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Energy Secretary Chu Endorses "Clean Coal"
DesScorp writes "The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Energy Secretary Steven Chu is endorsing 'clean coal' technology and research, and is taking a pragmatic approach to coal as an energy supply. '"It absolutely is worthwhile to invest in carbon capture and storage because we are not in a vacuum," Mr. Chu told reporters Tuesday following an appearance at an Energy Information Administration conference. "Even if the United States or Europe turns its back on coal, India and China will not," he said. Mr. Chu added that "quite frankly I doubt if the United States will turn its back on coal. We are generating over 50% of our electrical energy from coal."' The United States has the world's largest reserves of coal. Secretary Chu has reversed his positions on coal and nuclear power, previously opposing them, and once calling coal 'My worst nightmare.'"
Oxymoron of the century.
Todos mis movimientos están friamente calculados
The dirtier the fly ash.
...ideology meets reality.
I understand that there is no such thing as truly clean coal, but what is so bad about trying to produce cleaner coal for electricity generation?
Yes I do support nuclear, but we are pretty efficient at digging up and combusting coal. Why not work harder to scrub it better and deliver more electricity for the plug in hybrids?
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Will "clean coal" provide health care for the miners? Will it eliminate those nasty, dangerous sludge ponds that occasionally break through their retaining walls? For some reason I doubt it.
Todos mis movimientos están friamente calculados
In one formula, CO2. Coal is the fuel that produces more CO2 per joule than any other energy source.
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Military Intelligence
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Evaporated Milk
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Clean Coal
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
Pfft... call me when one of the big-wigs endorses it, not their secretary.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
A major political figure completely reversing his stance a subject and is able to provide straightforward and logical explanations for the change? Maybe I'm used to the previous administrations policy of "what we say goes, no matter what" but, yeah, this does kind of surprise me.
Say what you will about clean coal, but he is right about one thing. China is going to keep burning coal until there's no coal left to burn or something cheaper is found. Why not research the hell out of the subject and sell it to them in 10 years when they realize that they're killing their population with pollution? And if they somehow work out a way to have truly clean coal (burning coal with no particulates and no release of CO2) then why shouldn't we use it here at home?
Personally, I like nuclear, solar, and wind for our energy needs. But I think we should be researching every possibility, including clean coal and biofuels. Having a diverse set of energy sources means that when when resource becomes scarce we can more easily shift our focus and continue on.
Well, well. Some truth about energy! Amazing. Lets take this a bit further and say that if certain groups haven't scared the hell out of people about nuclear, we wouldn't have so many coal plants in the US. We could be selling the coal to other countries. :)
From reading the Economist, I've the impression that clean coal isn't actually that great. Check out these two articles:
The illusion of clean coal
Trouble in store
Despite all this enthusiasm, however, there is not a single big power plant using CCS anywhere in the world. Utilities refuse to build any, since the technology is expensive and unproven. Advocates insist that the price will come down with time and experience, but it is hard to say by how much, or who should bear the extra cost in the meantime. Green pressure groups worry that captured carbon will eventually leak. In short, the world's leaders are counting on a fix for climate change that is at best uncertain and at worst unworkable.
Aside, the WSJ isn't really giving us any new information, is it? Obama was advocating CCS during the election, so is it really surprising that his secretary is now advocating it?
While nukes could reduce energy demand a lot, fuel-air bombs would be easier to clean up after.
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Dude... we had change from pro-coal to anti-coal. Now we have change back to pro-coal from anti-coal.
Maybe my math sucks, but that's 200% of the change we expected.
Why you hatin'?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
You can't build nuclear plants that fast
Why can't we? Would it have anything to do with the fact that the enviro-nazis and NIMBY bastards successfully stymied the construction of new plants back in the 70s and 80s and in so doing left zero incentive for American industry to retain the plant and equipment to build reactors?
