Coal Plants Get New Lease On Life With Natural Gas 143
HughPickens.com writes Christina Nunez reports in National Geographic that in the past four years, at least 29 coal-fired plants in 10 states have switched to natural gas or biomass while another 54 units, mostly in the US Northeast and Midwest, are slated to be converted over the next nine years. By switching to natural gas, plant operators can take advantage of a relatively cheap and plentiful US supply. The change can also help them meet proposed federal rules to limit heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, given that electricity generation from natural gas emits about half as much carbon as electricity from coal does.
But not everyone is happy with the conversions. The Dunkirk plant in western New York, slated for conversion to natural gas, is the focus of a lawsuit by environmental groups that say the $150 million repowering will force the state's energy consumers to pay for an unnecessary facility. "What we're concerned about is that the Dunkirk proceeding is setting a really, really bad precedent where we're going to keep these old, outdated, polluting plants on life support for political reasons," says Christopher Amato. Dunkirk's operator, NRG, wanted to mothball the plant in 2012, saying it was not economical to run. The utility, National Grid, said shutting it down could make local power supplies less reliable, a problem that could be fixed by boosting transmission capacity—at a lower cost than repowering Dunkirk. Meanwhile the citizens of Dunkirk are happy the plant is staying open. "We couldn't let it happen. We would lose our tax base, we would lose our jobs, we would lose our future," said State Sen. Catharine M. Young. "This agreement saves us. It gives us a foundation on which to build our economy. It gives us hope. This is our community's Christmas miracle!"
But not everyone is happy with the conversions. The Dunkirk plant in western New York, slated for conversion to natural gas, is the focus of a lawsuit by environmental groups that say the $150 million repowering will force the state's energy consumers to pay for an unnecessary facility. "What we're concerned about is that the Dunkirk proceeding is setting a really, really bad precedent where we're going to keep these old, outdated, polluting plants on life support for political reasons," says Christopher Amato. Dunkirk's operator, NRG, wanted to mothball the plant in 2012, saying it was not economical to run. The utility, National Grid, said shutting it down could make local power supplies less reliable, a problem that could be fixed by boosting transmission capacity—at a lower cost than repowering Dunkirk. Meanwhile the citizens of Dunkirk are happy the plant is staying open. "We couldn't let it happen. We would lose our tax base, we would lose our jobs, we would lose our future," said State Sen. Catharine M. Young. "This agreement saves us. It gives us a foundation on which to build our economy. It gives us hope. This is our community's Christmas miracle!"
Who opposes cleaner sources of energy? (Score:1)
Apparently environmentalists themselves. Perfect is the enemy of good. If one were to be cynical one would suggest that environmentalists only want sources of energy that are expensive and unreliable because the availability of abundant energy sources won't strike a stake through the heart of capitalism and consumerism.
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People are the source of all pollution. If we could just get rid of all the people then there would be no more pollution.
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If one were to be cynical one would suggest that environmentalists only want sources of energy that are expensive and unreliable because the availability of abundant energy sources won't strike a stake through the heart of capitalism and consumerism.
See, this is what happens when folks get "informed" from the the mass media. Their conception of issues is with sound bites explained by ignorant pundits.
Issues are very complex and are never black and white as the media will portray them - even the beloved Jon Stewart and John Oliver over simplify things and spin things to play to their audience.
And don't get me started on how most of the web is just shit - personal propaganda.
Everyone has a bias but sources such as books and magazines (Discover, Scientifi
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Or they could, ya know, maybe use less energy. There's plenty of low-hanging fruit in using what energy we can produce more efficiently, which obviates the need for any new generation, or allows old plants to be mothballed. It doesn't mean shivering in dark caves: humans, particularly Americans, are fantastically thoughtless and wasteful when it comes to energy.
Rather than
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DDC controls with better algorithms and controlling more building systems.
More efficient pumps, fans, motors, etc.equipment.
More use of variable flow pumps and fans.
Increased insulation.
Better performing windows.
Heat recovery between outside air intake and exhaust.
Gas fired heating equipment that use low flue temperatures to capture the heat of condensation from water vapor in the flue gases.
Lower wattage lighting.
