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Future Looks Bright for Large Scale Solar Farms
Hugh Pickens writes "The economist reports that Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) systems that capture and focus the sun's rays to heat a working fluid and drive a turbine, are making a comeback. Although the world's largest solar farm was built over twenty years ago, until recently no new plants have been built. Now with the combination of federal energy credits, the enactment of renewable energy standards in many states, and public antipathy to coal fired power plant, the first such plant to be built in decades started providing 64 megawatts of electricity to Las Vegas this summer. Electricity from the Nevada plant costs an estimated 17 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh), but projections suggest that CSP power could fall to below ten cents per kWh as the technology improves. Coal power costs just 2-3 cents per kWh but that will likely rise if regulation eventually factors in the environmental costs of the carbon coal produces."
No. That would make sense. Common sense and reason are dead in our country. Dead. We do absolutely NOTHING that makes sense. We never change ANYTHING. This must be what Rome felt like in the end...A few people jumping up and down screaming at the top of their lungs while the majority stumbles around blindly patting themselves for being the absolute best...
http://www.google.co.za/search?q=%22deaths+per+year%22+from+coal&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a Either 10000 or 100000, depending which link you follow. Google is your friend!
62MW of Solar power. That's laughable, when your average gas turbine peaker cranks out a few hundred MW, and a big coal or nuclear station can crank out a 1000. Look at the energy portfolio of the USA, and its obvious, you need to have nuclear power if you want to get rid of coal.
I would further dispute the idea that there is a "cost" of global warming that should be recovered by the government by raising taxes on carbon. If that is not a liberal act of theft, I don't know what is. "Hi, your act imbalances the environment, so give me and my friends some money." That's what these messages are.
The real reason liberals are against nuclear power as a solution to global warming, rather than carbon taxes, is because, at the end of the day, they just want to steal your money for adding no value to the economy, just like they always do. I'm not disputing the science, but the salespeople pushing this are a bunch of fricking crooks.
Let's say for a minute, that global warming does come to pass, antarctica and iceland melt, the oceans rise, and even a billion people drown. My answer is: so what. The world population will still be higher than it is today, and, if it isn't, that's not a bad thing either. If the oceans rise up, sure, a bunch of people will have to move from the coastlines, but, look at all the construction jobs you'll get, and you'll have cities built with better transportation and newer technology. New York, London, and other coastal cities are all old anyway and its time to just move on.
Besides, you could take all of those disasters, and I'd almost rather have that, turning the whole world upside down, than give an extremist socialist liberal one thin dime. Let's see. Give the liberals money, or trash the planet. Sorry Earth.
It's just a no brainer. Better Dead than Red, means something to this day!
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They have the idea that they're going to store heat in huge steam accumulators. As TFA points out, however, it hasn't been proven that those would actually be workable at the necessary scale.
The final statement "... costs of the carbon coal produces.". Coal does not PRODUCE carbon when it is burned, it RELEASES it. Furthermore, if you take a picture of a 30 year old coal plant, and a 30 year old nuclear plant, you will see next to the coal plant a MOUNTIAN of coal that DWARFS the power plant; That is AT MOST a SIXTY DAY SUPPLY, and most of that is being released into the atmosphere. Look back at that picture of a nuclear plant; EVERY OUNCE OF FUEL IT HAS EVER USED IS STILL IN THAT PICTURE, in holding tanks within the plant. Now, the difference in their by-products is that, while the nuclear plant generates less waste matter, it is many times more harmful to us in the long run if not stored properly. Disasters like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island are exaggerated; they're not likely to happen again any time soon. The REAL cost of TMI was that the plant was LESS THAN 90 DAYS OLD, and was planned to last at least 30 years. Thus the power company involved had to build ANOTHER BRAND NEW nuclear power plant right next to the old one, and causing them to inflate the price of electricity to cover the costs of both plants. We also need to be building less hydro plants that rely on blocking rivers to generate power, and more that run in tandem with a nuclear plant to pump water into an artificial lake on off peak hours, and generate electricity during peak hours by draining the lake into a nearby river. Even FRANCE primarily uses nuclear power, so why shouldn't we? Hell, we consume other Frenchish things; like fries and toast....
The anti-coal fanatics need to get a grip. New environmental implementations on coal plants make these units very environmentally friendly. The united States is the Saudi Arabia of coal - If we want to reduce our foreign dependence on fossil fuels - we have an answer in coal. Coal plant construction is at an all time high - so statements that we are "running away from coal as fast as we can" are ridiculous. Wind and solar are good ideas in concept - but are not ready to supply even a fraction of the energy requirements used by the US. We enjoy relatively low cost energy in the united states - if we keep up the process that make it hard to build the necessary capacity to serve the needs - we WILL see energy prices increase drastically.
The right question to ask is where that infrastructure can be built:
Some 30 billion pounds of steam every year flow beneath the streets of Manhattan from the Battery to 96th Street. While it is unknown to most New Yorkers, Con Edison's subterranean steam system is the biggest steam district in the world, larger than the next four largest U.S. steam systems combined and boasting an annual steam production more than double that of Paris, Europe's largest system.
