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DOE Pumps $126.6 Million Into Carbon Sequestration
RickRussellTX writes "The DOE awarded $126.6 million in grants today to projects that will pump 1 million tons of CO2 into underground caverns at sites in California and Ohio. Environmental groups call carbon sequestration "a scam", claiming that it is too expensive and uncertain to be competitive with non-coal alternatives like wind and solar. I just hope nobody drops a Mentos down the wrong pipe."
..."claiming that it is too expensive and uncertain to be competitive with non-coal alternatives like wind and solar."
Why can't we do both? Damn environmentalists meddling again. Never wanting to compromise or find some benefits in alternatives.
Carbon sequestration is like burying a ticking bomb in your backyard. A much better solution is carbon mineral sequestration - turning the carbon into rocks of some kind. That way, unlike underground sequestration (which has the potential to leak straight back into the atmosphere), the carbon stays where it is put.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Actually, my main concern is "what if it escapes?". Considering that CO2 is heavier than Oxygen, I wouldn't like to be anywhere near (i.e. within tens of km if not more) a site that stores thousands of tons of CO2.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
That's the main problem with environmental groups. At their core, many of them are just as immune to rational argument and unwilling to consider proposals that don't line up with their pre-conceived notions as the fossil fuel industries and their pet politicians.
The arguments against sequestration are (so far as I've seen) just as bogus as the anti-nuclear waste disposal arguments. I'm glad that these groups recognize when there are problems with any given technology, I just wish their response to any attempt to address the problem wasn't a knee-jerk claim that the proposed fix was a scam and that the only solution was to abandon the technology and switch to moonbeams.
--MarkusQ
We produce possibly harmful waste and bury it deep underground.
What can possibly go wrong with such a foolproof plan?
Hope you don't live near or at least this type of disaster doesn't happen there.
The USA: Dumping their problems into holes and sealing them off...since...forever.
Obligatory blog plug: http://www.caseybanner.ca/
By a quick calculation from Wikipedia, there are about 1.9 trillion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere.
What exactly is the point of this endeavour?
Can't we just plant trees? I heard that natural swamp ecosystems can be used to purify water better than our industrial plants. We could create a project that actually does something useful.
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that's why all the plans involve putting it down somewhere. I'd oppose sequestration in huge towers outside of major metropolitan areas, but putting it deep down in the ground makes a lot of sense.
--MarkusQ
1. Grow Bamboo 2. Drop down old salt mine or other large hole. 3. ??? 4. Profit!
meh
I like how 'environmental groups' is a link to a single source: Greenpeace.
As we all know, they're the kind of people that we can have a good intelligent discussion with, right? Of course, anyone that doesn't fall in line with their philosophy is some sort of heretic, even if they happen to be one of their own founders that disagrees with a long-standing platform of the organization.
I'd have a lot more respect for them if they also condemned Al Gore and his pimping of useless carbon credits that happen to fatten his own pockets...
"We'll need 2000 crickets, 4 cans of Easy Cheese, and the fluid from 18 glowsticks for this plan to work...." - ph0n1c
is the biggest environmental fraud. I'd like to sentence the perpetrators to hold their breath so they stop emitting "polluting" carbon dioxide.
"many of them are just as immune to rational argument"
Your statement hinges on the fact that coal industry has indeed given any rational arguments to support the burying of CO2 (A very literal way of 'burying your head in the sand', don't you think?). Let's step back and look at the problem. The main issue we have the moment is global warming being caused by an excess of greenhouses gases, predominantly CO2 in the atmosphere. We need solutions. Renewable energy is a solution. Cutting back on energy usage is a solution. And yes, even sequestration is a solution. However, what are the best and most effective solutions to take? Cutting back our usage can be done now and it can have significant effects in the area of reducing CO2 output. Renewables are already a proven technology and lack only significant funding to make them more common. That said, in many countries and states funding is significant and renewable energy targets are set to be met. Now let's look at sequestration. Is it proven? Only in laboratories. Which if you consider the scale and possible ramifications of the process is a fairly useless sticking point. Is it safe? Well you decide for yourself. Pumping millions of tonnes into underground caverns? Versus building windmills, hydro plants and solar farms. Does it solve our problems? In the short term it prevents CO2 from immediately going into the atmosphere but burying it can't continue indefinitely, and it does nothing to reduce our reliance on coal - a finite source.
The idea virtually is a scam, it's the coal industry asking for grants and subsidies all across the world to support a dying business instead of looking the facts in the face and realising that renewables are the way of the future. No amount of exaggeration (Moonbeams?) on your part will change that.
"Cutting back on energy usage is a solution."
What you really meant to say is that massive depopulation of the earth is the solution, since at this point we can only reduce the rate at which energy consumption grows, not the overall rate at which energy is consumed.
I wonder if Greenpeace realizes the choice isn't between coal plants with sequestered carbon and windmills. In reality, barring some fortuitous breakthrough in solar power, as oil gets more expensive the choice will be between coal plants with this technology and coal plants without it. I believe Greenpeace has completely overestimated the average person's willingness to make lifestyle sacrifices for the sake of atmospheric carbon reductions.
I wish organizations like this would try to be part of the solution instead of just trying to limit our options. You can't accuse the coal companies of proposing a technology that isn't economically feasible on the one hand and then propose wholesale conversion to technologies that are even less economically feasible.
We wouldn't even have this problem if the very same people hadn't killed the nuclear industry through scaremongering and excessive litigation.
How much CO2 is generated in the process of accumulating, pressurizing, and delivering it? When you have worked through all of the ripple effect, I bet they generate a pound of CO2 for each pound they sequester.
This is no different from Wile E. Coyote's electric fan-powered sailboat.
Or the ethenol believers who conveniently neglect the big fire they have to put under that still.
I didn't know the Department of Education was interested in carbon sequestration... Sounds like a euphemism for larger class sizes.
/. editors, please spell out acronyms.