Architects paying attention to the orient
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Those measures are increasing my freedom - by making a selection of more efficient appliances for me to buy at low cost, and thus allowing me to lower my power bills, all of which puts more money in my pocket. I thought that was the very essence of the Conservative idea of freedom, more of my own money.
We know what corporations do when such measures are not in place. They don't innovate on efficiency, or provide cost effective efficient appliances. Only by moving the entire industry to more efficient standa
Shortsightedness (Score:1)
Gas not less CO2 on refiring coal plants (Score:2)
Natural gas is better if you use a combined cycle gas turbine plant, where the natural gas is burnt in a what amounts to a jet engine and then the exhaust is used to heat water for steam turbines.
If you just replace coal with natural gas in the same plant to heat the water it is not significantly less CO2, though it will likely be less other pollutants.
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Natural gas is better from the get-go, in that only half as much CO2 is emitted per unit energy.
And fewer particulates to boot.
It is a "bridge" fuel to a cleaner future, and a very reasonable/practical short term measure
to implement while our Mr. Fusion home reactors are developed.
Re:Gas not less CO2 on refiring coal plants (Score:5, Informative)
Burning coal is pretty much just turning bulk carbon into carbon dioxide. Burning natural gas (methane, CH4) creates carbon dioxide, too, of course, but also releases energy from burning the hydrogen to make water. As a result, the combustion of natural gas produces less CO2 for the same energy output.
From the Energy Information Agency [eia.gov] - Pounds of CO2 emitted per million BTU of energy:
Coal (anthracite): 228.6
Gasoline: 157.2
Natural Gas: 117.0
[I'll apologize for the units - I'm just quoting the result. If you must know, 1 lb / 1e6 BTU is equivalent to 0.43e-3 kg/MJ. Or, just look at the number as a figure of merit: lower is better.]
more data here [eia.gov]
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Burning coal is pretty much just turning bulk carbon into carbon dioxide. Burning natural gas (methane, CH4) creates carbon dioxide, too, of course, but also releases energy from burning the hydrogen to make water. As a result, the combustion of natural gas produces less CO2 for the same energy output. From the Energy Information Agency [eia.gov] - Pounds of CO2 emitted per million BTU of energy: Coal (anthracite): 228.6 Gasoline: 157.2 Natural Gas: 117.0 [I'll apologize for the units - I'm just quoting the result. If you must know, 1 lb / 1e6 BTU is equivalent to 0.43e-3 kg/MJ. Or, just look at the number as a figure of merit: lower is better.] more data here [eia.gov]
It is even more effective than that- these numbers don't take plant efficiency into consideration. The "per million BTU of energy" is just the amount of heat produced, not the amount of electricity. A very efficient traditional coal plant is about 35-40% efficient in turning the heat into electrical power. A typical combined cycle gas power plant is about 57-60% efficient due to the nature of the different cycle. So, on a per-MW produced basis, Natural gas looks a lot better.
It also doesn't hurt that
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From what I understand these are retrofits. They will reuse as much equipment as possible so you can probably forget the combined cycle advantage.
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If you just replace coal with natural gas in the same plant to heat the water it is not significantly less CO2
Yes it is. Combustion of a kg of methane will generate 55 MJ of heat. Combustion of a kg of coal will produce about half as much energy, while generating 1/3 more CO2. That is a big win. Source: Heat of Combustion Tables [wikipedia.org].
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Except the epa just found that massive amounts of methane are released around natural gas well pads
They also found huge variations between different wells, and different companies. So this is a problem that can be fixed by widely applying best practices.
Methane is a stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, but it has a much shorter atmospheric half-life, of about 7 years, compared to over a century for CO2.
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So this is a problem that can be fixed by widely applying best practices.
Great! Surely every well owner will do just that because free market! If you have a realistic way to implement this in the real world that can actually be applied to the type of human beings that live on earth I'd like to hear it.
Also, the half life may be 7 years but the effect is 100x that of CO2. We could do without a quick extreme burst of greenhouse effect when we are already at a tipping point.
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If you have a realistic way to implement this in the real world that can actually be applied to the type of human beings that live on earth I'd like to hear it.