I read somewhere that there's only one steelworks in the world that's capable of forging the reactor containment walls and they have years of back orders on the books. Of course it didn't used to be that way but the various anti-nuclear movements drove down demand to the point that it wasn't profitable for other steelworks to retain the equipment to produce them. Other parts of the supply chain have been equally impacted.
Congratulations environmentalists -- you ripped the heart out of the only energy source that could have weaned us off carbon in our lifetimes. Seems a bit shortsighted in retrospect, doesn't it?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Who's reversing his position? Everyone talked up so-called clean coal during the election.
I agree however; even if we don't use the technology, we can make money selling it to other people.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Stop burning coal. This isn't the industrial revolution. It's 2009 for pete's sake. Breeder reactors. Pull your superstitions out of your brain and your heads out of your asses. B-R-E-E-D-E-R R-E-A-C-T-O-R-S!
Of course they did. They wanted to get the electoral votes in swing states like OH and PA.
Your mistake is in thinking that it had anything to do with energy policy.
I generally agree that environmentalists have screwed the planet pretty good on nuclear power, but I think charging them with the crime of driving some steelworks out of business might be a bit off.
I think the deal is really more that steelworks that could make really thick plates just aren't used that much anymore, and I'd bet principally because the world's warships don't use thick steel plates. While, granted, I would feel a lot safer behind a very thick armor belt as found in an Iowa class battleship, than in a different ship, current naval protection doctrine eschews passive protection in favor of active protection. Instead of armouring ships, you build loads of anti-missile system, electronic warfare, and you also try to avoid detection.
But once Navy's made that switch, they didn't need the uber thick plates, and really, they were the only really big customers. Other people that use armor of some kind, such as tanks, tend to layer it up with different things - like composites.
Without the military driving the creation of foot thick plates, who really needs to do it? I really do try and think, just why I would a foot thick steel plate...
This is my sig.
Chu is not anti-nuke. I don't know where you got that idea, but Secretary Chu has long been a proponent of nuclear power. From a 2005 interview with UC Berkeley's Bonnie Azab Powell:
Question: Should fission-based nuclear power plants be made a bigger part of the energy-producing portfolio?
Chu: Absolutely. Right now about 20 percent of our power comes from nuclear; there have been no new nuclear plants built since the early '70s. The real rational fears against nuclear power are about the long-term waste problem and [nuclear] proliferation. The technology of separating [used fuel from still-viable fuel] and putting the good stuff back in to the reactor can also be used to make bomb material.
And then there's the waste problem: with future nuclear power plants, we've got to recycle the waste. Why? Because if you take all the waste we have now from our civilian and military nuclear operations, we'd fill up Yucca Mountain. ... So we need three or four Yucca Mountains. Well, we don't have three or four Yucca Mountains. The other thing is that storing the fuel at Yucca Mountain is supposed to be safe for 10,000 years. But the current best estimates - and these are really estimates, the Lab's in fact - is that the metal casings [containing the waste] will probably fail on a scale of 5,000 years, plus or minus 2. That's still a long time, and then after that the idea was that the very dense rock, very far away from the water table will contain it, so that by the time it finally leaks down to the water table and gets out the radioactivity will have mostly decayed.
Suppose instead that we can reduce the lifetime of the radioactive waste by a factor of 1,000. So it goes from a couple-hundred-thousand-year problem to a thousand-year problem. At a thousand years, even though that's still a long time, it's in the realm that we can monitor - we don't need Yucca Mountain.
Question: And all of a sudden the risk-benefit equation looks pretty good for nuclear.
Chu: Right now, compared to conventional coal, it looks good - what are the lesser of two evils? But if we can reduce the volume and the lifetime of the waste, that would tip it very much against conventional coal.
Congratulations environmentalists -- you ripped the heart out of the only energy source that could have weaned us off carbon in our lifetimes. Seems a bit shortsighted in retrospect, doesn't it?
Yes, it's the environmentalists that got us into this mess. Back then, they were saying that nuclear will kill us all. The debate was over.
