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MIT Says Natural Gas Best To Lower Carbon Emissions
eldavojohn writes "This week MIT released a comprehensive, hundred-page report entitled 'The Future of Natural Gas' that outlined the many scenarios the United States faces when aiming to reduce carbon emissions. From the New York Times recap: 'The scenario goes like this, according to MIT: Nuclear power, renewable energy, and carbon capture and sequestration are relatively expensive next to gas. Conventional coal is no longer a major source of power generation in the United States. "Natural gas is the substantial winner in the electric sector: The substitution effect, mainly gas generation for coal generation, outweighs the demand reduction effect."' Will this urging help to produce a policy shift from renewable energy (like wind) to natural gas for the United States?"
It could work.
Too much has to change around the transmission/distribution infrastructure for the renewables to work. And scaling the renewables up to current needs promises to make them no cleaner and potentially not even more carbon neutral than what we have now.
Like it or not, the future will have nuclear and cleaner versions of hydrocarbons before renewables.
Well, I've been an advocate of replacing coal power with nuclear power for quite some time, but even I'll admit that NG generally results in less than half the CO2 emissions for the energy production, and relative to a reactor is far cheaper to build. And nuclear promises to be cheaper than solar/wind for the amount of electricity produced.
However, you need quite a lot of it. NG, while cheap in many areas, makes me hesitant because I believe that when we go 'full bore' we'd exhaust our supplies fairly quickly and have increased expenses. Thus I'd like to see nuclear electricity production while we keep NG for heating homes and chemical manufacturing. Heck, you'd have to be rather round-about to make steel using nuclear energy, you can use NG heat directly.
I don't read AC A human right
That's nice and all, but you should keep in mind how lots of places in the U.S. get their natural gas these days. Through phracking.
It's not a good thing. There are huge environmental concerns. Flamable drinking water, Neurotoxins and other poisons in drinking water. There's even a movie about it.
Natural gas is better than biofuel, obviously, because for natural gas you don't have to chop down rain forests. But natural gas still produces carbon dioxide, unless chemistry has fundamentally changed in the last few days while I wasn't paying attention.
Making synthetic gasoline from solar energy doesn't produce a lot of carbon dioxide because what gets produced in your car, gets used when they make it, more or less. We'll use solar energy to make the stuff. That's not extremely efficient, but who cares? More solar energy is hitting earth than we can use anyway.
no, I don't have a sig
TFS says:
Conventional coal is no longer a major source of power generation in the United States.
I call shenanigans. Coal is the #1 energy producer in the US. The US gets 30% of it's power capacity and nearly 50 percent of it's produced power from coal. I would love for that to be different but that is the current state of affairs and it is unlikely to change soon since the US has large coal reserves and it is much cheaper to produce power using coal than any other current fuel.
Enigma
...the environmental wackos aren't going to like this.
Natural gas = carbon emissions however reduced they may be.
Natural gas = drilling
Yeah, this ain't gonna fly. Just wait for the big fat raspberry from the greens.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Thats A GURL
My first question on any study is who paid for it? That said, natural gas is a better alternative to oil and coal. The real problem with alternatives like solar, wind and to a lesser extent nuclear is the cost per Kwh. I can by electricity generated by coal, oil and gas between $1-2 dollars per Kwh. If I replaced my electric with solar panels and batteries, my cost would be $4-5 dollars per Kwh. Tax credits reduce that cost, but they are still being paid by someone. Natural gas and nuclear are excellent bridge technologies while alternatives are brought down in cost.
MIT just considered burning natural gas, not how you get it, and only considers the CO2 footprint.
Build a couple large NG boilers thru lower 8 states on East coast, Run a massive pipe to gulf, and draw this incredible amount of gas to the boilers - all on bp's tab.
There - I just solved unemployment, foreign energy dependence, global warming, electric distribution network upgrade, mess in golf.
Burn more fossil fuel to lower CO2 emissions?
And this:
Manufacturers have been trying to introduce natural gas cars for decades. The technology is there, but nobody bought them and nobody will.
The price of natural gas is coupled to the price of oil. Look at the economic wars being fought over natural gas in Europe right now. No way will this be cheaper than other fossil fuels.
I'm sure you'll be able to power at least a reading light. Yet another reason why nerds are useful to women.
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
So, is this just an advertisement for the natural gas industry? Why not title it something like, "The Future of Energy Production in the U.S.'?
I was seriously researching building an electric car. Then I saw an article on the conventional and non-conventional supply of natural gas. There's a hundred year supply. Natural gas can be used to power cars. The main cost is the high pressure tanks required, but those are cheaper and last longer than batteries for electric cars.
We can get off imported oil and not have to make too much sacrifice. I am of course ignoring CO2 induced climate change but the science on that seems to be changing ... (me ducks beneath desk to avoid thrown bricks)
Too bad that extracting natural gas usually involves pumping massive quantities of toxic chemicals directly in to the ground.
Thanks to the incredibly corrupt Bush Administration, Fracking isn't even subject to the clean water act. The Halliburton Loophole, named after Dick Chaney's true employer, has allowed entire towns to be polluted beyond repair.
Thousands have been sickened by this polluted water. Pets are losing their hair. People are getting cancer. The water out of some homes' faucets is actually flammable!!
citation needed?
Natural Gas is mostly Methane. Since methane has the smallest ratio of carbon to hydrogen at 2 carbons, per 6 hydrogens, it is the best hydrocarbon to burn if you are trying to reduce carbon emissions.
Yeah, other sources produce no carbon, but they can't compete with Natural Gas's price.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
So MIT is smart enough to speak for the thousands of Americans living near natural gas operations that have flammable tap water from natural gas leaking into their watershed?
Environmentalists demand that you get your power from pixie dust or else!
Owing to the intermittent nature of wind, the need for 100% backup of generating capacity, and the ability to provide at most 20% of total electricity, wind is a way to in effect get an extra increment in efficiency in a natural-gas based electric power generation economy. As such, you can ascribe to wind power all of the evils you ascribe to natural gas production, only, about 20% less.
I admit I have not studied the answer yet. But... the energy release from burning 1 gram of coal is higher than the energy release for burning 1 gram of gas. SO how could it be the gas every beats coal for carbon reduction? I think also that of the two that gases tend to release more methane as well. In which case the greenhouse case is even worse than CO2.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Wow, burning methane (CH4) produces less carbon emmisssion than longer chain hydrocarbons, and especially less than coal which is ALL carbon.