The brain dead obvious (and self-funding) solution would be a fine for wellheads releasing excessive gas.
Also, the half life may be 7 years but the effect is 100x that of CO2.
No, the effect is 30 times that of CO2, per mole.
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Combined cycle plant are a remarkable piece of engineering and a truly more efficient.
However, most of the natural gas plants being built are not the high efficiency plants. There are the older, cheaper (capital cost) design since they are primary used for peak load conditions since they can spin up much fast than coal plants.
Natural gas is is also much worse than coal in terms of price volatility. In the US, gas is cheaper than coal, although last winter in the Northeast it was much higher than coal during
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There is basically no oil burned for power in the continental USA. Sorry to burst your bubble.
Dependency (Score:2, Insightful)
, said the addict.
Build their economy? (Score:2)
It seems to me that if they were going to use the local power plant as a foundation for building the local economy, they might have gotten around to that by now. The plant has been there for decades, right? Looks to me like they squandered their chance as diversifying their tax and
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Yes, but this is in New York State and upstate NY at that. NYS has been taxing the living hell out of corporations for decades. It started under Rockefellar, Rocky never saw a tax he could resist. The Unions did their bit, and county governments did their bits...all to screw any enterprise that was productive out of their money. Dunkirk probably couldn't do much on its own.
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One of our townships in Michigan is in the same boat, except most of the power produced there is exported to New York; a lot of townships in Ontario are in the same boat, except most of the power produced there is exported to New York. We could save a lot of CO2 emissions by just stopping electricity from being imported by metro New York City.
Its a step forward, but not a permanent solution. (Score:2)
This is a temporary Measure at best. I see alot of anti-liberal and pro-conservative posts here. Let me make myself absolutely clear:
I'm not pro-development, I'm anti-living-in-the-past and reactionary-ism.
I don't think that cars are a bad thing in and of themselves. I think that cars burning petroleum is a bad thing. We should have cars, everyone needs cars, modernity is built around people having cars. But our cars should not be burning Petroleum. They should run on Electricity or some other Fuel source.
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We disagree with the speed in which you expect it to be done. It will take time to bring the price of all those other things down to be affordable for the masses. a tesla model S, while I would LOVE to own one is simply out of my, and most others price range at this time. Not to mention if we all switched to electric cars overnight, what does that do the the power grid? increased demand means increase in energy needed to be produced. how do we get there?
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There are plenty of ways to make cars better without going all-electric-all-the-time. Firstly they need to close all the loopholes in the fuel economy regulations that give free passes to big gas guzzling SUVs and crossovers (like the one that doesn't count them for fuel economy purposes if they happen to be capable of running on E85 even though most of them will never see a drop of E85 in their lifetime or the loophole that made the ugly-as-sin PT Cruiser count as a truck when it clearly wasn't or the regu
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Not everyone needs cars. Just pointing that out. Where I live many people don't have or need cars, because public transportation is so well developed. The public transportation uses electricity, which reduces the amount of pollution in the city center, and the electricity itself is created through environmentally-friendly means.
I think if you said "everyone needs transportation" that would be more accurate, but we could point out people that don't need transportation, and get nowhere :) No pun intended,
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Low-density, high-impact shit like solar panels and hydroelectric dams?
Hydroelectric dams I'll give you. Insofar as there is anything to give. All useful rivers that can be dammed for power already have been, on this continent. There will be no more hydroelectric dams built in North America.
But solar panels? Solar panels are not high impact, despite being low density. There are 100 million roofs in the US. Factor in all the deficits and that's still a monstrous amount of power. We just have to use it. And the roofs are already there, so the deployment impact is zero.
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Managing a distributed solar infrastructure is a nightmare. The companies that do so charge as much as your main utility.
Natural gas from: (Score:1)
just guessing here - Fracking?
And yet... (Score:2)
And yet there are news stories all over the place about how BECAUSE OF the mass switch to natural gas, my electricity bill is going up double digits...