Seriously,
yeah right, solar is what, $10 per watt still? what a joke.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
One way CO2 is being sequestered now is with enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Even though it sounds like you're just pulling more hydrocarbons out of the ground (e.g. bad), think of it this way: if you're pumping more CO2 into the ground then produced from combustion of the oil taken out, you've just made all that oil carbon neutral.
we have 100's of years worth of coal. why can't you people understand this fact.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Bamboo rots. Gives off methane and CO2. Methane is almost 30x as bad a greenhouse gas as CO2.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Environmental groups call carbon sequestration "a scam"
Well, as the experts in scams, they would know.
Carbon Credits/Offsets are the modern version of Catholic Indulgences.
Personally I'd like to know if an earthquake or shifting in an inconvienent place would cause CO2 leakage.
but perhaps not a sustainable environmental model.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
that's why all the plans involve putting it down somewhere.
If it was stored in gas form at atmospheric pressure, it wouldn't be a problem (it would just be silly). The problem is that if it's stored in highly compressed or solid form, then if something goes wrong and it goes back to gas, it *will* go up and escape, potentially killing anyone in the area.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
"Laugh while you can a-monkey boy!" - Dr Emilio Lizardo
Hundreds of years if our current consumption levels don't increase. Since energy consumption increases exponentially...
We also don't have enough "underground caverns" to fit hundreds of years worth of CO2. In addition searching and mining for more and more coal resources is going to have detrimental effects on the environment as a whole. All my points still stand.
To get horses to jump over fences, and they want to do it with elemental carbon? Craziness, I say!
$126 Million looks like spare change compared to what the DOD (Department of War) is spending on Iraq Sequestration.
California might not be the best spot for storing of carbon underground..... Heard of an Earthquake?
Not except in some green fever dream.
We will need everything we got including wind, thermal, biomass, nuclear, and good old black gold just to keep up with the inevitable buildout of the third world.
And you if think enough wind farms, biomass farms, and solar panels to supply our demands won't harm the environment as much as oil and coal, you are naive.
Everything we use for our energy supply will have costs to the environment. We must be smart. Scrub the smokestacks, reclaim the mines, kill the birds but try to minimize, plow over the forests for more farms, but use the best techniques and preserve the remaining forests smartly with corridors for animals.
There is no choice between a dirty hydrocarbon past and a clean green future. There is no such thing. There are no free lunches in anything.
Without sequestration, then, mankind has no defense against a natural carbon dioxide increase. The simple fact of the matter is that while man might dump 8 gigatons of carbon into the environment, the biosphere is churning through nearly one hundred times the amount. Balancing human emissions won't guarantee a stable system - that's a mathematical impossibility, and the geologic record shows it.
If you are going to manage atmospheric gases, then manage them. Otherwise, quit moaning the about the threat of GW. Just because man may choose not to do it does not mean that nature will agree.
This is my sig.
It looks as though we are going to need sequestration from the atmosphere based on what is becoming understood about the sensitivity of the climate to grenhouse gasses http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TargetCO2_20080317.pdf
In my opinion, a solid is much more compatible with storing carbon in the Earth than a gas, but even if we are to store a gas, it does not make a whole lot of sense to use up what capacity there may be on burning coal. Coal is already nicely sequestered.
Al Gore should get a commission.
Hydrocarbons contain much more carbon by volume than CO2. Replacing the hydrocarbons with CO2 would still represent an outflux of carbon.
That's exactly the sort of thing I mean. Carbon sequestration is an idea. There are arguments for and against it, and each of these arguments will have some degree of merit and applicability. If you are being rational, that's all that matters. I am making no assumption whatsoever about where the arguments come from, but you immediately attribute them to the coal industry. I fail to see how this is productive.
Not in and of itself, surely. The things most people mean by "renewable energy" simply aren't up to the task, and most have not-so-hidden costs that make them worse than the alternative (and given how bad fossil fuels are, that's saying something. If you're talking about nuclear, space based solar, or sacrificing most of the world's deserts to do molten salt solar I might buy it, but I doubt that's hat you're thinking.Not unless you are going to impose your plan through the use of force, and are willing to kill a large number of people in the process. Tem million uppies switching to compact florescent bulbs isn't going to do it.
I fear this (and only this) is the real objection. Which (if true) is sad since a) it would be better to focus on solving the actual problem (HCGW) and not get distracted by red herrings (reliance on coal), and b) the very fact that fossil fuels are finite resources is a good thing.
We'd really be screwed if there were effectively unlimited supplies of coal that could be profitably mined at today's prices. Global Warming would then be truly impossible to prevent. Luckily, supplies are limited and thus prices will continue to go up and up until alternative are much more attractive. That is what will send the fossil fuel industry packing, leaving them on the discard pile with slide rules, steam shovels, and buggy whips.
Flip, yes, but not entirely an exaggeration. Some of the "alternative energy sources" that have been proposed over the years actually yield, in the best case, less energy than the Earth gets in the form of sunlight reflected off the moon. But I will concede that such flippancy is counterproductive and detracts from my main point.
--MarkusQ
The idea virtually is a scam, it's the coal industry asking for grants and subsidies all across the world to support a dying business instead of looking the facts in the face and realising that renewables are the way of the future. No amount of exaggeration (Moonbeams?) on your part will change tha
The fact of the matter is that right now there is no alternative energy technology that competes with coal. If there were, people would be using that. But it doesn't exist. You can say that coal has a future, but until you produce a few trillion watts of 24x7 reliable power from windmills on a calm day and solar panels on a cloudy day, then, alternative energy doesn't have a leg to stand on.
Even already in Texas, which mandated alternative energy, customers in ERCOT are looking either at blackouts when the windmills don't go, or, they import their energy from some place, that well, uses coal.
This is my sig.
I'm amazed every week when the DOE announces another multi-million grant or partnership or RFP all the while they are starving their own National Laboratory system. In 10 years the DOE budget has grown modestly. However, the $$ that the DOE headquarters receives has grown from 1.5 billion to nearly 5 billion - and the $$ at most DOE labs has been flat (effectively a budget reduction due to inflation).
