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Just about the only chance to make hydrogen as a fuel worthwhile (compared to electricity production) is if we can use availably energy _directly_ for electrolysis or thermal decomposition in a way that's more efficient than making electricity. Since PV panels are wildly inefficient (albeit significantly more efficient than photosynthesis), a solution like this might turn out to be a game changer, making a hydrogen economy feasible instead of a subsidy-fueled wildly inefficient pipe-dream.

Thermal decomposition is how this would work, unless electricity becomes so cheap (or Hydrogen valuable) that the economics of electrolysis work.

The heat might come from very high temperature steam from gas-cooled high temperature nuclear reactors. This high temperature steam could potentially have a lot of industrial applications eventually, replacing natural gas powered process heat and reducing CO2 emission and methane leaks.

As a added bonus, higher temperatures mean higher thermodynamic efficiency, resulting in more electricity per unit of fuel, and less waste heat to dump.

You know the next part. China is eating our lunch in innovation, but somehow Donald Trump isn't hot and bothered. Huh.

I recall that just a few months ago California also tossed out all fossil fueled power generation plants in a similar move.

You really need to see someone about this memory issue. 'Cause that didn't happen.

Maybe you missed this: https://www.powermag.com/calif...

IF smog is your concern, do CNG powered buses.

Still produces some smog-forming chemicals. Also, they're already in place. This is plan is about replacing those buses as they reach EOL.

Also, it's not like this is hard to do. There's no new technology to invent. There's already cities that use 100% EV buses, and these cities are not small. So all that is needed is a reason to switch. And this regulation supplies that reason.

No, Not nearly as many. CNG is much cleaner as a motor fuel, especially diesel. Plus, with current emission standards, MOST newer gasoline powered vehicles are emitting cleaner vapors than they are ingesting when the air quality is bad. We have, at least in the USA, largely dealt with vehicle emissions and the production of smog. In fact, the majority of the problem is no longer vehicle emissions, but all the other things out there like law mowers, water heaters, manufacturing processes or even building materials.

But hey, don't let the facts get in way of a good narrative here..

You still haven't addressed HOW the state is going to get enough electricity to charge all these batteries. Which was my point. You cannot just toss fossil fuels out of the mix by buying electric vehicles because all that power needs to come from someplace.... All the "green" sources are going to rapidly be tapped out and then where will we be? (walking home in the dark instead of taking the bus most likely)

The problem with bulk solar production in Florida is night time demand. Due to the hot and humid climate, you don't see a major demand drop as you do in other parts of the country.
TECO in Tampa is converting their Big Bend power plant from coal to natural gas. They are also building solar farms.

https://www.powermag.com/tampa...
Florida power companies are no saints though. Look what they tried to pull over on the state's residents back in 2016
https://www.vox.com/science-an...

Don't get me wrong - I appreciate that nuclear power is still one of the safest options per unit power, and a dramatically better alternative than fossil fuels. And you're right about hydro power; dams don't have the best safety records (particularly in some countries) and have all their risk loaded up front with immediate deaths & damages. But I also think it's wrong to focus on immediate deaths as the only important metric, and to not overlook the significant long-term issues from a major nuclear accident (e.g. IEAE report on Chernobyl, Kyshtym & Windscale's deaths, or even Fukushima's estimated 1600 people dying as a result of "evacuation stress"). Comparatively, grid-scale solar entails very little construction risk (usually ground-level), insignificant operational risks per MWh, and the occupational hazards of mining for PV materials have to be less than the corresponding construction risks for a nuclear plant, mining & concentrating fuel etc.

Plus the cost of nuclear accidents is still very much a concern, and is the primary reason for the currently heavy regulatory oversight. Plant construction is also still very expensive. That's generally why I advocate for solar wherever it makes geographic sense, while nuclear is the best choice when cheaper options aren't suitable.

"Nuclear is as cheap as wind and solar wish they could be."

This is absolutely false. Variable costs of production are low, but the overhead is crushingly expensive, see below examples as well as the fact that even existing nuclear plants need state funding to stay online in deregulated states (NY, NJ, and IL already have Zero-Emission Credit legislation passed, while OH and PA have nuclear plants that will likely close without state intervention). Also the time it takes to build those plants is so long that even if the license applications to build up a huge fleet were submitted today they probably wouldn't be finished until around 2030 or later.