Natural gas is just as bad as coal... (Score:2)
Natural gas produces just as high a greenhouse gas effect as coal.
http://environmentalresearchwe... [environmen...rchweb.org]
This gas fever needs to get real.
dont forget metals pollution angle (Score:2)
Re: It's still reacting carbon and oxygen... (Score:4, Insightful)
You say that and you are correct, but when the best solution we have right now, nuclear, is mentioned the greenies freak the hell out and star screaming and running around in circles. Until we actually embrace what is possible to do and stop wishing on new technology to catch up, we'll be stuck here for a while.
Re: It's still reacting carbon and oxygen... (Score:4, Insightful)
- it requres huge investement before nothing happens
- it takes years to construct a power plant
- it's pretty much unflexible regarding any peaks or lows in consumption
- the latest generation concrete housings' carbon foorprint takes a decade to offset
- provided the fuel mining, enrichement and transportation is almost carbon neutral
- the nuclear plants require a lot of sweet water for cooling, 24/7, and the world is running out
Oh, and nobody is willing to foot the bill, including insurance and decomissioning, so techically greenies don't really need to freak the hell out or start screaming, because mostly nuclear power is off the table due to practical issues. Which probably is why I don't know any greenies who do run around in circles. Actually, most of the greenies I know are free-market liberals. Now, *that* doesn't make any sense...
Re: It's still reacting carbon and oxygen... (Score:4, Informative)
Nuclear is dead in the US. It's been regulated to the point that it's not financially viable to build one. I know a guy who worked on the construction of one and he said what caused the massive costs overruns is that the plans constantly change while you are building. He said they would build a wall, then tear it down and build another wall with different specs then a year late the specs would change again. He built one wall four times. The cost overruns and impossibility to meet any kind of schedule kill it.
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That was then. Today we have settled on standardized new-generation plant designs that avoid this problem.
What's really needed is a change in our legal system to eliminate the disproportionate power that small groups of activists have to disrupt construction. Their strategy is to raise costs by imposing phony legal delays on construction after the initial approval.
Re: It's still reacting carbon and oxygen... (Score:5, Informative)
That was then. Today we have settled on standardized new-generation plant designs that avoid this problem.
What's really needed is a change in our legal system to eliminate the disproportionate power that small groups of activists have to disrupt construction. Their strategy is to raise costs by imposing phony legal delays on construction after the initial approval.
As a guy who very recently was involved in selling new power station equipment, I can say with 100% confidence that there is no such thing as a standardized power plant design in the USA. I was selling turbines to Duke, Southern Company, Exelon, Luminant, and many others. Every customer wanted something different. Some of them wanted triple redundant instruments on valves, and some were happy with dual redundancy. Some of them wanted the generator protection system to be redundant on 2 different vendor's kit, and some wanted redundancy with identical cabinets from the same vendor. Some wanted a stainless steel oil tank, and some were fine with the carbon steel + epoxy coating tank. Some of them wanted to have a large turbine deck to make maintenance easier, and some were cutting that cost since they were going to flip the plant anyway. We went into great detail about even the most mundane of things. Some of the customers wanted to have all our equipment numbering changed to their (internal and proprietary) numbering standard so that all the plants they owned had the same numbering scheme. No matter what our "standard" design was, someone had a problem with it. These guys know what they want and if it isn't included in your "standard" design, they want a price to make it happen.
This is a different philosophy from Europe and Asia, where standard designs are common and even preferred. But that's the US power market. Toshiba/Westinghouses' standard AP1000 plant isn't good enough for any of the US utilities who can afford to build such a thing. All the customers have their little quirks of wanting to be a little more safe in one area, or a little more convenient to operate, or a little cheaper to build. None of those changes affect the core safety principles of the design, they are just different. They do, however, drive up the build cost. Additionally, these plants don't get build often enough to keep the same crew on each job. By the time you build Unit #2, 10 years has gone by and a lot of the people who built Unit #1 have changed jobs or retired. It is difficult to keep such specialized experience in the economy if it is needed so rarely.
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After all those years of one-off nuclear projects that kept being redesigned in the middle of construction, the US came up with the AP-1000 as a standard. If we fixed our legal system to make standard infrastructure designs immune to junk lawsuits, what utility wouldn't want to build to the standard? Even as things are, the newest plants just permitted in the US are AP-1000s. This is also the design that China is now using.