The Leadership in DC must feel they know what science will best serve the future - as apposed to the scientists who actually do the science.
So I wonder, is the carbon sequestration a bottom up effort or a top down effort?
Gas at atmospheric pressure in air is only one possible solution. For another, consider that at higher pressure, CO2 is denser than water under the same conditions. Thus, if sequestered under the sea it would be even more stable than the gas at one atmosphere in air case. There are other solutions as well.
CO2 is not as simple a substance as you seem to be supposing, nor are extrapolations from familiar situations always valid..
--MarkusQ
What we don't have is 100's of years worth of atmosphere to pump greenhouse gases into without it making a very visible difference.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Wouldn't it be less expensive to pump CO2?
Yeah I dunno, sequestration kinda makes sense. I think that rather than fighting the capitalists tooth and nail, the environmentalists need to look at how we can best find a compromise. Economics is always going to be the strongest driving force in any reduction in greenhouse emissions. We need to look at what are the most economically viable ways of achieving our goals visa-vis reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And at the moment, the most viable way is nuclear power, and carbon sequestration.
What I would like to see is a decentralisation of power production. Set up a scheme whereby households can generate their own green power (via solar panels, hyrdogen fuel cells, whatever) and sell the excess back into the grid. The power companies would eventually just become energy brokers rather than producers.
$126M buys 126000KW, i.e., 126MW of installed wind power. At a power factor of 30% this produces 38MW of power.
A coal powered plant would produce 300000 Tons of CO2 a year to generate this power. Three years of operation would mean 1M tons of CO2 not released into the atmosphere.
For a gas-powered plant, it would be 6 years. For an oil powered plant, 4 years.
A 38MW plant is not really much power, and is a drop in the bucket. On the other hand the research benefits from this project are not easily quantifiable. So I'd go with the research on this one!
References:
http://www.seen.org/pages/db/method.shtml
http://www.windpower.org/en/tour/econ/index.htm
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
Let me guess. It this the co-worker that told you about Obama and the swearing in on the "kuran"? Or perhaps he told you to buy some excite (or enzite, or something like that ). Or he told you that the Federal Budget has been balanced, but those GD dems unbalanced it again? Because they all have the same validity.
They are talking about sequestering co2 right, not carbon. That means they sequester two oxygen molecules for every one carbon molecule.
Sounds like a bad idea.
To play devil's advocate, all that carbon is underground right now. Who says we can't put it back later?
Sequestration has only been proven effect in labs...
... sequestered?
Where did all that carbon that was released into the atmosphere come from? Could it be that it was
Imagine that. All part of the carbon cycle. Get over it.
A much better plan would be oxygen sequestration... then you could sell it back to people when we run out!
But really, carbon credits seem to be a good idea. Without such a carbon economy, what's really to stop people from sucking up all of the oxygen and pumping out carbon dioxide on a massive, teraformational scale?
As opposed to Carbon credits/offsets?
Time to wake up: it's because they're in control that things suck so much.
Well, if you're going to go off on a tangential rant, I'll tell you why everything sucks, it's because of "limited liability" corporations.
Now, I'm sure 500 commies will jump me and tell me why it's oh so vital that we have the corporate charter.
Most of them will say "But you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette!" But when it comes time to pay for those eggs? "Not I!" said the fat cat, "Not I!" said the mangy dog, "Not I!" said the communist pig.
Without this "everyone else can pay to clean my shit off their shoe and they'll LIKE it!" attitude, companies would have to prove (to themselves, to their shareholders, to the public, and likely to the courts) that what they intend to do will work and won't cause actionable damage. At that point, we'll be certain that anything happening is either A) because of something someone did, and WILL pay for or B) really isn't anyone's fault.
Burning 1 gallon of gasoline produces 18 pounds of CO2. It only takes 111 gallons to equal a ton, or almost $500 of gas. For their 126M, they are going to sequester 100M tons, so they are paying over 1M per ton of CO2 sequestered. Are they completely frigging nuts???
Huh, let's see, of all of the places they could be running an experiment in trapping gases underground, these two don't sound promising to me. San Joaquin, that's like, populated. And a geological feature in Ohio with Sandstone in its name does not give me the cozy feeling of being really airtight. This has always seemed like a bad idea to me (since we already know that large C02 leaks are very deadly), and then they are doing the large-scale experiments in unlikely and risky sounding places. Way to get the public on your side . . .
strange as it may seem I'm beginning to wonder if instead of recycling my newspapers I should sequester their carbon - send them to the dump ....
Doesn't nature provide carbon sequestration in the form of Wood? Wouldn't cutting down a forest and building stuff out of the wood, meanwhile letting the forest regrow, effectively remove carbon out of the system?
Could someone please check to make sure there aren't any missing government laptops in the caverns.
I love dry ice bombs...
...humans need water to live. So go stick your head in a bucket of it.
Too much of anything is as bad as too little.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
not if the C02 is put in there under enough pressure. though unsure if that much pressure is feasible.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
if sequestered under the sea it would be even more stable than the gas at one atmosphere in air case.
However CO2 reacts with water to form acid. Because of this the world's oceans are acidifying. This acidification creates more problems, for instance it eats coral reefs and the shell of shellfish, and who know how many fish can't live in acidic environs?
FalconShould there be a Law?
The arguments against sequestration are (so far as I've seen) just as bogus as the anti-nuclear waste disposal arguments.
Oh really? And if the arguments against nuclear waste disposal are bogus I suppose you wouldn't mind the waste being disposed of in your back yard.
FalconShould there be a Law?
And yet, a natural carbon dioxide is the least of our worries - its mostly unpredicatble. However, human emissions are predictable - and forecast to grow at exponential rates
... what happens when Africa decides to get air conditioning?
There's so many problems here I don't even know where to begin.
China now exceeds the USA in CO2 emissions. Part of this is economic growth, but a surprising share is because of a massive coal seam fire that is expected to burn for at least another 50 years. The coal fire alone already produces more emissions than all US cars combined. The Chinese are exempt from Kyoto...