Summer plant in South Carolina, cancelled: original budgeted cost of $9.8 billion, "Analysts estimate completing construction could have ultimately cost more than $23 billion"

Vogtle plant in Georgia, still under construction: original cost estimate of $14.3 billion,
current estimate of over $27 billion. Original “guaranteed substantial completion date” of April 2016 and April 2017 for Vogtle Units 3 and 4, currently expected in November 2021 and Unit 4 in November 2022.

My evidence is observable reality. In a bid to save coal and nuclear power plants - which are unable to stay in business against cheaper alternatives - Trump has asked the DOE to force utilities to buy a certain amount of their power from these sources.

https://www.powermag.com/repor...

The DOE thankfully seems to be dragging their feet a little, and to my knowledge has yet to actually issue a formal order to enforce this. There is no active directive, but there is probably a draft one (the DOE's website for browsing draft directives is not working at the moment so I can't check). I suspect that the draft directive includes the 24-month investigation and temporary purchasing requirements mentioned in the articles. =Smidge=

You literally trumped him, using an actual Trump.

My evidence is observable reality. In a bid to save coal and nuclear power plants - which are unable to stay in business against cheaper alternatives - Trump has asked the DOE to force utilities to buy a certain amount of their power from these sources.

https://www.powermag.com/repor...

The DOE thankfully seems to be dragging their feet a little, and to my knowledge has yet to actually issue a formal order to enforce this. There is no active directive, but there is probably a draft one (the DOE's website for browsing draft directives is not working at the moment so I can't check). I suspect that the draft directive includes the 24-month investigation and temporary purchasing requirements mentioned in the articles.
=Smidge=

Exactly this. Concentrations of CO2 currently in the atmosphere are 400ppm, meaning 1 molecule of CO2 for every 2500 molecules of air. For that 1 molecule of CO2 to raise the ambient temperature of the surrounding 2499 molecules of other gases by 1C would mean that a single molecule of CO2 is emitting 2499 degrees of heat.

The air around the CO2 molecule is made up of the following components:

Nitrogen: 78.08%
Oxygen: 20.95%
Argon: 0.93%
Carbon dioxide: 0.035%
Methane: 0.00017%

And each one of these gases has a different specific heat capacity So that must mean that CO2 is one hell of a hot molecule. And no it is not absorbing and releasing that much thermal radiation to make any difference, only about 8% of blackbody radiation is picked up by CO2.

The primary argument is circular. The climate change acolytes know that water vapor is the #1 greenhouse gas, but they want to claim CO2 is the cause of warming so the argument goes that an increase in CO2 will heat things up just enough to increase the evaporation of the oceans to increase the amount of water vapor which will be the cause of the increase in temperature.

My mistake I was going by a 2016 article in the new york times, I guess I should have not trusted them on even this.
the usa is going with natural gas instead of coal it is cheaper and we have lots of it. New plants are being built for that and existing plants are being converted. https://www.powermag.com/new-g...

You are certainly the worst in coal emissions.

Nevah been done befoh. http://www.powermag.com/two-sc...

So 2014 wasn't far enough back for you, now you are using 2002 numbers?
Remember when talking about efficiency, China's coal is more efficient than US coal.

BTW, the CHinese coal fleet is pretty low at around 38.6% efficiency.
Of course, that is better efficiency than Europe's (38) and Americas (37.4).

Of course, the real problem is NOT efficiency, but amount of it being burned.
CHina has 1.2TW of coal plants running at 60% load factor, while BOTH America and Europe are at .25 TW running ~90-95% load. Note that this means that Europe and America can NOT increase their emissions from coal without building new plants. OTOH, about 700 GW of electricity for china is coming from its coal, and it can add another .5 GW over night. That is a LOT. IOW, just by running their current plants, they will use more coal than Europe and America COMBINED.

= = = http://www.powermag.com/ferc-b...
Throwing yet another twist into a long-running saga, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on April 27 blocked a pair of power purchase agreements (PPAs) that would have supported continued operation of FirstEnergy’s Davis-Besse nuclear plant and several aging coal-fired plants belonging to FirstEnergy and AEP.

The Pubic Utilities Commission of Ohio approved the PPAs on March 31 over strident objections from ratepayer groups and rival generators. FirstEnergy and AEP say the PPAs are necessary to keep the plants operating, and that their closure would imperil reliability in the state. Consumer groups charge that the deals, which would have allowed the utilities’ distribution units to purchase power from the plants at guaranteed, above-market rates for eight years, amounted to corporate welfare.

