Which I disputed by providing a cite which documented the ampleness of the resource. My thesis then and now has remained
I stated then and still maintain
And
There is plenty of wind exploitable; its ongoing costs, including maintenance, are tiny, despite what you imagine ($8/MWh), and (same DOE source) “wind has consistently been priced at or below the low end of the wholesale power price range.” Still integration into a grid is, a that cite states, “manageable but not costless” and our poor transmission infrastructure makes its expansion trickier.
Once again, wind is not the answer. Most certainly neither is nuclear. Or natural gas. The best generating mix for any particular region will vary from region to region depending on local conditions and depending on whether or not carbon is monetized and to what degree. To eliminate nuclear as part of the potential set of solutions would be stupid; to believe that it is going to provide a lion’s share of the solution is unrealistic. Having a variety of tools available, all to be applied to the end of reducing greenhouse gases in a cost-effective, time efficient, and safe manner, makes the most sense.
Echoing WAM’s “what if” Una - would biomass co-firing gain interest back with carbon monetized? I’m guessing you’ve modeled different carbon tax and cap and trade contingencies at different natural gas and biomass resource costs. Under realistic assumptions how do they play out?
Okay. We’ve been talking about substantially different things. Local generation and off-grid is a different model.
I’ve heard an opinion that off-grid will be the way of the future, remote locations in China, India and Africa using photovoltaic roofing for electric lighting and then developing comfortable but electricity-frugal lifestyles around their spare capacity before the grid ever reaches them. LED lighting, thermal solar hot water, passive solar heating/cooling… all the stuff we should have been doing since 1970 but never bothered with because energy was so cheap. (Apart from LED lighting, of course.) Then they’ll teach us how to do it. It’s a nice idea. Try http://www.thersa.org/events/audio-and-past-events/2010/the-empathic-civilisation if you’re interested. It’s in the second half of the audio presentation (and presumably the video, which I haven’t watched.) It’s been left out of the Animate though.
Might be area-dependent. Try Subscribe to read. Doesn’t have a Google cached version, unfortunately.
I think that’s exactly what IS going to happen however, and India might end up selling their thorium reactor technology to US as the uranium price increases. We’d better hope that the AP1000 McNuke is foolproof because I think we’re going to be seeing a lot of them in a few more years.
On a more optimistic note, here’s a couple of papers on wind energy in China. At least 41 GW capacity there now, which is quite impressive. The area factor of wind isn’t so bad if you’re growing crops or something in between the towers. Still only equivalent to fourteen 1000 MW powerplants though, with a load factor of 33%.
I provided a comprehensive cite of power generation costs. That cite considered the cost of power from birth to death of the power plant.
Wind was not very competitive (in the game but not great…I noted its problems when scaled to sizes big enough to power a country which you never responded to). I noted the bonafides of the cite earlier as well.
(bolding mine)
I have said numerous times before and will say it again…
Wind power has a place in the mix. Solar does too.
Whatever makes sense is what should be done (with an eye to pollution and such as well).
It is my belief though that the power generation needs of the US cannot be met in a significant amount (say more that 20%) by solar and wind. We need something else. Massive power generation is only really managed by boiling water which leaves Coal/Gas/Nuclear (and maybe biomass mixed in).
I think that FTcom link might be dynamically generated depending where you’re searching from. Google china westinghouse and it should be in the top ten somewhere.
I should note that I ignore hydro power in the mix when talking about this because (IIRC) the US has all the hydro power it will ever get. There are not really any places left to build a hydro plant so as such, for the US, it is pretty much a done deal.
(This does not include tidal power or generators in sea currents…not sure how those pan out but guessing they do not measure up since aside from a few test facilities no one does it.)
Well…wouldn’t bounce off but close enough. Thing would pulverize before getting far.
It’d poke a hole and shred on the outer building. That’s where it’d blow up as the outer girders ripped through the plane. If the terrorist was lucky the plane’s engine would continue on a little and cause more damage.
It would not make it near the storage pool. Considering the strength of the pool the plane would make a mess and cause semi-minor damage but come nowhere close to causing the power plant serious problems.
First off, I do not believe I have ignored the concerns over scaling up for any single source, including wind.
I do appreciate that cite and particularly agree, as it seems do you, with its conclusion:
But that it also why I think the concern that wind is not a perfect answer in and of itself is a straw man. We are not trying to replace all our generation capacity right now. If we could get renewables up to 10% (forget about 20), maintain nuclear’s share as plants age out (which is an ambitious goal with nuclear), switch from some coal to natural gas, and so on - we’d exceed most CO2 reduction targets handily. None of them can do it on their own.