SO, US EMISSIONS CUTS CANNOT POSSIBLY WORK BECAUSE THE CHINESE ALREADY PRODUCE MORE CO2 THAN THE USA. Even if we go to ZERO emissions, the net CO2 balance in the atmosphere will continue to grow. Given that China has more people than the USA and EU combined, it stands to reason that China will reach a point in CO2 emissions where complete and total sequestration by all of NATO will not be sufficient to halt an increase in greenhouse gases.
Now if you think China is going to suddenly see the light and change its act, think again. China is spending billions of buckazoids a year to commission ever more coal plants. She's also making Coal to Liquids plants and is investing heavily in oil exploration off of her own shores, off Africa, and is working to build ties to the middle east.
'Managing' atmospheric gases does not mean hiding them like a corpse or feces and hoping no-one notices. It means reducing consumption, primarily, as this reduces overall emissions. Increasing emissions while relying on unproven technology to be your saviour is extremely juvenile and short-sighted.
No. Managing atmospheric must include sequestration. Please see above, and while you are at it, also add carbon emissions for the developing third world
We have to be able to take CO2 out of the air, and put it somewhere. Sorry, that's just the case. Anything that doesn't include sequestration is just a fantasy.
This is my sig.
Their mentality is quite common in the environmental movement. It is very much a movement based on problems, not solutions. That is perhaps one of the reasons it attracts cause heads that are passionate for awhile then move on. It is easy to scream about how fucked we are and point out why everything is bad, much harder to come up with realistic, workable, solutions.
So while Greenpeace may be one of the bigger, more recognizable names, their mentality is unfortunately all too common.
1 billion years ago a thriving carbon based society on earth faced exactly the same problems as us. They also came up with the bright idea that carbon dioxide could be pumped into the ground. They mixed it with water and did so. (Un)Fortunately it was too late and they went extinct.
Years of high temperature and pressure turned this into coal and oil which we now mine today...
Coal is a renewable resource!
How about we solidify our carbon into blocks (such as adding calcium as previously mentioned), and then just hurl the whole damn thing directly into the sun, or into the void of space?
:P
I mean, it can't be that bad if it just burns up into nothing after contacting the sun..
127.0.0.1
Perhaps you replied to the wrong post.
What kind of engineer? Sanitation enginneer? That's just utterly rediculous.
I have no idea, he's not my friend. He's the friend of the person I replied to.
No spud, you don't run electric space heaters, dryers and stoves off solar. The first thing you do is get rid of all the overconsumptive stuff.
Space heaters, whether electric or gas, aren't very efficient. Radiant floor heating is more efficient. Solar dryers are the most efficient as well, the oldtime version is the cloths line. And Solar cookers are quite good. As for overconsumption, when designing for off the grid living, the first thing that's usually focused on is conservation, people reduce what's needed and then what is needed energy efficient models are used.
FalconShould there be a Law?
You're obviously right - those durn scientists just want more money. Noone is actually concerned about the future of the planet, the glacial sheets or the potential for civilization-ending change, clearly, they just want funding. That is, I'm hard pressed to find any other motive that could possibly rationalize your argument and place it in the realm of the possible.
Out of curiosity, are you also one of the card-carrying members of the 'Ozone hole is a scam' club? My landlady a long time ago was my first close encounter with one of this kind - when she said the ozone hole is a conspiracy made up by scientists, my eyes almost popped out.
Sure there is, one is called Global Warming. And the Inuit in the Arctic Circle are paying for it, with their lives. Southeast Asia will pay for it when ocean level rise. People in Appalachia are paying for it. Try again.
FalconShould there be a Law?
This always seemed like more of a band-aide (and a poor band-aide at that) than a solution. It doesn't do anything to reduce the amount of carbon being produce.
The gates in my computer are AND, OR and NOT; they are not Bill.
That said, the pile released from burning fossil fuels is even bigger again. There's no way we could plant enough extra biomass to do the job of sequestering all the CO2 we produce.
There's one possible exception - algae in the ocean, but I'm reserving judgment on that one until it's clearer that it a) doesn't just replace one environmental disaster with another, and b) that the dead algae stay as solid carbon on the ocean floor, as promised.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Given the importance of finding less carbon-intensive energy sources, and that so many people are wedded to coal, you'd think that it'd be worth spending $125 Billion on the technology if we're really serious about the issue.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Carbon sequestration not a scam? Do you know what "sequestration" means? It means "hiding". It is exactly the same as "sweeping your problems under the rug". Now, I don't know if you have a huge lump of old rotting dirt under your rug, but personally, I sweep up or vacuum up dirt, and do my best to avoid messing the floor up in the first place.
They pick carbon sequestration, because industries are afraid to change their business model.
There are lots and lots of good solutions to this problem, that are thirsting for a little funding. Carbon sequestration just isn't one of them.
Citation please. Heck, I'll provide one. MIT's "Tech Review" says "Solar power cost about $4 a watt in the early 2000s". That's less than half of what you say.
FalconShould there be a Law?
This idea reminds me of the episode of the Simpsons where Homer buries all of Springfield's garbage underground ...and we all know what happened there
If all the CO2 ends up underground, won't the trees suffocate ?
Won't someone think of the trees !!!!!
Man, I would not want to live anywhere near one of these storage facilities.
On the other hand, from wikipedia "To further investigate the safety of CO2 sequestration, we can look into Norway's Sleipner gas field, as it is the oldest plant that stores CO2 on an industrial scale. According to an environmental assessment of the gas field which was conducted after ten years of operation, the author affirmed that geosequestration of CO2 was the most definite way to store CO2 permanently. [4]
"Available geological information shows absence of major tectonic events after the deposition of the Utsira formation [saline reservoir]. This implies that the geological environment is tectonically stable and a site suitable for carbon dioxide storage. The solubility trapping [is] the most permanent and secure form of geological storage." [4]"
This sounds pretty exact-opposite of what the greenpeace hippy terro... activists are saying.