I guess nobody ever thought about that before.
But hang on, what if we got our energy from sources that don't have any carbon. Nuclear, Hydro, wind and geothhermal. Or even nuclear fusion. Until we get our own fusion generators going, we can use the one thats 93 million miles away.
Let's focus only on the 13 of carbon emissions in America which are electricity related:
Coal emits 2.1 lbs CO_2-eq per kWh generated. Oil 1.9, nat gas 1.3. Wind, solar, geothermal 0. If we instantaneously switched all 20 quads of energy from coal used to generate electricity to natural gas *tomorrow*, we'd save roughly 10% of our overall carbon emissions (coal is 1/3 of overall carbon emissions used almost entirely for electricity, and switching to gas saves 1/3 (1.3/2.1 ~= 2/3)). So the 10% is nice, but it's clearly not enough.
We've got to do better than that. Additional ways to do better include:
* Improving building envelope (air sealing and insulation) has a substantial impact on both heating and cooling load. Interested in the electricity portion -- focus on the southeast and the southwest explicitly. Work to improve the existing building infrastructure with regard to envelope.
* Strengthen building codes. There's no point in tightening up old buildings if we permit new buildings to be built leaky. This is especially important to do at the Federal level, because (a) most new construction is in the southeast and southwest, not northeast nor midwest, and (b) their Republican governments have shown no interest in passing state laws. Before you go off on a libertarian rant, keep in mind that even if a homeowner was savvy enough to understand the importance of a tight and well insulated home, he would have very little ability to measure/inspect the potential home because seeing through sheetrock is nontrivial. Building inspectors, on the other hand, are looking at the space before finish walls are installed, and therefore have a perfect opportunity to inspect for energy efficiency.
* Follow California's lead in ratcheting up energy efficiency requirements for appliances and electronics. Sure, they won't get it all right the first time -- that's true of just about all engineering projects -- but the overall impact is substantial. It's not just about saving money for customers, it's also about reducing the demand on the grid and at the power stations.
* White/green/solar roofs, particularly in urban areas, particularly in those with more sun exposure in warmer climes. This is a simple building/zoning code change, and it has a tangible impact over time.
* Local renewable. Solar or wind at the home or small commercial level, on site, helps not only reduce demand (from the utility, it appears to be the same thing), but it also reduces the demands on the local grid. This is important because it allows us to hold off on building larger capacity at the local level for as long as possible, a huge savings. Ways to foster this include tax credits, time-variable pricing (solar), and even simply ensuring that net-metering is legal everywhere.
* Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) have been enacted in roughly 30 states. Essentially, they require utilities to increase the percentage of renewable electricity in the mix of their electrons by a little bit each year or every few years. They define what counts as renewable (typically large hydro is excluded, biofuel may or may not be, wind and solar and geothermal are, some states allow a portion to be met with negawatts (efficiency improvements). The elegance is that the utilities can choose the technologies / facilities which make sense for them to meet the criteria, they can "bank" surplus credits, and if they come up short they pay a financial penalty which is severe enough to make compliance cheaper than punishment.
You'll notice I've entirely avoided mentioning nuclear power. I'm not opposed to it, but I also acknowledge that it's far more expensive for society than the pro-nuke folks let on, and it's far safer than the anti-nuke folks acknowledge. In either case, since it is more expensive than lots of alternatives, let's work on the alternatives and see how far we can push them. If we've legitimately pushed wind and solar and geothermal and efficiency as far as we can and
Support a few technologists in Washington.
We will not burn up all of the natural gas deposits for centuries to come. There is much more methane (natural gas) in hydrates than in all of the possible traditional natural gas reservoirs worldwide.
If you have been watching the news regarding the oil well disaster down in the Gulf of Mexico they have problems with hydrates condense out of the expanding column of oil and gas that forms hydrate ice crystals and blocks up the stack. (remember basic physics about expansion and temperature).
Hydrate deposits could be exploited in a controlled manner with the modest introduction of heat into a deep deposit to liberate the gas. To stop a well from producing, remove the heat.
Tisha Hayes
Your last sentence in the summary is contrary to the main finding of the article in regards to power generation.
"Power Generation
" -the MIT research summary
They are not advocating moving away from renewable energy like wind or solar to natural gas but rather advocating the use of both to replace coal since wind and solar do not produce reliable energy.
Think globally but act within local variable scope.
Yep, right now you see natural gas electrical generation at peaking plants as they can come on-line very quickly.
For jump starting a conventional plant that would be called "black start capability" as most power plants do not have enough electrical generating capacity to bring the plant on-line. Natural gas powered plants and hydroelectric are also referred to as facilities that are "black start".
Tisha Hayes
Fracking is messing up Northern Pennsylvania right now.
And the dirtbags are trying to start it up in New York State.
Say goodbye to your drinking water!
Fracking is allowed to use *any chemicals they want, with no disclosure* pumped deep into the ground.
In North America, conventional natural gas reserves have been in decline for a while, and it's not expected that trend will reverse as unconventional sources (shale gas and coal-bed methane) are brought on stream. There are also legitimate concerns about groundwater contamination in association with shale gas and coal-bed methane projects, although it can be done safely if the work is done properly. Investment in natural gas will continue because it is a good option: it's clean, has less CO2 output per unit energy than other fossil fuels, there is substantial infrastructure built to deliver it, there's a decent reserve already, and even as North American supplies continue to dwindle, there is also quite a bit available world-wide that can be delivered via liquified natural gas terminals at sea ports.
However, supply of natural gas is still going to peak eventually like oil will. It's a temporary solution. So investment in renewable/sustainable energy sources should be the focus, and, no, policy should not shift from that. Natural gas certainly doesn't need any special financial encouragement because it's already an economically profitable option.
Using a cleaner burning fuel like natural gas would allow for generating facilities that capitalize on both the MHD effect and then the follow-on of traditionally 'boiling water to make steam" to drive a turbine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamic_generator
By adding an MHD system to a conventional plant, energy efficiency can be increased by 50% over a conventional facility. As we do more work with near-room temperature superconductors the efficiency would increase.