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Keep pushing that canard. No activist has stopped the construction of a new power plant. The problem is financing. Banks don't want to lend the money because of the cost over-runs. That's why the nuclear industry has been pushing the government to guarantee those loans.
1. Shoreham.
2. When building a power plant will involve hundreds of millions of dollars in lawyers fees to keep your sort at bay, that tends to increase cost over-runs. Which your sort then uses as a further argument against nuclear power. (Yes, there are plenty of non-lawyer related cost overruns.)
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Keep pushing that canard. No activist has stopped the construction of a new power plant. The problem is financing. Banks don't want to lend the money because of the cost over-runs. That's why the nuclear industry has been pushing the government to guarantee those loans.
1. Shoreham.
Technically, no. Shoreham's construction was completed - it actually ran low power tests. What happened was not it was not permitted to begin commercial operation -- due to its singularly poor siting on Long Island, and Long Island Sound after the local community and state had had time to reflect on the wisdom of this particular license. In light of Fukushima, safety concerns about the siting of one of these first generation nuclear power plant designs were quite reasonable. This was a plant that should nev
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And incessant lawsuits.
Re: It's still reacting carbon and oxygen... (Score:4, Informative)
That's the problem with you "environmentalists".
* You don't like coal because it emits soot and C02
* You don't like gas because it still emits C02, even though it's way better than coal
* You don't like nuclear because, well, you name it. Excuse after excuse after excuse.
* You don't like Hydro because of the fishes.
* Some of you don't like large solar because of he turtles or whatever else crawls on the ground and will be denied the Sun.
* Some of you don't like wind because...hell, I don't know. The fact that some of you do is hilarious considering the trubines regularly kill endangered birds.
You pretty much don't like anything. You don't have a solution except austerity/rationing/restrictions/taxes.
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The more massive generalisations you make the less people should listen to you. You are merely projecting your own ideas of what an environmentalist is to you, and the battering it to death with a bizarre take on logic.
Environmentalists like power sources which don't adversely affect the environment. The clue is in the name. Rants like yours are simply embarrassing.
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Ha!
Environmentalists don't consider ANY power source to not adversely affect the environment. You mention any power source and I could probably find some environmentalists group that has objections.
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You're making a "I can find an idiot" argument, and expecting people to be bowled over by your amazing cognitive powers. You then take the existence of those idiots as an excuse for a "you'll never be happy" strawman.
CO2 is causing problems, right now. Real problems. Whatever bullshit objections you imagine someone might raise, the ones about excessive fossil fuel consumption are valid and every simplistic pro-fossil fuel argument you make needs to take that into account.
Period.
What I'm saying is whateve
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"you'll never be happy" is not a Strawman. Its existence is proven by this very topic...They want to convert the coal plant to natural gas and the environmentalists aren't happy...some strawman eh? Careful, this one walks, talks and files lawsuits.
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"Dunkirk's operator, NRG, wanted to mothball the plant in 2012, saying it was not economical to run. "
"The utility, National Grid, said shutting it down could make local power supplies less reliable, a problem that could be fixed by boosting transmission capacity—at a lower cost than repowering Dunkirk."
The issue the Dunkirk was refitted was because of political reasons. It had nothing to do with energy needs. So your argument holds no wate
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"The utility, National Grid, said shutting it down could make local power supplies less reliable..."
Hugh says it could be fixed by boosting transmission capacity.
Hmmm...The Utility or Hugh? Utility or Hugh?
I think I'll go with the Utility on that one.
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And I'm sorry, but what doesn't hold water is an argument that the Sierra Club is interested in saving anyone money.
They want the plant shut down, period.
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Just like a lot of Military base closings, It's all politics, it's the rule of reciprocity and what makes modern society even possible. Favors owed are favors to be repaid, without reciprocity your money would be useless, because basically all your money is worth is what it can buy and at the end of the day you can't eat gold. About the power grid, it's brittle, Northeast blackout of 2003 [wikipedia.org] was one tree brushing against one transmission line and one software bug. Everything effects everything, taking out a po
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I'm an environmentalist. I think converting coal to natural gas is a great idea. So, your general claim is disproven.