Ace
AL Gore has no need for a new commission, his family's a large investor in Oxy, Occidental Petroleum.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Please at least add nuclear to your list. Nuclear can make the US self sufficient in energy, AND it is better than the bucketload of coal power you have and use.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Or you could take all your atom bomb, lower the grade concentration of U235, and use it in civil central. Just saying.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
There are ways to enrich spent fuel. I think USSR was pretty good at that and I presume technology wasn't lost. Any reactor fuel can be enriched and reused for the rod manufacturing using centrifuge based density separation. Appearantly relatively small loss of Uranium concentration in rods makes them close to useless. Problem is (appearantly) that it's cheaper to mine uranium than to enrich spent fuel. Right now we dump that fuel underground into either storage facilities or back into mines where it happily decays (or worse places). I think it's a major waste because fissile materials are only economical way for humanity to make a (controlled) matter to energy conversion.
But anyways, I think use of Plutonium for reactors is a very good idea. Unfortunately with Plutonium it's too easy to deliver power of atom into every home if you catch my drift. So I do not believe Plutonium can become available because it makes some people tipsy. Ok, it makes a lot of people tipsy... literally if you are stand close enough to be able to piss without a flash light.
On another note some Uranium deposits are so rich that they are impossible to mine. Even in Africa.
given that the norwegians have been doing real carbon sequestration into salt domes for 10 years, I'm struggling to understand why you think its just bad lab science.
Panels are too expensive to manufacture. Currently there are 2 ways to deal with the problem none of which are economically acceptable for a house. Both use arrays of mirrors that focus on a single point which could be either high efficiency solar panel capable of operating under extreme temperatures or something that heats salt. As far as I know only thermal solar power has been applied, in two commercial power plants. There is a reason for that. Black pipe doesn't need to be replaced as often as uber high tech high efficiency solar panel capable of withstanding 600C or more. It's funny may be you could combine both since whatever solar cell missed can be collected as heat.
On the side note how long do you think it takes to pay off a mine or a rig? I takes fucking decades. 40-50 years? Ok may be not a rig since it's a portable mine. I suppose depends on type of mine but investment is sick. Sure it's viable now, but sun unlike oil will not run out any time soon which removes the need to move solar plant. Solar plants have a lot less moving parts (gas pressure controlled array alignment) than a rig and mirrors decay at a much slower rate than solar panels do. It's all about mass production. If there was a way to stamp low tech solar plants... All we need is mirrors. A lot of them. It's just technology is dumb as a brick and because of that solar power plant can last for a veeeery long time.
What a waste of money! Laughable.
Very fitting, considering global warming is a myth in the first place!
for just 10 seconds a day, we could reduce CO2 emissions considerably.
Do your part!
(Enviros are so gullible)
Maybe if electric fusion can generate surplus, economical power, it would be wiser to just create gasoline from water and air? Hydrocarbons can store hydrogen in high densities much more safely and easily than via compression, and recycling carbon dioxide would result in zero net additional CO2.. Who knows, if the WB-series of fusors can be scaled up enough, maybe it'd eventually be cheaper to manufacture gasoline this way than by cracking raw crude?
Excellent points, and I'm all for restoring funding for basic research. However, the scale of the CO2 sequestering problem means it won't be economically feasible compared with almost any carbon-neutral alternative energy source (solar, nuclear, wave, wind...) If you think transportation and long-term storage for a few tons of a glass encased solid spent Nuclear fuel rods is a problem, try to picture this:
About 40 train car loads of coal are burned in a typical 500MW plant each day is a reaction that releases SO2/NO2,Mercury and radioactive material along with CO2(still not considered to be a pollutant by our Department of Environment). For simplicity, let's ignore that other lung rot and focus on, C + O2 ----> CO2 where each CO2 Molucule weights about 3.6 times as much as the carbon it came from.
So for sequestering, we have 144 train cars leaving the coal plant every day. Scale this up to the 3 burner megaplant being built in my home town which already requires over 1100 train cars every day and you'd have to have about 4000 train cars leaving the plant every day.
This all assumes we've overcome the magic alchemy of converting CO2 back to something easily transported without consuming more energy or sequesturing the carbon in a material that is even heavier than CO2 (e.g. carbonate rocks). Realistic estimates of carbon alchemy assume that is is acceptable to use 200% or 300% more coal to produce the energy if that energy is carbon zero.
We already have a choice of reduced carbon energy production and we ignore the elephant in the room represented by the biggest, cheapest and most practical carbon reduction strategy, reduced consumption. Carbon sequestering will be remembered as the biggest taxpayer funded boondoggle since corn ethanol.
Reference: http://www.carbonzerocoal.com/decarbonization.html
Awe,
Just compress it all down to diamonds and call it a day.
Oh wait, De Beers would hate that, Nevermind
Why? The problems we are experiencing have nothing to do with the amount of energy we use, but with where the energy comes from. If we were 100% solar for instance, what would be your argument for reducing consumption?
Reducing our consumption is nice, and will benefit in the short term, but the idea that the entire human population should be on an energy diet forever makes no sense.
... they have fallen for the last several years (not much, but by a similar amount to the yearly increase the previous decade or so).Why stop there? If you have read/know that, you also read/know that this is only TEMPORARY. Somewhere between 2015 and 2020, the warming pace will pick up again and make up for the lost warming decade.
It only takes one man to change the Wisdom of the Crowd to Tyranny of the Masses.
Imagine a world where all water is Perrier water.
No sig today...
And that's *today*, not in fifty years or whatever else the spineless countries are predicting...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Spain
No sig today...
I'm sure they don't intend to just throw solid CO2 into the earth. Rapid sublimation of solid CO2 means it can be used as a "cold explosive" in mining. If you dump this stuff deep into the ground it will sublimate and leak out faster than you can throw it in.