Tisha Hayes
I wish someone would torrent it, I have been waiting to see it since Sundance, because now some companies are starting to talk about using these methods more here in nothern europe.
Even in these internet days, you can't see it out outside the US, one should think the creator would want to sell it on different movie ppv sites worldwide.
Environmental impact is, in economic terms, all about externalizing costs. Furthermore, like any other cost the *margins* of environmental costs vary with volume and at some point consistently trend upward with scale.
That means that from an environmental economic perspective there is an optimal volume for something like natural gas. If reduce production, the slack is taken up by marginally dirtier sources. If we increase production, we are replacing marginally cleaner sources. At some point we end up letting the impacts of NG (as in from phracking) get out of hand, which only happens because we can pass them off to third parties (as BP did by passing the risks of DWH onto everyone else who was dependent on the Gulf to make a living).
So for a given level of energy consumption, there is an environmentally optimal *mix* of sources.
Efficient electricity distribution and local storage is key to making that possible. You can't put an environmentally optimal mixture of energy sources into an internal combustion engine car's gas tank, but you *can* do that for electric cars.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I am the folks at MIT you insensitive clod
A lot is going to have to change in the natural gas market to start replacing large amounts of our coal capacity with natural gas. Our distribution networks are hugely complex, aging, and very much tied to domestic supply.
Electric utilities built most of their base load capacity (coal, nuclear, hydro) before 1980, and a lot of this (the coal/nuclear part, that is) is coming up for replacement at the same time that demand has been creeping up, eating the surplus capacity afforded. The easy way out, especially with more investor-owned utilities (IOUs lol) and fewer state-owned, is to start adding to your generating fleet by installing plants which are only used several weeks a year at very high load. These are invariably plants which are cheap to build and expensive to run (because of fuel cost per kWh). NG-fired gas turbine generators are the dominating solution.
These low investment/NG-fired capacity upgrades all have their straws in the same glass, as it happens, and are being used for more and more weeks per year. Not only that, but they're also competing against the market that was practically made for NG, heating. We've been fortunate that, so far, the big summer peak in electricity consumption from air conditioning use has been on the opposite end of the year from the big winter peak in NG heating consumption. (with regard to both NG distribution and price reasons)
However, all this extra consumption is making NG prices are nuts, and--anecdote warning--I've seen a utility go a summer without running their GTs simply because it was actually cheaper to buy off another near-overloaded utility than to run peak plants on NG, which just never happened. Those prices aren't going to get any better running NG-fired capacity not only during the summer peak, but even during the not-to-be-sneezed-at winter peak. Coal is king, and the only way we're ever going to start replacing it or adapting to its decline in affordability is with thoughtful, long-term investments in efficient base load and phasing out of "temporary" capacity upgrades. This is not just a matter of one generation method/energy source being preferable to another, it's a systemic lack of strategy in our energy sector for preparing for changes which they already know will happen or imposed.
MIT and LurkerXXX are considering different questions and arriving at different answers.
MIT says that natural gas is the best practical low-carbon-emission fuel.
LurkerXXX notes that current production methods are just ducky, as long as you hate groundwater and like cancer.
That's nice and all, but you should keep in mind how lots of places in the U.S. get their natural gas these days. Through phracking.
It's not a good thing. There are huge environmental concerns. Flamable drinking water, Neurotoxins and other poisons in drinking water. There's even a movie about it.
I thought you were talking about something else: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrack
I'm saving the environment. And so is the dog. So there, please quit complaining, honey.
CO2 is not a pollutant. It is in fact essential for the Earth's life cycle. Plants would not survive without it.
If you actually believe that global warming is a man made problem, and believe greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced, you would not be replacing coal with natural gas (methane). Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Any methane infrastructure will necessarily have emissions.
No, the reason people are going for natural gas is the typical myopic management of today. Building a natural gas power plant is very cheap, even if the fuel isn't. Since people plan everything on the short term today, what matters is the low initial capital costs, even if you have to screw your customers in the long term.
I grew up on flammable drinking water with no fracking fracking involved!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A meaningless statement. The fact is, nothing is a harmful in a small enough quantity, and nothing is safe in high enough quantity. You may as well argue that reducing salt intake to combat heart disease is stupid because sodium is necessary for survival.
However, you make a good point that methane is a horrible greenhouse gas, so reducing leaks of unburned methane would have to be a priority if we ramp up the natural gas infrastructure.
CO2 is not a pollutant. It is in fact essential for the Earth's life cycle. Plants would not survive without it.
Water is not a pollutant, it is also essential in the earth's life cycle. We wouldn't survive without it. It still kills tens of thousands a year from overabundance.
I'll note that my reasoning behind getting rid of coal plants has always been more due to the pollution they produce than the CO2 they release.
No, the reason people are going for natural gas is the typical myopic management of today. Building a natural gas power plant is very cheap, even if the fuel isn't. Since people plan everything on the short term today, what matters is the low initial capital costs, even if you have to screw your customers in the long term.
It's also easy. Nuclear everyone's afraid of even though it has fewer deaths involved with it than pretty much any other industry, and coal is dirty. So getting approval for a natural gas plant is relatively quick and easy.
I don't read AC A human right
All taxicabs in the main cities in India run on Compressed Natural Gas. So do the public transport buses in many cities. It takes 800$ to convert a regular petrol burning to car to run on either petrol or CNG. Some individual owned cars all have also been converted. CNG prices are around 60% of petrol prices in India, so it takes a year or two (depending on how much you drive) to break even on your 800$ conversion cost.
In college I took a tour of a couple power plants as part of my courses. One of the power plants had this tower of a boiler where the coal dust was blown in the bottom and the soot was tossed out the top. The tour guide pointed out that the boilers had to be pre-heated with natural gas before the boiler could switch over to coal dust as fuel. Another power plant I toured had a more conventional, and less efficient, boiler that also used natural gas to get the fires going. It took me a split second to realize that these boilers could just as easily run on natural gas all the time if they chose to do so.
Not part of my tours but I have read about how some diesel powered generators have been converted to using natural gas or propane as fuel by injecting the gaseous fuels into the combustion cylinder much like how a conventional gasoline engine does. The ignition of the fuel still requires a small amount of diesel fuel to be injected into the cylinder. With this conversion just about any diesel cycle engine can use just about any ratio of diesel fuel to gaseous fuel to run.