On April 27, in a pair of rulings, FERC agreed with the groups challenging the PPAs, rescinding previous waivers it had issued to FirstEnergy and AEP allowing them to purchase power from their affiliate generators. Loss of the waivers effectively blocks the utilities from purchasing power under the PPAs until FERC has had a chance to review them.

“While it is true that Ohio ratepayers will continue to have a statutory right to choose one retail supplier over another, we conclude, based on the record, that [Ohio ratepayers] are nonetheless captive in that they have no choice as to payment of the non-bypassable generation-related charges incurred under the Affiliate PPA,” the FERC ruling said. “These non-bypassable charges present the ‘potential for the inappropriate transfer of benefits from [captive] customers to the shareholders of the franchised public utility,’ and, thus, could undermine the goal of the Commission’s affiliate restrictions.”= = =

You need to read up a bit on the FERC, federal primacy in interstate power markets, and how the bulk electric system works.

sPh

Coal disasters are hard to clean up as well. Do some reading.

Yea, nuclear power will never work in the UK

nor do we have the money.

Yes we do, if we had any sort of a sane process. Most of the cost of a solar plant is spent just dealing with that. The actual cost of the plant is just little more than an equivalent coal plant, and takes about a year or two longer to build.

Nuclear plants are very expensive. Existing nuclear plants have been retired or warned about pending retirement if they don't receive a bailout.

These are existing plants that can't compete with the market prices for energy. The effective variable fuel costs for these units are quite a bit lower per MWh than coal or gas, so it is the fixed costs that are the problem.

So flat coal consumption is misleading - this would imply coal is growing as a percentage of energy mix given the economic situation.

Actually, I think it is more complicated than that. For instance, a small decrease in electricity demand would not prompt Germany to start dismantling plants. Some plants can easily be used less, while other may not. Older coal plants designed only for base load face significant challenges when trying to operate to accommodate turbulent demand. Accordingly, a downturn in demand could result in a higher mix of coal vs gas, but only because the gas generators are more flexible than the coal plants.

Another point worth mentioning is that improved efficiency is also the cause of decreasing demand. Unfortunately I am not able to find an actual percentage breakout, but I would guess that it is not insignificant due to recent trends like LED lighting. Accordingly, I think it would be unfair to exclude the efficiency improvement portion from the mix and then say that Germany was getting less green because of an increased coal mix. We should be comparing the work accomplished by electricity, not just raw electricity production.

The links provided in the story are the usual, information free sort one expects from mdsolar as he plies his anti-nook trade around Slashdot. There are better news stories written about this and the bottom line is a subcontractor is falling behind making "submodules." This story from yesterday points the finger at Chicago Bridge & Iron in Louisiana, and this story actually provides a little detail about the submodules that CB&I are trying to make. The builders are moving some of this work to other facilities and contractors because of CB&I failures. Another story a year ago also names CB&I as the culprit for delays.

So it's a manufacturing problem and not a regulator hold up. Manufacturing problems are solvable (we've built stuff like this many times) and not as appealing to mdsolar as a nasty regulatory tangle, so he deliberately avoided stories with specifics.

There are ways to cool without dumping heat into rivers and oceans or evaporating water.

Stirling engines? Well maybe. Do those produce economically meaningful output without a large temperature differential? Regardless, these problems have solutions already available in real power plants.

Power plants can isolate their heat to cooling ponds with little lost to evaporation. Examples:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_Station
http://www.powermag.com/coal/Rawhide-Energy-Station-Fort-Collins-Colorado_1444.html

Otherwise, where fresh water is abundant cooling towers work fine.

This is a cost problem. It costs more to maintain a pond. It costs more to build cooling towers. It costs more to locate your plant behind the first or second row of foothills, rather than directly on the beach:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Power_Plant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Onofre_Nuclear_Generating_Station

Here are some nice images of a 280MW coal fired power station in the US. This facility will power up to 10 of the Facebook data centers in question. There are also a few recently added 65MW GE 7EA turbines on the site, each capable of running two of these data centers.

BTW, those GE 7 frame turbines are common as dirt today with the rapid growth in natural gas power generation. GE can't build them fast enough.

I will preface this by saying I have no idea of the comparative cash flows in different countries, or between different parts of the utility/electric industry. That said...