Now they are making the same arguments about carbon while adding "but THIS time, we are right!"
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
In a nutshell. Just because you're pro-green, doesn't mean you're completely out of touch with reality. We use coal for a HUGE amount (it's the largest single source) of our national energy production, and it'll be decades before that can change in any meaningful way, so it only makes sense to see if you can make a virtue of necessity.
The thing I liked about Obama was that he wasn't batshit crazy. This is a perfectly sensible move, something he promised to look into during his campaign, and something worthy of study at the least. I am at a loss to explain all the crazy that's leaking out in this thread.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
"Would it have anything to do with the fact that the enviro-nazis and NIMBY bastards successfully stymied the construction of new plants back in the 70s and 80s and in so doing left zero incentive for American industry to retain the plant and equipment to build reactors?"
Nope. It's the cost thingy. It costs big bucks to build a nuclear plant. As a result the power is expensive. So you have to be sure you will need the energy and the price will be competitive in decades to come. And there still is that annoying waste issue.
It's cheaper to pay people to use less energy (efficiency), build coal plants or add wind or solar in small increments.
Well, I did not get the information their ad.
The quote is from Obama, interview with the San Francisco Chronicle.
FactCheck.org addressed the McCain-Palin ad(s).
They did not address the direct Obama quotes at all.
FactCheck.org directed you to Obama's energy policy on his web site, but did not address his words to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Maybe you should get your own facts straight and actually read what FactCheck.org stated and shows.
You fucking idiots are so fucking funny.
Coal technology is already clean [...]
About 525 million gallons of ash slurry clean, yeah.
"As president, as president, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. I'll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America."
--Barak Obama, Acceptance Speech, Democratic National Convention. August 28, 2008.
Seriously man. Seriously. You cite the Drudge version of the Chronicle piece just like a conservative tool. Here's the whole quote:
"So, if somebody wants to build a coal power plant, they can. It's just that, it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel, and other alternative energy approaches. The only thing that I've said, with a respect to coal -- I haven't been some coal booster -- what I have said is, that, for us to take coal off the table as a ideological matter, as opposed to saying, if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it. You know, that I think is the right approach." Barak Obama, SF Chronicle Interview, Jan 17, 2008 (emphasis mine)
How about you think for yourself just a tiny little bit, eh?
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
In addition, though DesCorps uses the quote from Chu that coal is his "worst nightmare" to imply that Chu has flipped-flopped on the issue, reading TFA the quote is taken from shows that even then Chu was talking about 'clean' coal.
Don't worry about the mule, just load the wagon.
In or out of context, message is the same.
And, I am thoroughly against the idiotic "Cap and Trade" gimmick. It is a farce, in the extreme.
Oh, and for the record, in response to your "...conservative tool..." rant:
I support neither of the two major parties.
They are both are **only** interested in getting and staying in and expanding their power.
They **are not** interested in doing what would benefit the country and citizenry as a whole. They could really care less as they drive the country into the ground with massive amounts of debt, which will result in hyper-inflation and tax burdens that make the current taxes look like change you carry around in your pockets.
But if we have to burn the coal (and right now we do), why not see if there is some way we can lessen the environmental impact?
We have a way already, it was developed at Sandia national labs on the behalf of the USDOE, and you can read a bit about how to deal with the carbon here. We capture 80% of the CO2 and then at least get to use it again. And a percentage of the algae becomes fertilizer. Of course, that assumes that such an approach fits into our national agenda — only time will tell. Is it as good as a complete "clean coal" solution? That very much depends on who you ask.
As for new coal-fired power plants, they are an aberration and should be avoided at all costs. If we must build new power plants which are not inherently sustainable, let us build plants to reprocess nuclear waste, and plants to run on the resulting fuel. Yes, the technology could be used to produce weapons-grade materials. No, this is not relevant, because we already have more of that than we could possibly need.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"