Power plants have for the longest time have been flexible in what fuel they use. They will burn what ever is cheapest or whatever is available. One of those power plants I toured still had it's old wood burning boiler as a last resort backup. I would guess they figured it would cost money to dismantle and remove the thing and as long as they had no need for the room in the plant it did no harm in keeping it there. Oh, that boiler could burn coal just as easily as wood. It could probably also burn straw, corn, soybeans, discarded plastic, old tennis shoes, grass clippings, dispatched zombies, or whatever else you could think of. As long as the fuel met certain minimum conditions then it should work as fuel. Might have to mix the fuels a bit to achieve a proper burn but the boiler shouldn't care if you put the old tennis shoes in with the zombies.
The reason these power plants have not already switched to natural gas should be obvious, it's cheaper. Not only that but with the threat of "cap and tax" hanging over their heads few will switch to natural gas even if it is cheaper. They need the history of being "dirty" so that if a cap on CO2 emissions is placed upon them the reduction of CO2 output can be done as easily, and cheaply, as throwing a switch over to natural gas.
Then there is the issue of how to get the natural gas. Natural gas tends to be in the same places as the oil. If we can't drill for oil then we can't drill for natural gas. If we burn the natural gas for fuel what are we to do with all that oil? Obviously we'd burn that too. If the government imposes a "cap and tax" scheme on industrial scale uses of coal and oil the price of natural gas will climb to adjust for supply and demand. That will make coal and oil cheaper for the smaller scale uses.
I've been telling people that if "cap and tax" passes into law then I'm buying a coal fired furnace for my home.
When it comes to CO2 output per kilowatt hour produced nuclear power is second only to hydroelectric. We've dammed up all the rivers we can. Wind power requires the use of carbon heavy materials like plastics and aluminum. (The aluminum does not contain the carbon but the carbon is used to reduce the aluminum ore to pure aluminum releasing massive amounts of CO2 into the air. Also there is much heat and electricity required typically meaning burning large amounts of fossil fuels in the process.)
The only real option available to reduce our carbon footprint, and reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy, is nuclear power. The problem is politics are killing both nuclear power and domestic fossil fuels. The politicians want so hard to please everyone in the country but something has to give or we are going to find ourselves capped and taxed out of an economy. I find evidence in human caused global warming unconvincing so I really don't care if the powers that be permit more drilling or more nuclear power plants
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
No idea why you were modded flamebait, your points are good and were presented well.
I guess it falls down to many people being hardwired to reject any reasoning that isn't black and white that allows for no continuum of benefit/harm.
From TFA:
That doesn't invalidate it, but it's important for readers to know and should probably be in the summary.
CO2 is not a pollutant. It is in fact essential for the Earth's life cycle. Plants would not survive without it.
You don't seem to understand what a pollutant is. Anything can be a pollutant given sufficient quantities of it. High oxygen environments can cause explosive fires, even though oxygen is essential for animal life. So your argument falls flat on its face. Pollutants are all about quantity. It's not a specific quality that you can wave away through pointing out some beneficial aspect of it.
Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Any methane infrastructure will necessarily have emissions.
Pointing to a preliminary analysis, with no details, and the author has ALREADY found grave errors in isn't exactly a very convincing argument.
AccountKiller
This is a great post! I was going to post something like this if no one else did. This 99% fixation on OMG WE NEED MORE POWER PLANTS! Instead of looking to REDUCE DEMAND is plain nuts. It's been pure propaganda and brainwashing of the population for decades now. I know why they do it, to keep wall street traders and speculators and the entrenched energy companies rich. Super insulate ONCE, save forever, or ignore rational insulation and efficiencies that are quite possible and keep up the propaganda that we "need" more power plants, of any kind, and keep paying through the nose month after year after decade for your energy. Freakin loony tunes how many people they have brainwashed against the realities of actual do-able energy savings that are possible using off the shelf technologies.
I've worked on several superinsulation projects, the heating and cooling savings are ginormous, simply *astounding*. The energy industry does NOT want this pushed, they got millions to throw around lobbying, so it isn't pushed. We're talking dropping your energy demands down to 20-10% sometimes of what they were previously, it's that good. It is by far and away the best ROI "energy dollar" that can be spent.
Next up, build out a better internet! It's ludicrous in the 21st century to have millions of people commute daily to go sit in front of a screen with an internet connection. That's bob cratchet and a quill pen action, we don't need that physical presence in the office all the time. We could eliminate millions of transportation miles, millions of lost production hours, by car or bus or train, and eliminate all this supposed "need" for huge SUV energy hog office towers, the ones with huge lights blaring all night long advertising to the space aliens.
There's tons and tons of places that we could be reducing demand at, without reducing quality of life at all, but wall street and the big energy cartels don't like that, and they run the nation. You saving money is not what they like, taking your money every month in big chunks is what they like, and they'll keep shoving propaganda like this article at people as long as it takes to keep you faked out, or feed you BS like "good cents" homes. That's a joke level.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superinsulation
I don't see the study give any consideration to the increasing escaping of methane due to increased production and distribution. In other studies the escaped methane and its efficiency as a greehouse gas made it a wash when compared to coal. Don't expect to run your car on this stuff. I don't see a way to price escaped methane
Methane production in the US is currently plagued by poor regulation and misguided greed causing damage that is socialized but profits aren't
Wind energy as a natural gas ploy also has the effect of placing a damper of increasing natural gas prices.
The latest edition to Pennsylvania's vast natural gas reserves, the Mercellus Shale find, is our only hope in this state to recover from de-investment since the steel industry was obliterated in the 1970s, and the coal industry before that.
Since NatGas prices are now trading at obscenely low levels, I'm hoping for more expansion (and driller taxation) in my state to at least make up somewhat for 30 years of economic decline, and the expectation is that NatGas prices now have nowhere to go but back up after perhaps another 12-20 month plateau until more coal-fired power plants are retired and gas-generated electricity expands.
Home consumption of natural gas in Pennsylvania is starting to expand after years of decline. Most PA electric companies will be allowed to jack up rates starting in 2011, which means any homeowner who moved off gas or oil heat to cheap and ineffecient forced-air electric heating elements to save money will now be royally screwed.
There's a lot of local companies around the Philadelphia area who are making a mint converting newer houses off electric heating back on to Natural Gas and those who are giving up oil heat are picking forced-air gas furnaces instead.