In the U.S., if you are part of the power grid (critical infrastructure, also known as the Bulk Electric System, or BES) and are found in violation, NERC has the power to fine you one million dollars per violation, per day. This fine starts at the outset of the violation (not when it was actually discovered) and can continue until it is rectified. Example trade magazine discussion, second paragraph under NERC Basics.

Pumping water into hot rock does not acidify it.

Why wouldn't hot water dissolve minerals from the rocks?

http://www.powermag.com/issues/features/Assessing-the-Earthquake-Risk-of-Enhanced-Geothermal-Systems_2309_p3.html

EGS techniques such as ... acidization

not a bug because the increased frequency of tremors means less magnitude.

Basel sits on top of a large (200-km long) "locked" fault that had previously ruptured and leveled the city in the 14th century.

Except when one of them cracks your roof tiles.

Loan guarantees are very common in long-term projects. Projects that WILL pay for themselves provided they can get financing at a predictable rates. No one will finance a 50-100-year bond at a reasonable rate, at least not anymore.

So what power projects need loan guarantees to be viable?

1. thermal solar
2. hydroelectric
3. wind
4. nuclear
5. coal [1]

[1] - http://www.powermag.com/POWERnews/DOE-announces-$8-billion-in-loan-guarantees-for-coal-indust_1374.html

Why? Because lifetime of these projects is long and the cost of fuel they use is small in comparison to the capital costs.

Which fuel source doesn't require these guarantees? Gas.

Gas power stations are just gas turbines. These have reasonably small capital cost and most of the cost is the fuel.

Of course you MUST NOT base your electricity load on gas or any single energy source or you'll end up with a scenario like what happened in late 1990s - running out of gas. And if entire electricity infrastructure is gas based, well, let's say it screws the entire economy.

Anyway, without fossil fuels, the future energy mix is a mix of nuclear and renewables. And all of them need "load guarantees".

Because it doesn't make enough sense for sane people to back. If it will pay for itself and give reasonable return while generating cost-competetive power, it doesn't need the governement guaranteeing it with your money.

So one can make the same case against all long term technologies I've listed.

I hate subsidies (eg. feed in tariffs subsidies for renewables - utter waste - for example Germany is paying $0.35/kWh in feed-in subsidies to produce their 10% renewables), but loan guarantees ain't it provided that the project can prove that it will be cost competitive.

Yup, I've very aware of locate storage options out in the power distribution network.

I'm sure there are numbers, but from a completely un-informed standpoint it seems to me that the paraboloc trough designs where a slurry tube runs through a mirrored trough would be cheaper to produce and maintain? http://www.powermag.com/renewables/solar/Saguaro-Solar-Power-Plant-Red-Rock-Arizona_468.html

How about some mobile nuclear reactors, or as Wired titled an article:

In Soviet Union, nuclear reactors finds you!

  Russian mobile nuclear reactors

There are Power station ships, but given the power requirements of Japan, they would need 30 of these.

Though it looks like the future is going to be Modular nuclear reactors, which are smaller than the conventional 3 GigaWatt reactor, but can be strung together and transported by container.

Yes, but did you include the fact that the wind doesn't blow all the time? You would need a helluva lot of batteries to buffer all that fluctuation. What about the environmental impact of disposal of those? Also, how much power is that per unit area? Last I checked, they're not making new land (except a few volcanos...). With breeder reactors, it's possible to reduce the waste from a nuclear plant by over 90%. It also reduces fuel requirements. If you have a 1GW plant, it would take 10,000 tons/day of coal, or 1534 tons/day of 0.3% grade uranium (standard fission), or 1.6 tons/day (breeder). Coal has no future, it doesn't pack enough punch. Wind and solar are unstable and aren't always available. Hydroelectric is limited by the environment. Geothermal may be plausible for baseload generation, but is limited by being readily available mainly in unstable geologic regions (i.e. Yellowstone caldera). Meeting future energy demands is a multi-faceted issue.

We need nuclear breeder reactors located at least 50 miles from civilization in a stable location that is secure from leakage in the event of catastrophic failure and hundreds of miles of superconducting transmission line to efficiently get the power to where it's needed. We're lacking in that - the longest superconducting cable is only 50 miles.

coal use should be illegal in any country that wants to call itself civilized

Well, we have a long way to go before we stop using Coal in the USA. Map of coal fired power plants in the USA