This was a Sierra Club lawsuit. The SIerra Club does not equal "all environmentalists".
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CO2 is causing problems, right now. Real problems.
Actually Crop production is at near record highes [fao.org], in part because the necessary nutrient CO2 is available in increased amounts. Both Arctic [uaf.edu] and Antarctic [uiuc.edu] sea ice is increasing, and there hasn't been any statistically significant Global Warming/Climate Change for 18 years; so please feel free to be more specific. If you'd go outside and actually experience some enviroment, you'd realizes that it's pretty fucking cold outside and we still have 4 weeks to go before winter starts.
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Actually Crop production is at near record highes
so far true
part because the necessary nutrient CO2 is available in increased amounts.
Oh look denier talking point that's been debunked a million times and has nothing at all to do with agricultural productivity.
Seriously, it's like you've never had a freshman biology or chemistry course, and then you amplify the basic ignorance about plant biology through a thousand implicit assumptions.
Heat and/or water tend to be the primary throttles on photosynthesis.
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So let me ask you something dave, what energy sources do you believe can replace coal and oil in the next 5 years and not cost more than we pay now? because in my experience just as the previous poster its impossible to get a real answer out of an environmentalist on what we should be doing, they only know what we shouldnt be doing.
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Nah, he told the true. You can find an environmentalist who likes wind but not solar, or nuclear but not hydro. The enviro movement, if I can call some so diffuse that, cannot collectively agree on anything. The only thing they can agree on are environmental regulations to stop something so they can cater to the one segment who doesn't like that something. The consequence is the polyglot energy systems we do have.
I believe in environmental regulations. However, choices have to be made. The biggest threat is
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I would use the term Schizophrenic.
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The more massive generalisations you make the less people should listen to you. You are merely projecting your own ideas of what an environmentalist is to you, and the battering it to death with a bizarre take on logic.
Who is listening to environmentalists these days? There's still a mass of laws and regulations they use to gum up the works constantly, but folks are starting to realize most environmentalists don't care so much about the environment as much as they hate their fellow man and his enjoyment of modern life.
Of course, you folks have your own tinpot dictator in the White House, who is a law unto himself and will probably service his ideological base with economy-crushing diktats.
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Do I also get to make sweeping generalizations about conservatives because you don't like government interference except to:
- control what I do in my bedroom
- control my social life
- control what I talk about
- control who I do business with
- control where I go
- control what I believe
- control what business I'm allowed to engage in
Just asking whether the "idiots are everywhere" and "generalizations are fun" rules can be abused in the other direction as well.
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Funny you should say that since the Libs want to:
- control what I do in my bedroom [npr.org]
- control my social life [diverseeducation.com]
- control what I talk about [thefire.org]
- control who I do business with [breitbart.com]
- control what I believe [ijreview.com]
- control what business I'm allowed to engage in [townhall.com]
It's time to reassess your opinion on who wants to to micromanage your life.
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You think you're refuting the GP's argument but you're actually bolstering it. GP says you shouldn't make sweeping generalizations about any one group. You show that's exactly the case because there is plenty of disagreement/contradiction within those generalized groups with your (somewhat dubious IMO) edge cases.
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Congratulations, CaptainLard gets it. Sycodon doesn't. I'll make another sweeping generalization: "conservatives can't read". This is fun! I can do this all day.
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And why don't *you* like austerity?
Re: It's still reacting carbon and oxygen... (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with nuclear, without even going close to the radiation boogeyman, is that:
- it requres huge investement before nothing happens
- it takes years to construct a power plant
- the nuclear plants require a lot of sweet water for cooling, 24/7, and the world is running out
I'm a fan of the mini-nuclear reactors. These are about the size of a bus, can be mass-produced to make them cheaper, and require no maintenance or cooling. They are extremely fault-tolerant - they only operate in a narrow thermal band, if they get too hot or too cold the reaction shuts itself down. One produces enough energy to power a small city, or a large neighborhood in a big city. You sink them in a concrete vault and forget about them for a decade or so. When their nuclear fuel is spent, you pull them out, get rid of the waste (about the size of a softball) refurbish and refuel the reactor and put it back in the ground.