It took a lot of digging though TFA to find anything remotely informative. Once you get past the "partnerships", "revolutionary" hyperbole and PR/Management bullshit there's some very thin science to thik about.
http://fossil.energy.gov/programs/sequestration/capture/index.html
Basically the strong options are chemical combination, hydrates and carbonates that will basically lock the CO2 into limestone forever. However, if you understand much chemistry it's not hard to see the net energy input must be collosal. Imho it's wishful science. Free CO2 has reached a low entropic point, so where are you going to get the energy to put the genie back into the bottle? The only reasonable option we know is photosynthesis. In other words, plant lots of trees.
"Versus building windmills, hydro plants and solar farms."
And how do you overcome BANANA environmentalists that stand in the way of ALL energy development. They especially tend to hate hydro plants because what they do to local aquatic ecosystems.
I also noticed you omitted Nuclear plants from your alternatives, but that's a whole different case of willful ignorance.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Is it me ir does this scheme seem a tad short sighted. It's still not a chemical equilibrium.
We might be better off without it.
The Subject of this post is the name of a Facebook group with over 2,000 members. Its URL is http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2204720375. CO2 sequestration is a stupid idea.
I hope they put all that CO2 in the part of California that *doesn't* have earthquakes.
What erks me is that this was sceduled to be in down state Illinois where there is a lot of high sulfur coal and a lot of coal burring power plants in the area. The DoE killed the project and now its raising its head in California or elsewhere west. The whole freaking point was for Illinois Coal Fired Power Plants to use Illinois Soft Bituminous Coal which are higher in pollutants than the Harder Coal variety. This part of the country has been depressed since the mid 1980's or at least when "Regan's Trickle Down Theory of the Economics didn't trickle down". The technology could have really cleaned up the air quality and the Jobs could have really helped the area as well. Also the Coal Industry and State and Local Governments really layed the ground work ($$$)out for this. It was Cut short for PURELY POLICATAL REASONS based on location which back out of at the last minute on the project as part of the "BUSH Whitehouse's Energy Policy" what ever the hell that is.
Artificial carbon dioxide sequestration, bio (corn) fuels, nuclear electricity are all short-sighted solutions to the energy resources shortage!
That is as simple as that. Now the question is : When will fossil energy dependent countries understand it?
Folks, start reshaping your massively scattered "cities" to accommodate public transportation networks, and think about building high speed railways between them right now!
A Greenpeace supporter.
Everybody likes dry ice, right?
"No, you don't get to keep your electric dryer. Changes must be made. "
In your world, you have to accept it your way, or you are morally wrong. That doesn't work and that is why we're not greener right now. The world will not accept your view, and I suspect you really like it that way. It gives you something to rail about and try to take a moral high ground.
You have to accept that coal will be mined and used in the U.S. for electricity until something better comes along. But then when something better comes along, since you don't like it, then it *must not be used*. In fact, it becomes a moral imperative to stop it. Because we should use wind and solar and anything else is wrong. And damn everyone for not seeing it your way. You "solution" is that we must go back to a lifestyle common in 1920's because, well, just because. No one will accept your view.
I have photovoltaics on my roof, paid a lot of money for them, but they only generate 25% of my power. I must be bad because I won't cut my consumption! I use my clothes dryer! And central air! Damn me for not living like my great grandfather. Instead, accept that if everyone did this, we'd reduce greenhouse gases by 25%. That's not good enough for you. In your world, we must SUFFER!
You're the problem. If we moved to 25% renewables, we'd achieve success. By every measure except yours.
Stop being the problem. Accept there will be solutions that *you won't like* and *won't do it the way you like*. Get over it, get over yourself and grow up.
Sheesh.
If Carbon Sequestration meant that the Carbon was placed into a solid form, I might like it.
:(
Imagine:
coal --> energy + diamonds
That's not a bad formula! Or:
coal --> energy + carbon (bricks, fibers, nanofibers, etc.).
We could use that for building materials. No problem there. But:
coal --> energy + high pressure gas buried in an old mine shaft underground waiting to escape
is not a good idea.
"Wouldn't cutting down a forest and building stuff out of the wood, meanwhile letting the forest regrow, effectively remove carbon out of the system?"
Yes, but not a whole lot.
The phrase "a drop in the ocean" springs to mind - think of all those people who turn a bucket or so of hydrocarbon into atmospheric C02 every single time they go out of the house.
And that's just cars. Industry and household electricity consumption is way bigger than that.
No sig today...
Most people focus on the problem of "what happens after we put the CO2 down there." This isn't the problem, nor is it the reason this won't happen.
We were involved in a study on a power plant. Part of the work involved study of carbon sequestation.
An optimistic estimate of the power to pump the supercritical CO2 underground was 15% of the power produced by the facility. That would easily correspond to a 20% premium on energy price, simply to sequester the CO2. These costs are significant enough to kill a project. Power distribution companies will choose cheap power from old coal plants over power with such a high premium.
Let's imagine this does push through at several facilities in the US and West Europe. The increased CO2 from India and China (currently expanding industry like crazy) will quickly offset any 'greenness.'
I don't have the answer to the problem, or I would tell you. I can tell you that this isn't the answer.