I am soon to buy a new home, and not only does my water heater and my furnace run off gas, but I will be switching my 240V electric clothes dryer (120V powers the motor, 240V goes to the heating element) to a low power 120V electric/gas dryer. Gas clothes dryers also dry your clothes quicker than all-electric models do with a more even application of heat.
Conventional coal is no longer a major source of power generation in the United States.
Yeah right. The US is to coal what Saudi Arabia is to oil. I cannot conceive of any scenario by which coal will not be a major player for the next 40 years. I'd love to be wrong but I seriously doubt I am.
(as BP did by passing the risks of DWH onto everyone else who was dependent on the Gulf to make a living).
It is entirely possible (perhaps not likely, but possible) that BP can't pay and goes bankrupt.
Imagine that there are a bunch of companies producing the same product. Half of them produce it safely, the other half have a 10% risk each year causing an environmental disaster costing a fortune in excess of their assets, but the production price is halved. In that case the unsafe ones are going to outcompete the safe ones, leaving only the unsafe ones (which are regularly replaced as disasters strike, but shareholders get their dividends each year for the ones which survive).
Market economics don't prevent environmental disasters even when environmental costs are entirely and fairly paid by the polluter. The only market economy remedy is requiring all companies to take out insurance for the very worst theoretical environmental disaster they could possibly cause.
There are other remedies for this problem which don't rely on market mechanisms, of course. Including the current one of letting society pay when companies can't...
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Natural Gas may lower carbon emissions in vehicles, however, there are more cars on the road than there were even 15-20 years ago. Even if today all vehicles were to be government mandated to go to natural gas, we would really only be reducing carbon emissions to levels that they were about 15-20 years ago and it would take forever for these mandates to go into effect. At the rate that cars are being added to the road, we would quickly negate any carbon advantage. Hell, the levels 15-20 years ago were still very high!! In the end, it really does nothing to stem the tide of greenhouse gases and climate change. If, as a nation, we were serious about alternative energies we would seek zero emissions. If we were serious about energy independence, we would be actively looking towards clean hydrogen. Clean coal is any oxymoron because it still emits greenhouse gases when burned. The trouble is, thanks to the GOP and Big Oil, we are not likely to get serious any time soon.
Water isn't a pollutant. That doesn't mean you can't drown in it.
What is "significant impact"? Renewables already constituted 7.4% of US energy consumption by 2008, which was a year before Obama started dramatically increasing investment in renewables. Before the US entered the Great Recession, after a decade of Oil War in which energy prices were finally high enough to make reducing energy consumption a national consensus. Before BP killed the Gulf with the consequences of offshore oil/gas drilling. That fraction had already jumped by the beginning of 2009 (still before those propelling events), just as it had been swiftly rising - though for only a few years.
California (1/7th of all Americans) already generates 31% of its electricity from renewables, 12% from non-hydropower. Again, this is all before the recent catastrophes and stimuli produce a new wave of generation plants, which are under construction.
It doesn't have to take decades before renewables have significant impact. In fact, close to 10% is already significant impact. Renewable plants are faster to build than exhaustible power systems, and are much easier/cheaper to build distributed around the country than centralized exhaustible power plants. Contrary to your statement, onsite generation by solar and wind is an advantage over centralized petrofuels in terms of our existing distribution, which onsite can largely ignore but petrofuels cannot. If we spent a $TRILLION on renewables for a decade, the way we will have spent a $TRILLION+ in Iraq on Oil War for a decade, we'd probably have at least 25% of our power coming from renewables. The resulting boom in the US domestic economy, both stimulated by investment in new technology/labor and unshackled from shipping money and jobs to foreign oil suppliers, would even further accelerate renewable fuel switchover, making subsidies unnecessary. If we canceled all the subsidies to petrofuels like oil, coal, gas and nukes, we'd see even faster conversion as a freer market finally played on a leveled playing field.
We don't have fifty years to leave exhaustible fuels for renewables. Fortunately, we don't need more than 10-20 to do it.
--
make install -not war
You're right!
http://web.mit.edu/mitei/about/members.html
most gas is now imported from Canada
... a known Terrorist State and Enemy of Freedom
The reason these power plants have not already switched to natural gas should be obvious, it's cheaper. Not only that but with the threat of "cap and tax" hanging over their heads few will switch to natural gas even if it is cheaper. They need the history of being "dirty" so that if a cap on CO2 emissions is placed upon them the reduction of CO2 output can be done as easily, and cheaply, as throwing a switch over to natural gas.
Or they figure they should use up as much coal as they can while they can. Or maybe they make an extra profit from the leftover coke?
More hydraulic fracturing! I was just thinking that my groundwater was WAAAAAY too clean for my tastes.
It proposes increased CNG use while ignoring the energy density and transportation issues.
It's among the easiest of fuels to transport as you can pipe it around easily and it doesn't have nearly as great a problem with groundwater contamination as heavier hydrocarbons. The energy density argument is rather bogus too; gas power plants are more efficient these days than oil or coal plants as they're run at much higher temperatures, and you don't transport it in the same way. One of the main ways in which the UK has reduced its carbon output over the past 2 decades has been by switching to producing electricity using gas, and this is despite the amount of electrical power required not decreasing (I think it's increased).
You would think, based on this, that natural gas is the be-all, end-all of fuels and is damn near perfect in every way. While it is lower carbon than coal, and slightly lower than oil, this is absolutely not the case. Effectively, this focuses on only the best aspects of gas and only the worst of nuclear and every other energy source. it uses the best case for gas and worst case for all others
OTOH, they can point to real case studies where the benefits are directly quantifiable. The technology exists now, and has done for decades; the kinks in it have been ironed out. It's definitely practical. (It also doesn't preclude investing in other technologies as well.)