To answer both you and DSeid, absolutely, I forgot to include that - the death of the carbon tax (which likely isn’t going to happen for quite some time, if ever) has also been a big factor in utility biomass development decisions. However, I need to include that in the studies I’ve done over the last 5+ years as people were expecting some sort of carbon tax, at the utility level most people did not honestly believe that there would be one - it was a risk, but not viewed as being real. And the reason being, as I’ve been told by everyone from plant workers to the CEOs of giant utilities: the average American is a dumbass who cannot think past tomorrow. OK, those are my words summarizing a complex concept. Again, tell the people that their energy costs will suddenly go up by even 10%, and Democrats will be screaming for massive subsidies for the poor (defined usually as anyone who votes for them), and Republicans will be wailing about the ubiquitous “small business owners” who seemingly are gods who walk this very earth, and who must Not Be Touched.
I don’t think a carbon tax will get in place unless it’s either so gradual it’s like the apocryphal “frog in boiling water” or else a bunch of politicians decide they want to be one-termers and just do it. I mean really, look around at our culture. Our culture is hopelessly addicted and almost obscenely celebratory of waste and conspicuous consumption. A carbon tax directly assaults the self-righteous ignorance, prejudice, and fear of the average American dumbass.
However, there is another wrinkle - as comes up in discussions about cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel, there is serious concern about what the true carbon neutrality of biomass fuels is. When you start including everything from the fuel used in first tilling to nitrogen emissions from the fertilizer (a GHG itself) to the energy used to harvest, transport, prepare, size, and get everything to the plant, the true carbon neutrality is quite low with some fuels. And as has already happened in Denmark, you can get into situations where the utility and the government get engaged in huge legal battles over how to account for carbon neutrality: “do you include the carbon produced by building new combines and tractors?” came up in one case, for example, as well as “do you include the carbon used by replacing tires on the 300 fuel trucks which have to be operating 6 days a week to supply the plant.” Lawyers and engineers can peck the carbon benefit to death like PCP-crazed ducks.
This deserves a comment and it relates to my discussion with xtisme.
We actually have enough generating capacity now (pdf) to run 84% of the light duty fleet off of electricity (with a decrease in oil imports by 52% and an overall reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from the segment by up to 27%, even with our current coal-heavy generating mix) so long as they powered up in a valley-filling fashion. As that paper notes:
Valley-filling can be best accomplished with a smart-grid and a sizable portion of electric vehicles could also function in a vehicle to grid fashion (V2G) and serve as grid storage, buffering short term excess production and shortfalls. Hydrogen, synthetic fuels, and biofuels made with power plant inputs, could also be produced in a similar valley filling fashion and that without a smart grid (although I do not know the degree to which current excess capacity would meet the need with those options). The more lower CO2 producing generation we bring on board the better that calculus becomes. It is of note that some regions that are more natural gas and less coal now would have as much as a 40% decrease. Raise up the share of renewables and nuclear and the benefit goes up even higher.
For me, this is one of the best arguments in favor of a fossil carbon tax. We have a wondrous invention that quickly computes how inputs affect each other–the market and its prices. If we were to tax each ton of fossil carbon as it exited the ground, the costs of fossil carbon would quickly adjust prices across the economy in proportion to their dependence on fossil carbon. Trying to figure inputs on a case-by-case basis is expensive and fraught with potential error.
As for implementing a fossil carbon tax, if it’s done at the sources of the fossil carbon, it need not be expensive to administer. Politically, to make it happen, it should be revenue-neutral. The monies collected as the fossil carbon taxes should be distributed on an equal per-capita basis to everyone who fills out an income tax form. People who do not use fossil carbon will effectively be getting cash back. People who use more will pay for the privilege. The initial per-ton tax can start out low, maybe $0.01 per ton of fossil carbon, and can be increased slowly later.
Two workers got splashed with water that had over 10,000 times the safe level of radiation. That had to come from somewhere. It is far above normal plant radiation. That would suggest the internal containment vessels are broken too. So all the hand waving and shrugging about these plants being a proof of nuclear safety ,is wrong.
Unless of course they went to the hospital last week and got 40 million MRIs.
*"It has already reached a level 6 serious accident on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES).
Separately, calculations made by experts place the level of soil contamination in some locations at levels comparable to those found after the Chernobyl accident in 1986.
With the Fukushima plant continuing to release radiation, there is the danger that the contaminated land will be unusable for many years."*
It seems that Japan got themselves a “Fukushima exclusion zone”, that’s ca. 300.000 people permanently displaced.
It’s an interesting article that is beginning to examine some of the cost increases the US nuke industry is facing. It sounds like many plants are just barely getting by, and any new significant costs could easily push them into no longer feasible.
This could have a serious impact on the 23 plants we have running the same design as Fukushima. It sounds like those plants simply can’t be upgraded with the kinds of new safety features we’re talking about.
Yeah, convincing investors that it’s worth it at this point is going to be a real hard sell.
Cobalt was found in the water sample from the turbine building, the water that burned the feet of workers. There is no doubt any longer that reactor core material is leaking out.
No doubt any longer that is, for the media, who once more considers this a story.
OK… now my next concern is whether that leak is still largely contained within the building (or what’s left of it) or leaking out into the environment? Because the answer to that question will have significant ramifications.
The lack of solid data is maddening. It seems like the water was in the turbine building, but that is conjecture based on extensive analysis of the plant, which is all based on scant information.