Correction Matton Illinos not Marion Illinos. The Project has been known as FutureGen and more info can be found at http://www.futuregenalliance.org/
12 Kyocera 130 watt panels @ $610 each dlvd = $7320 Outback GFX3648 inverter,controller,charger, etc = $2800 Wire, breakers, cable, connectors, panels, etc. = $1600 42 KWH battery bank = $4100 Total = $15,820 This system will deliver about 5-6 KWH per day. Summer more, winter less; this is an average. Say it's 6; 6 x 365 = 2190 KwH per year. 2190 x $0.06/KwH from the grid = $131.60 per year cost avoided $15,820 / $131.60 equals a payback of 120 years, not including labor or the cost of my tracker, which is homebrewed. Generator (gasoline) costs about $1200 for a portable 7.5 Kw nominal. You can expect no more than about 500 hours runtime from these gensets, so the cost per hour is about $2.40 per hour for the generator. If you run it at 6Kw, it burns around 2 gallons an hour, maybe a little less. With gasoline at $3.60, it costs me about $7 per hour to run, maybe a little less. So my cost per hour is about $9 or so, say $9. That gets me 6 Kwh of power, for a cost per Kwh of about $1.50, or 25 times what grid power costs me. On that basis, assuming running a generator full time, the payback is less than 5 years. Of course one has to consider the circumstances under which grid power might not be available, and the payback becomes a few months, at most. Several points to be made here- Grid power is a SCREAMING deal compared to solar, based on today's costs. Even at TWICE the cost, grid power is a bargain, compared to other sources. However, grid power may not be available, and it's really nice to be able to have a refrigerator and a computer running when the power's out. So what are the best options? Over a short time, emergency generators deliver more power capability for much less money than solar does. Over the long haul, solar can provide a quiet source of electrical power; I expect my solar installation to last for the rest of my life. Having that capability and ability to be self-reliant is worth a great deal to me. That's why I bought a solar system rather than a new car.
I knew this sounded familiar - its the plot of a Beverly Hillbillies episode from September 1970.
http://www.tv.com/the-beverly-hillbillies/the-pollution-solution/episode/72982/summary.html
Jed: This fellow's gonna drill a tunnel through the San Bernardino Mountains, put in a great big fan, and draw all the smog out of Los Angeles.
Drysdale: Why, that's a preposterous idea.
Jed: Yeah. We like it too. (edit)
Good episode
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
"...I just hope nobody drops a Mentos down the wrong pipe..."
One of the best parts about this setup is that it can also desalinate water at the same time. Obviously that has tremendous potential in much of africa, and other parts of the world where both energy and drinking water are needed.
life is a tragedy to those who feel, and a comedy to those who think
This is interesting... $126.6 million dollars to remove 1 million T of carbon through sequestration.
A forest removes about 2 T a year of carbon from the atmosphere.
http://www.ucsusa.org/publications/catalyst/fa04-catalyst-forest-carbon-sequestration.html
It would take 500,000 acres to remove 1 MT of carbon from the atmosphere. (follow me so far?)
It costs approximately $68/ acre to plant forest.
www.alliancechesbay.org/pubs/projects/deliverables-77-7-2004.ppt
For $126,600,000, you could plant 1,861,764 acres.
This would remove 3,723,528 tons/ year of carbon. Roughly 3.7 times more carbon sequestration annually.
This DOE project removes one million tons once. Forests would remove 3.7 times more each year.
Tisha Hayes
So on one particular day, wind managed to provide 32% of electrical power. Nice, but I bet most days aren't that good.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
A decent size solar electric generating plant in the Nevada desert could be built today that could power all of America's electricity needs at about $0.05 KWH. All we would have to do is build it. But then we wouldn't need all those electric companies, and all the support personnel, etc. Of course it would require a plant the size of a small state like Vermont, but in Nevada or someplace in the Southwest. And of course it'd cost tons of money to build. But by all means let's keep finding new ways to pollute the planet, rather than finding a simple solution that just works.
I find your characterization flawed.
10,000 MILE footprint in the desert does bother me. Besides the animals and plants it would impact do you have any idea what that much of a heat sink would do to the WEATHER in the area?
I dont.
I do know that cities absolutely modify their enviroments and what we discussing is MASSIVELY more complex. For example FOrt Hood is 335 square miles and its enviromental impact is noticable. Weather CHANGES when hits it. Most cities have a differnce in tempature of a few degrees then surrounding areas but have a bigger footprint then their limits.
So as treehugger i would be concerned that not just Fauna and Flora might be changed/damaged but that we have NO CLUE what it might do to the surrounding environs.
Some Enviros absolutely would just care about the desert rat..and who can blame them, that rat has EXACTLY as much reason for life as you. I prefer to think of long term consequences and what we might have fix in the future that we mess up without giving due consideration to ALL the problems we might cause. The Law of unintended consequeces is my friend.
If it was stored in gas form at atmospheric pressure, it wouldn't be a problem (it would just be silly). The problem is that if it's stored in highly compressed or solid form,
In order to get it into solid form it has to be highly compressed, chilled or both.
Other alternative ways of getting rid of it are to react with an alkali metal hydroxide or put it into an actual greenhouse.
Any strategy to combat rising yearly CO2 emissions must be a multi-pronged approach. Let's say, hypothetically, that we were to successfully implement policy to reach Kyoto target emissions. Furthermore, let's go nuts and suppose that all industrialized nations do the same and play all green and eco-friendly. Do you know where that would leave yearly emissions in, say, 2050??
The answer is that yearly emissions would be through the roof! A little acknowledged fact is that the industrialization of underdeveloped nations (China, India, Africa and parts of South America, listed in order of importance) will exponentially increase emissions within the next 50 years, regardless of optimistically estimated reductions in emissions by the industrialized world. On humanitarian grounds, we can't oppose this drastic quality of life increase that comes with reliable power, and the only reasonably priced implementation for developing countries in the next 50 years is fossil fuels.
So, should we pump research money into making all sorts of carbon neutral technologies cheaper to the point of affordability and implement policy to reduce emissions? Of course! But, should we also put a little money into the hedge fund known as carbon sequestration, in case these technologies don't pay off quickly enough, and to combat the immutable increase in emissions spurred on by the industrialization of underdeveloped nations? Of course. Any solution to this hole we've dug MUST be multi-faceted.
As a side note, the amount of money being dumped into carbon sequestration is comparable to other technologies. The US DOE has programs with similar levels of funding for both photovoltaic and biodiesel research. Sequestration is only one of many technologies being pursued, and like a responsible investor, the government is diversifying its investments.
"...or shifting in an inconvienent place would cause CO2 leakage."
No, that's methane leakage.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Ooh, I like a man with no sense of proportion! I'd ask you to marry me, if I wasn't one myself.
Wood.
Organic molecules involve many carbon atoms. One way of removing carbon is to grow forests, cut them down and turn the wood into buildings.