Now, this should not surprise anyone: the major funding for this came almost entirely from the gas industry, who has recently been using heavy PR to cultivate a much "greener" image than it really is entitled to. The major funding and supporting agency is "The American Clean Skies Foundation." This foundation is funded almost exclusively by Chesapeake Energy corporation - one of the largest natural gas producers in the US. YES, THAT'S RIGHT - THIS WAS BOUGHT AND PAID FOR BY A GAS COMPANY
You'd rather it was funded by the nuclear industry? Or the RIAA maybe? (Powering America on the burning ambitions of a generation of artists!!) Seriously, while you're absolutely right to be careful of what they say, you can't just reject it out of hand because there actually is evidence that it is better (i.e., more flexible, cheaper, more efficient per ton of CO2, etc. There's quite a few metrics.) The companies involved think they can make money (duh!) and serve some other goals at the same time. To claim that their natural financial interest makes them ineligible to say anything on the topic just marks you out as one of the Loony Left (or perhaps the Raving Right; I've lost track of which part of the political spectrum is currently claiming the forefront of rabid anti-corporatism at the moment).
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Yearly consumption is about 20 billion cubic feet
Reserves are measured in hundred of trillions of cubic feet
So...enough for tens of thousands of years even if we double or triple the consumption, plenty to keep going until somebody invents the ZPM.
(Assuming I haven't mixed up what Americans think of as "billion" and "trillion")
No sig today...
How did this troll get modded up to 5?
CO2 is not a pollutant. It is in fact essential for the Earth's life cycle.
That is a false dichotomy. It is essential for the life cycle, but it is also a pollutant in excessive quantities (and the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club).
Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
Your article is interesting, but it seems to be quite a bit of guesswork. The analysis is assuming leaks and also that extraction of methane is necessarily more energy intensive than petroleum, which I don't think is the case.
Sulfur is essential for some life on earth as well, but that doesn't mean it's not a pollutant when you spray large quantities of it into the atmosphere (hooray for acid rain!).
Yes, but it's much, much shorter lived, and so has much less impact.
The link you cite is about automobiles. Yes, if you have many millions of poorly maintained vehicles driving around, and average people fueling up every day, you can expect lots of leaks. When you're talking about a single pipeline to a power plant, you shouldn't expect much leakage at all. There's a lot of experts, and money working on preventing any such leaks before they happen. That's the main benefit of centralization after all.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Converting natural gas to electricity using boilers is old tech. Turbines are more efficient.
There is another option, and that is energy efficiency. Our current profligate rate of energy use will cause us to run out of the stockpiled energy we have in just a few generations. At that point we may need that energy for projects that would have really been useful and not easily doable any other way - infrastructure that has a negligible ongoing energy requirement, exploring and colonizing space, that sort of thing. Instead because energy is so cheap, guys like this (http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1699062&cid=32702164) who are investing in energy reduction measures are laughed at by their friends. Energy is so cheap that the guy I linked to can make an investment in his house that will pay off better than stock market averages, and he is LAUGHED AT by his friends who think he should invest in marble counters and a theater room.
Human civilization managed to grow (and at an exponential rate) well enough without using any fossil fuels. With the engineering knowledge we have now, our standard of living can be vastly higher, without much more in the way of energy use. However, infrastructure has to be designed to conserve energy rather than prioritize convenience or aesthetics. Probably one of the best ways to do that is to gently ramp up energy costs with taxes until the ROI of energy efficient investment becomes a no-brainer. This can be done without causing too much in the way of pain by lowering income and sales taxes in proportion as taxes on energy are raised.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
I think the term was...oh, yeah:
C L I M A T E G A T E?
People in this group are natural thinkers. Are we also natural forgettors?
Al Gore shows the two, seemingly identical charts on roll-arounds because he wants to hide a one fact, and create another: that CO2, per the fossil record and no one's opinion, actually COOLS the planet, not heats it. The 800-year delay is the data that gets lost because they're on different charts. After the ocean has been "hot" 800 years, the CO2 in the ocean is released in great quantity and resolves the problem.
Then we have all that "here's how we make this information up" discussions from a dozen various "science" outlets.
So who GIVES A SHIT about tuning for zero-carbon? I think we have much bigger problems.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Converting natural gas to electricity using boilers is old tech. Turbines are more efficient.
Yes, moving to natural gas turbines would be more efficient. However there is a sunk cost in the existing boilers. Those boilers can be switched over to the less "polluting" (assuming the claim that CO2 is pollution has merit) with essentially no cost. If the change to natural gas has a long lasting merit then we can expect the power plants to be switched to combined thermal turbines.
Even then we can expect the boilers to exist on site for as long as it is a no cost effort as a for profit organization is reluctant to destroy capital. That boiler may be idle for decades before it is torn down as there may come a day that they will need to burn coal again.
We should all realize that there is more to the operating cost of a power plant than fuel. It may be more profitable to run a less efficient electric generator even though the fuel cost is higher because the more efficient generator may need more capital investment, man power, or maintenance.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
My argument is for regulatory enforcement to internalize costs, or where costs cannot be internalized to prevent reckless action.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Oxygen (O2) is essential for life on earth too, but if you stick yourself in a room of pure O2, it will kill you.
Nitrogen is essential for life on earth, if I stick you in a room full of Nitrogen, then you will suffocate.
If you increase the amount of any gas too high in the atmosphere it will have bad consequences
Need I go on?
I've been supporting T.Boone Pickens for over a year. A sane (IMHO) roll in of natural gas for commercial vehicles.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein
Gasland
Watch it. People across the country are getting sick from natural gas drilling because they must drill through underground water to get to the gas.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Hey petroleum and natural gas are renewable energy too. They just take hundreds of thousands of years to renew.
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/globalwarming.html
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/climategate.php
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
I'd guess you've never seen or experienced a superinsulated residence. "They" don't push it from the reasons I state, it would collapse energy prices because demand would drop. The energy cartels are some of the biggest lobbying and influence kahunas out there, they fund "studies" like this MIT propaganda piece.
There's a reason there's a push for the "passive house" in places like Germany where energy prices are high and winters are long..it *works*.
Go outside in the winter in some chilly northern clime with a T shirt and shorts, then try it in an insulated snowsuit/ snowmobile suit, see which works better on "saving energy". Same with your house/building, it's dogshit simple to see this. It can be done new construction or retrofit, I have worked on both kinds. Try a house in Maine in January, comfy inside, with NO heater running during the day, and just a very small supplement at night when it is below zero F. It can and does work that well.
Part of getting it adopted is educating people that superinsulation (R55 or better all around, planned air intake and exhaust with a heat exchanger, triple pane windows with pull down insulated covers for at night, etc) exists and can work, that's why I posted the above with the link, so people can see they have some options.