Rockefeller Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the United Nations [use steam] for heating and cooling - along with some 2,000 other customers and 100,000 buildings, from residential low-rises to commercial skyscrapers. All are in Manhattan, primarily because steam is most efficient and cost effective for high-rise buildings.
The number of steam customers has not increased in the past few years. "A lot of people don't know about it or don't know it's an option, or building owners don't want to go through the conversion process and don't want to spend the money to convert."
And so, for now at least, steam remains New York's neglected power source. "The steam system is a great asset to the city and delivers clean energy. We can clearly be doing more with it." Steam [2003]
Manhatten is a compact island with a population density of 67,000 people per square mile.
Manhatten is not hurting for lack of water - one gallon of water equals about eight pounds of steam.
The steam system is fueled by oil and natural gas. Manhatten draws its electricity from enormous hydroelectric plants upstate and in Canada.
The first system referred to in the article is at Kramer Junction in the Mojave Desert. Links: 1, 2. Angelenos, next time you're passing by that way, keep an eye peeled. It's really cool.
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>if it's just shipping it all to France, where they are disposing of the waste quite handily,
Sigh, instead of making uninformed comment like this, would it kill you to research the topic first?
A few facts:
- France has currently *zero* long term storage location: our politicians weren't able to pick one (the not in my backyard effect).
- Sure we have a good processing factory which is able to process the radioactive waste, it doesn't make radioactivity magically disappear and the 'waste from the waste' is sent back to the orginating country.
According to TFA the improvements are in simpler and more robust construction methods. Also, the manufacture of semiconductors is extremely toxic and high-energy; CSP plants use less toxic raw materials and more conventional manufacturing techniques. The manufacturing capacity to cover thousands of acres with PV cells would have to be developed; the capacity to cover thousands of acres with CSP exists already.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
>> Since when does C02 drive weather anyway? they ignore basic high school science. I found it amusing to watch a show the other night harping on about increased C02 raising sea water acidity, when in fact a warming ocean results in c02 ESCAPING the water.
.1 lower than it was at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, even as the oceans have been warming. According to your vast geochemical knowledge, shouldn't the opposite be happening?
You've clearly forgotten high school chemistry. Yet you're arrogant enough to believe that climate scientists are the ones who have forgotten.
If you have a system with water and a CO2 atmosphere in equilibrium, some concentration of CO2 will be dissolved in the water. Now, what happens if you double the CO2 in the atmosphere? More of it gets dissolved in the water. That's where the increased acidity comes from.
And yes, it's coming. pH is
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
In fact no. The plutonium is fabricated into MOX, but the uranium is stored because it is poisoned with U-236. Most of the reprocessing is just a precursor to long term storage and very little yields new fuel. The MOX is not subsequently reprocessed at all. http://www.wise-uranium.org/epfr.html. Considering that the French program devotes the output of three reactors to uranium enrichment, the energy return on energy invested is pretty low (less than 7) so that reenriching the spent uranium does not make a lot of sense even if it did not contaminate their enrichment facility. They might get a boost from going with centrifuge enrichment but that idea is currrently snarled up.
But solving the nuclear waste issue (or, more accurately, permitting one of the solutions to the nuclear waste problem to be implemented) is not optional. We have to do it to dispose of the waste we've already got. So one of the solutions to disposing of this waste will ultimately be implemented, even if it's just shipping it all to France, where they are disposing of the waste quite handily, thank you very much.
Actually France isn't doing so well with nuclear waste:
"Nuclear Wasteland"
FalconShould there be a Law?
Further research answers my own question: yes, we could use solar/nuclear electric to generate hydrogen and then combine it with biomass carbon to make liquid fuels. These guys worked it out:
"Sustainable Fuel for the Transportation Sector"
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0609921104v1
Switchgrass/biowaste/deadfetuses/kittens/etc + Hydrogen = fuel
6.2% of US land area would be needed, vs. over 50% for biofuels. Works because the process can turn ANY carbon-bearing biomass into fuel, rather than needing biomass with high energy content. Plants are just gatherers of atmospheric carbon, rather than the energy source. For solar-H, a negligible amount of additional land area would be needed for the solar collectors, since they're so much more efficient at solar energy capture than plants.
This makes me wonder... what if, instead of biomass, we just collected carbon right out of the air? Could we design CO2 collectors more efficient than plants, just as solar cells are more efficient photoelectric collectors than plants, due to being optimized single-purpose machines that don't expend energy constructing themselves? Perhaps use 1000 square miles of solar collectors + 1000 square miles of carbon collectors (maybe the same 1000 square miles), to run the vehicle fleet? No need to harvest and transport biomass, and the system would be mostly automated. But could we "mechanically" pull enough carbon out of the air to make it work?
Take 0.0383% CO2 in air x 15 psi x 144 sq-in/sq-ft x 5280x5280 sq-ft/sq-mile, get 23 million pounds of CO2 per square mile. Admittedly simplistic analysis, but interesting...
> Wrong. pressure and temperature are what effect it. even if you doubled the c02 ppm, that won't cause extra to be absorbed since the C02 isn't anymore more soluble.
Looks like someone doesn't understand Partial Pressure (Read about Henry's law on that page about the solubility of gases in liquids, which supports the GP and contradicts the parent.
So you are, in your own words: Wrong.