Rather than spending megabucks to dump carbon into a hole, why not ship wood to the third world, so long as they don't burn it?
Wood is a lot safer than carbon dioxide stored somewhere, which can suddenly escape.
One of causes of unaffordable housing is the lack of it. Who wants to work for 30 years just to pay off a house? Meanwhile we hear that the rich are getting richer and everyone else isn't. Simultaneously people are driving around emitting carbon dioxide, driving the environment to ruin, trying to make ends meet. Raising real-estate quality in the third world helps the poor and reduces the environmental impact of our efforts just to live. Furthermore, industries that have been hurting from subprime can be rejuvenated. It just gets better and better.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Now if only we could find some sane and humane way of harvesting natural gas from natural digestive fermentation. Just imagine, an energy-self-sufficient Taco Bell franchise!
In all seriousness, what about finding a way of harvesting methane from cattle? They're pretty much farting all day long anyway, and that's an enormous amount of potential energy going to waste.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
And the Inuit in the Arctic Circle [guardian.co.uk] are paying for it, with their lives. Southeast Asia will pay for it when ocean level rise. People in Appalachia [washingtonpost.com] are paying for it. Try again.
And again, what's the cost of all of that? The costs are overstated, and, really all you have is some anecdotal evidence and you aren't considering the benefits side of the equation at all.
1. Artic ice is actually thicker and wider this year, so the inuit are fine for now.
2. Sea levels have risen 200 meters over the last thousand years and have been rising since the ice age. The IPCC says that AGW should accelerate sea level rise but this has actually NOT taken place. So, for now, we don't have to worry about SE Asia under water. On the flip side, if you lower global temperatures, growing seasons shorten, you starve a billion people, and, at the same time, they also die of thirst because all the fresh water gets locked up in our homemade ice age ice.
3. People in Appalachia, too, would benefit from the cheaper food made possible by a longer growing season on a warmer planet. They wouldn't have heating costs associated with a bitter winter that you will create by lowering planetary temperatures. And, best of all, if you get rid of coal mining, you throw them all out of work. So, other than starving them, freezing them, and throwing them out of work, being good about the climate does the appalachia people a lot of good.
This is my sig.
The transmission of that power would be a huge, huge problem and immensely wasteful. You can't have a power system that's that centralized for such a huge land area.
So produce more to make up for transmission losses.
You do realize that world insolation is 150,000 TW, right? And that we need only 20 TW (no, not 20,000 TW, just 20).
There is no shortage of solar energy, only a shortage of political will and an excess of vested interests.
That was then, this is now. PV panel prices have gone up significantly since that study.
According to "Tech Review" because of new silicon production fabs prices could drop by 50% by 2010.
His installed cost for materials alone was just over $10/watt.
Did he check for incentives, subsidies, or tax credits? DSIRE, Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency, is a database of what each state offers in the US.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The costs are overstated, and, really all you have is some anecdotal evidence and you aren't considering the benefits side of the equation at all.
Life is one cost, are you saying life isn't worth it? If so then why won't people lower their living standards, after all it's not worth it. As for the benefits it wasn't my aim to consider them, my aim was to show that even those who don't use coal are made to pay for it's usage.
1. Artic ice is actually thicker and wider this year, so the inuit are fine for now.
Oh really, that would surprise those scientists who have said the ice covering the Arctic Sea ice coverage has shrunken for the fifth year. Do you know more than they do? Scientist now say the Arctic will be ice free by 2030, decades before the models forecast. "Global Warming Is Rapidly Raising Sea Levels, Studies Warn". "Sea Level Rise During Past 40 Years Determined from Satellite and in Situ Observations". And Inuit's would either laugh or cry if you were to tell them they were fine. Oh and if it's not so bad then why is the government considering putting the polar bears on the endangered species list? But I guess you know more than the scientists, Inuits, and polar bears do, or more likely you're a troll.
I can't go on anymore with such nonsense.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Carbon is what all life is made of. To bury it in the ground as an inert salt is diabolical. If people want a problem to solve, why don't they tackle world hunger? $126M would feed a lot of starving kids. All the "concerned" followers bray about Carbon but you hear squat about the starving humans. The whole thing makes me nauseous. Global warming dogma is just a new fear porn, purpose made for those immune to religion. What is wrong with us, people?
Social Credit would solve everything...
it's pretty apparent that to be effective, this will have to basically rebuild the entire petroleum industry, more or less, in reverse, in order to bury as much carbon as we are now pumping up. Then we would need to bury some more to account for that generated in building all this infrastructure, and some more on a continuing basis to account for all the carbon dioxide generated in running the thing. other than that, it's clearly the magic bullet, though, if only those liberals weren't so wacky, eh?
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
"they"?
Yes, they. It's 92 minutes long, but the film lists who they are. The electric vehicles were here, leased and not sold, and when people attempted to buy them, they were pulled and crushed. See the sad story here. Someone pulled the strings to pull the electric cars from production, lease, or sale.
Try to buy an electric production vehicle. Get the words from those who leased them and wanted to keep them. Yes, somewhere in the backrooms power players, they pulled the Electric Vehicle. See who they are here;
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7202740060236675590&q=who+killed+the+electric+car&ei=HtYnSJXZFJGMqwPkgoCvCQ&hl=en
The truth shall set you free!
sorry did I fuckup entering the adress? this IS /. right? says news for nerds on top. nerds, as in smart people, where'd you find those? all the posts are from braindead/washed idiots taking mass media as-is.
back to the real world guys, plsss! http://www.junkscience.com/
I know full well that tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack
sorry, wrong site. i thought im in /. cuz it says news for nerds i.e. smart people - none such here, just a bunch of joe sikspacks repeating what the media toldthem, idiots
http://www.junkscience.com/
I know full well that tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack
CO2 is most certainly a green house gas. It absorbs infrared radiation from the earth and prevents it from radiating back to space. It looks like the wikipedia article on greenhouse gases is fairly comprehensive, try reading that instead of some crank web site.