The bonus side-effect is a more stable and efficient electrical grid with fewer long-haul high voltage power lines running all over the place, more redundancy and less centralization.
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Your perfect solution sounds perfect. Are there any working models in use?
I'm all for nuclear but what you're describing (no maintenance?!) doesn't exist. Please prove me and the rest of the world wrong. Right now it looks like the most promising candidate for your mini reactor is Lockheed's new fusion design. If they really get it up and running in 10 years we might have a chance of sustaining the environment our society has evolved to thrive in (assuming we also do CO2 sequestration because we're already
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These are about the size of a bus, can be mass-produced to make them cheaper, and require no maintenance or cooling.
Not quite true. They do require cooling. Fairly substantial infrastructure surrounds one of these things. Steam cycles don't happen in a shoebox if you want megawatts out of them. Concept art from one of the companies proposing them can be seen here [gen4energy.com]. So yeah, the reactor itself is the size of a bus, but the infrastructure surrounding it is the size of a substantial electrical substation. It's not exactly trivial.
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Yeah...they'd just have to dig one up and cart off all one hundred tons of it off in the middle of the night when no one is looking.
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Wow I guess all of the Nuclear Aircraft carriers are chugging around on unicorn farts and pixie dust!
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Ignoring the rest of your points...
No, they don't.
1) It's quite possible to build a nuclear power plant that has a closed-loop coolant system. The navies of the world have been doing it for better than half a century.
2) You don't want pure H2O in the coolant loop in a reactor. Hot water is quite corrosive, so you add chemicals to lessen the corrosive effects of the water. The navies of the world have be
And you forgot storing the waste.... (Score:2)
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Not really. Only once-through nuclear plants require large amounts of fresh water continuously. Most plants use cooling towers instead. Some plants don't even use water in the recirculating parts of the cooling systems (e.g. molten salt reactors).
Also, once-through reactors, if designed to do so, can use salt water instead of fresh water.
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It's all just about boiling water. We boiled water with wood, then coal, natural gas and now nuclear power. All these years and we're still boiling water.
Re:It's still reacting carbon and oxygen... (Score:4, Informative)
Well, Coal is very high in carbon, little hydrogen. Natural gas has a CH4 has 4 hydrogen to 1 carbon. Thus one CH4 burns to CO2 and 2-H2O
The heat from the H combustion adds no CO2 to the air and coal is over 90%(varies a lot with hard/soft coal - google that). In addition, the combustion of hydrogen makes more heat per mole than the combustion of carbon.
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this is a great stopgap to hold things over until alt fuels and battery storage become cheep enough for the avg american
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Maybe you should check out what these guys said... (Score:1)
It's still reacting carbon and oxygen... (Score:1)
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John Hillerman, the guy that played Higgs in "Magnum PI" had a better moustache.
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It wasn't always this way. In John Steinbeck's day, leftists celebrated the huge infrastructure projects of the New Deal, because they meant construction jobs now and an improved economy later with cheaper transportation, electricity and water. The left chose to turn anti-himan in the Seventies, which is why progress today has to wait until that generation ages out of political relevance. Fortunately for the rest of us, their youthful drug use is catching up with them.
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I bet they are all about reliable and inexpensive energy now that their oxygen pumps and other medical equipment relies on it.
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I'm sorry, but who is opposing big infrastructure projects such and putting peopel to work through new incarnations of the WPA and CCC in the wake of the recession?
It was the GOP that shot down those proposals.
Yes...we're so antihuman that we want to decrease pollution because its not good for human health, not good for the planets health.
I cant believe you are seriously making the statement that preferring solar/wind over fossil fuels is somehow anti-human.
You and your ilk repeatedly make these same sorts
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Then why is fear of science and its applications the default position of today's left whenever something new comes along? If fossil sources pollute, why won't you let us have nuclear? If spent nuclear fuel is piling up, why didn't you let us build recycling facilities, as the French did years ago, to make it into new fuel? If nuclear recycling is more expensive than mining under present conditions, why didn't you let us open that storage facility in Nevada, the one we spent $5 billion preparing, so that we
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What need of a comet? Species are already dying off at rates not seen in hundreds of millions of years.