mindless socialist environment-loving green weenie!
Feel free to check back in 2012, it may be safe for you to come back on line then.
Re:Eminent Domain bonanza!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really. You do not need eminent domain to take contaminated sites. Owners of contaminated sites are usually praying that the government will take those sites off of their hands. You see, when you own land that is contaminated you are responsible for cleaning it up, and you can pay pretty hefty fines if the contamination spreads or affects the groundwater. There have been many cases where people will sell contaminated sites for negative money (i.e., pay money for someone to get them off their hands). So yes, the owners will be quite happy to give them to the government for free.
The concern is actually quite the opposite. It is possible that the Obama admin may use this program as a hidden subsidy. That is they may let owners of contaminated land off the hook for the clean-up costs and get the federal taxpayer on the hook for the clean-up costs. But in general it seems like a good idea as long as environmental groups watch the implementation carefully.
Re: (Score:2)
We're already doing this in Buffalo, NY, on the old Bethlehem Steel site. It used to be one of the largest steelmakers in the world; now, we get clean energy.
Wow, I wish they had mentioned that in the article somewhere. You know, maybe right around the first paragraph. It would have made a great example for the article.
Re: (Score:2)
It's times like this that I wish I could moderate myself down.
Re: (Score:2)
The next step... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
GM has the dream like option never to hire another US citizen yet keep the brand strong with small US flags..
In China if you make trouble/get hurt its a small pension, chat with a local official or prison farm.
The US is great for logo design, turbine design or sales, installation, ongoing work over life of the unit.
Re: (Score:2)
We make a bunch of windmills here in Indiana. Turns out the cost of transportation and installation is pretty high compared to the labor to make them. It's cheaper to make them closer to where they need to be installed.
Re: (Score:2)