Heating and cooling buildings is the number one energy use in the nation, dropping demand, while retaining the same or even better comfort levels (planned air in and out means you can run a much better air filter, keeps the inside cleaner, plus the house is quieter), would greatly negate this "need" for more plants and using all this fuel, natgas coal nukes whatever. Those boys are in the energy SELLING business, at best they will pay lipservice to the energy savings business, mostly for PR purposes to look green trendy when they are anything but. They are in no way sha[pe or form ever going to push rational conservation as an option, it makes them loads LESS money. There's nothing new to patent, no giant wall street speculation is needed, no one company can gobble up a whole region worth of the insulation business because any carpentry crew can do it. This is off the shelf, already invented long ago stuff, just MORE of it with a few other efficiency tweaks involved.
Superinsulation works with air conditioning as well. Another project I worked on in Missouri was in the summer, the lady there called us up after the install/retrofit was finished and complained we "broke" her air conditioner. She was so used to it kicking on every half hour or hour during the summer, hearing it, when it went more than a day and didn't come on she thought it was broken. I asked her if it was still nice and cool inside, she goes "yes.." "that's what you paid for ma'am". It really does work that well.
the company i work for, www.lincolncomposites.com might have the answer to your "energy density and transportation issues" we just introduced a 40ft. cng tank(TITAN) which combined with 3 others inside an ISO frame(the boxes you see on ships in the ports) can handle your transportation issues i know the truck and bus tanks we make can handle 3500psi easy plenty of volume and safe as can be btw i'm just a lowly production worker who sees the future of our products and i am in no way getting paid for this
Goals: reduce carbon emissions, greatly reduce CO2 emissions, reduce rate of global warming, reduce man made emissions, reduce fossil fuel use, reduce hot air from politicians & liberals, eliminate efforts to create global government. Without any new technology, without wait, without construction, all these goals can be accomplished in one step. When liberals quit exhaling CO2, all the listed goals will be accomplished.
Yesterday Goddess Pele emitted 300 tons sulfur dioxide to atmosphere. That is right, KILAUEA VOLCANO, one of 350 active volcanoes, did 600 million pounds of sulfur dioxide in one average day. We do not make global weather or global warming. According to our US government the major (98.7%) green house gas is water vapor. Not CO2, not carbon dust, water in air controls solar heating of this world.
All the lies of dangerous CO2, rising oceans, carbon caps, cap & trade is just a way to Global Government. Power to the politicians is always better than power to the people, right? Just read history, see how powerful politicians have always kept rich contented subjects.
"Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
"Yes, but it's much, much shorter lived, and so has much less impact.""
A molecularly specious argument. Trace the atoms and you get a different story perhaps.
The breakdown products of atmospheric methane is water vapor and usually CO2. The negatives you give to CO2, you have to give to methane because it eventually becomes CO2, with some qualification to the conversion. (While water vapor is a greenhouse gas, it's proportional to average temperature.) The qualifications are that it's not 1:1 CH4 to CO2, and there are minor methane sinks involved that draw it out. Still, that's accounted for somewhat in the lifespan count.
A better measure is to look at methane's GWP. It's why even after 500 years, it's still over 7 times higher than CO2 (CO2 is the baseline and is always 1). So even the timeline measure using GWP still points to methane as worse.
Which, btw, is why there has been more research into looking at the methane numbers, and methane is showing up more and more as the cause for CO2 levels to some, at least enough to have an argument about. If the conversion plays out a certain way, we aren't looking at CO2 as the major player, and that makes certain environmentalists unhappy.
Gasland: http://gaslandthemovie.com/
-Eric
It's the sockpuppet account he has for when he wants to annoy people with a fake parody persona to send up Christian Libertarians heterosexuals with a working class background. Look at his posts and his journal where he talks about his other account and all of his previous posts where he accuses others of homosexual acts he describes in expert detail (not that there's anything wrong with that - but accusing others is wrong).
I just pop down to the beach and get a bucket of fuel; it's delivered free by BP.
Sort of like many wind and solar fans don't give much thought to what it takes to build those panels and turbines.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Can you find one other example of this? Obviously not.
That's right guys, it's yet another lie.
People who believe what they see in Gasland must also believe in the tooth fairy. It is an advocacy piece, discredited by anyone who knows anything about energy, including the New York Times. Please, I do not work for the gas industry and I am a Democrat, not a Dick Cheney supporting republican. I do know that there are environmental impacts from all energy production, including concentrated solar and ethanol (both of which use far more water than natural gas production). If you had read the study from a world class research institution (which receives money from many industry and foundation sponsors but remains respected for its objectivity), you would know that it recommends that we require full disclosure of fracking fluid contents as well as regional water planning and disposal, two positions strongly opposed by the industry but in the public interest. On Gasland, you should know that much of focus on Colorado has nothing to do with shale gas, they don't produce shale gas in Colorado. Also, natural gas in tap water is a perennnial problem when you do any kind of shallow drilling to, for example, install geothermal heat pumps for your house where there have beein similar documented instances of gas in tap water. There is a lot of gas at shallow depths. Shale production on the other hand occurs at depths of 8-10,000 feet below the surface whereas aquifers are seldom deeper than 1000 feet. There are thousands of feet of impermeable rock between a frack and groundwater. there are clear surface and shallow aquifer issues but this is from produced water that comes up through the borehole, not from fracking. That's why you need regional surface water management, which most states that have a history of gas production already have. Read the report, think, don't respond to cheap shot advocacy pieces that are designed to appeal to people who know nothing.
I have seen many Gasland comments in the chain and responded to one but want more people to read my response. Also, agree with the person on penetration of renewables. It will take decades and breakthroughs to reduce costs. I think solar is the long term winter but it is an order of magnitude more expensive than gas. Someoned cited California as getting 31% of its energy from renewables. Without looking, I can tell you California generates most of its electricity with gas and uses alot of hydro. I suspect there is corn ethanol in that figure as well. At any rate, this is a fairly erudite discussion so I am surprised that any one is fooled by the muckraking in Gaslang. My comments on Gasland follow: People who believe what they see in Gasland must also believe in the tooth fairy. It is an advocacy piece, discredited by anyone who knows anything about energy, including the New York Times. Please, I do not work for the gas industry and I am a Democrat, not a Dick Cheney supporting republican. I do know that there are environmental impacts from all energy production, including concentrated solar and ethanol (both of which use far more water than natural gas production). If you had read the study from a world class research institution (which receives money from many industry and foundation sponsors but remains respected for its objectivity), you would know that it recommends that we require full disclosure of fracking fluid contents as well as regional water planning and disposal, two positions strongly opposed by the industry but in the public interest. On Gasland, you should know that much of focus on Colorado has nothing to do with shale gas, they don't produce shale gas in Colorado. Also, natural gas in tap water is a perennnial problem when you do any kind of shallow drilling to, for example, install geothermal heat pumps for your house where there have beein similar documented instances of gas in tap water. There is a lot of gas at shallow depths. Shale production on the other hand occurs at depths of 8-10,000 feet below the surface whereas aquifers are seldom deeper than 1000 feet. There are thousands of feet of impermeable rock between a frack and groundwater. there are clear surface and shallow aquifer issues but this is from produced water that comes up through the borehole, not from fracking. That's why you need regional surface water management, which most states that have a history of gas production already have. Read the report, think, don't respond to cheap shot advocacy pieces that are designed to appeal to people who know nothing.
Pebble bed dates back to the 1950s. The South Africans and Germans have had decades to solve the hassles that Oak Ridge gave up on in the 1970s. Now the Chinese have some full scale prototypes thanks to help from German and South African research.
I see now why you don't get the point about making iron and steel so I'll explain it a bit better. The entire point of the process is to take iron ore and make iron and alloys from it - so the entire point is to reduce the iron oxide of the ore and heat will not do that for you. Using coke to reduce it generates a lot of heat, but the heat is not the point, the reduction is the point - hence my nitpick that started the entire thread.
We can use alternative sources of energy such as nuclear for a lot of things but steel, fertilizer and the huge range of petrochemical products are dependant on coal and oil as raw materials instead of as a source of energy. That is all I'm trying to say on that issue, and that's all I wanted to draw your attention to based on your suggestion that we can make steel with nuclear energy. You can melt stuff that is already steel with arc or induction furnaces with electricity from anywhere later - but to make it the chemistry is the thing and the heat is a useful byproduct.
We have to consider nuclear energy as a real thing with real limitations to separate ourselves from the idiots that think it is magic that are ready to fall for the next snake oil scam.
That's why I jump on claims that don't quite get things right.
Using coke to reduce it generates a lot of heat, but the heat is not the point, the reduction is the point - hence my nitpick that started the entire thread.
Ah, now I get you.
Pebble bed dates back to the 1950s. The South Africans and Germans have had decades to solve the hassles that Oak Ridge gave up on in the 1970s. Now the Chinese have some full scale prototypes thanks to help from German and South African research.
And we have information from the super-phoenix reactor.
You can melt stuff that is already steel with arc or induction furnaces with electricity from anywhere later - but to make it the chemistry is the thing and the heat is a useful byproduct.
Yeah, makes it even more important to save our coal for things like making steel. There's other methods, some that may use electricity, but coke is the cheap, efficient method.
I don't read AC A human right
Yes, the information we have from Superphoenix is to move on from a 1968 design like that! We've come a very long way since then and whoever suggested that it was a good idea to you is well and truly stuck in the 1970s before we knew better. It's even a dud for plutonium production for weapons materials, CANDU is the reactor of choice for that role in countries with nuclear ambitions.
By the way, the bomb that manipulative people blame for the closure of the superphoenix went off on January 18, 1982. The plant closure was actually announced in June 1997 - that's fifteen years later! Do you see now how we are being manipulated by emotive arguments to think that is it wasn't for those damn hippy protester kids and their dog nuclear would be everywhere today? Nuclear will be everywhere when it's good enough to be everywhere, and it's only going to be good enough if companies trying to sell it actually do some R&D. Otherwise we wait for China, India or maybe even France and buy it from them.
When I say 'lessons learned', I'm thinking more about the technical details of working with a liquid sodium design. With liquid sodium, you can increase the reactor's temperature quite a bit to produce things such as hydrogen, increase efficiency so you're dumping less heat for more electricity, etc...
You're thinking I want to see the reactor design itself resurrected - I don't. I don't want breeder reactors for plutonium, I want them for their far greater ability to completely consume fuel and dispose of waste.
By the way, the bomb that manipulative people blame for the closure of the superphoenix went off on January 18, 1982.
That was the RPG attack, while explosives were involved I wouldn't call them 'bombs', the damage profile is quite different.
'63 months normal operations(but low power), 25 months outage due to technical problems, 66 months spent on hault due to political and administrative issues'.
In 1996 it finally reached 90% power, after they fixed the sodium system's corrosion and leakage problems.
Otherwise we wait for China, India or maybe even France and buy it from them.
Something of this scale should be joint, I think.
I don't read AC A human right
Yep - such lessons learned are not to use liquid sodium (cause of liquid metal embrittlement) anywhere near something that is bombarded with neutrons and thus develops the sort of voids that produce the sort of cracks that get opened up a lot by a liquid metal. Nobody ever found more than a short term solution to that one even with a lot of retubing. A very similar sort of thing to neutron damage happens with high temperatures and stress and the same alloys are used in coal fired power stations which is why I was reading papers on that even though I've never worked on anything from a nuclear plant.
To put things in perspective I heard a lot of the things that were wrong with it from a former Russian nuclear power station engineer in 1994 - that French plant was so bad that even the Russians said it scared them. That Russian engineer wasn't stating it out of any sort of patriotism, he also said much of the Russian stuff was very very bad (with very scary details) but Superphoenix was considered a bad joke in comparison.
Anyway, liquid metal embrittlement is interesting stuff and is why you can't take mercury thermometers on aircraft - once it spills it dissolves any little scratch into a major crack and forces the crack open. That was one of the many problems resulting from the very concept of a liquid sodium reactor. Get around with that the right materials and the concept has a chance - but who has been able to do so? Until that is no longer a problem there is no chance of ever getting such a thing as a system reliably generating electricity, so a dead end for now unless some research can find something to fit all of the conditions.
The plutonium fast breeder was mostly to get around a future shortage of fuel from cheap high grade uranium ore which is no longer worth worrying about since much more has been found and only old US designs (eg. what Westinghouse is try to sell to the Government) need high grade fuel anyway.