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The EPA Carbon Plan: Coal Loses, But Who Wins?
Lasrick writes: Mark Cooper with one of the best explanations of some of the most pressing details on the new EPA rule change: 'The claims and counterclaims about EPA's proposed carbon pollution standards have filled the air: It will boost nuclear. It will expand renewables. It promotes energy efficiency. It will kill coal. It changes everything. It accomplishes almost nothing.' Cooper notes that although it's clear that coal is the big loser in the rule change, the rule itself doesn't really pick winners in terms of offering sweet deals for any particular technology; however, it seems that nuclear is also a loser in this formulation, because 'Assuming that states generally adhere to the prime directive of public utility resource acquisition—choosing the lowest-cost approach—the proposed rule will not alter the dismal prospects of nuclear power...' Nuclear power does seem to be struggling with economic burdens and a reluctance from taxpayers to pay continuing subsides in areas such as storage and cleanup. It seems that nuclear is another loser in the new EPA rule change.
I think you can be sure no matter how this plays out, power is going to be more expensive. In addition, if the coal-fired plants are removed from the equation before replacement sources of power are in place, there will be power shortages.
Nuclear power does seem to be struggling with economic burdens and a reluctance from taxpayers to pay continuing subsides in areas such as storage and cleanup. It seems that nuclear is another loser in the new EPA rule change.
Make those Regulatory burdens.
Why does nuclear cost so much? Cause we're stupid, ignorant, and afraid. Nookyuler is scary black magic.
So because our government decision are determined by a stupid electorate, something has to be done to level the playing field.
The idea is that we reduce carbon emissions to slow the rate of the effects on climate. They're not trying to pick winners and losers; why would you try and make winners and losers out of this?
All of the non-coal fuels each have their own challenges, and this rule doesn't alter that. It's like free market, but with the addition that the cost of altering the climate is factored into regulation because a commodity-priced market is unable to react to a result with a 100 year return period.
You still can't find anybody willing and able to properly store spent nuclear fuel, nor someone looking to invest billions of dollars and a decade of zero income in an industry which has a low-growth potential.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
We freeze in the dark.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Nuclear reactors stand and fall mostly on their own, what the government does is determine if you can open one. Because of our dear presidents own stance, we will not be opening new nuclear plants until he's gone. Nuclear is the cheapest per megawatt power source we currently have. Renewable are nice, but they cannot provide base load, they take a far longer payback time period than nuclear, they continue to advance(meaning the new stuff will be out dated before it pays for itself), they are only usable in certain areas, etc. You want to tell me that the government screwing nuclear power by making reprocessing illegal is a subsidy? If they were allowed to reprocess then the amount of nuclear waste would drop dramatically, costs would drop further, we wouldn't have such a shortage of medical isotopes, etc. The problem is that nuclear power has been demonized and made to seem useless. You think that if nuclear couldn't compete it would be the heart of all of the most effective warships on the planet, the reasons it isn't used in satellites are mostly treaties and laws, the other is mass and heat dissipation from higher power plants. Hell, nuclear is the most viable option to reduce environmental impacts in a manner which preserves quality of life, requires minimal governmental interference, and does not require that researchers create regular miracles just to keep society working.
The companies the EPA likes--which never end up working. Solyndra anyone?
These hippies won't be satisfied until we are living in holes in the ground like hobbits.
The American people lose as more expensive less reliable power is substituted for base load coal power.
Obama said the price of electricity will necessarily sky rocket...yup for once he told the truth.
And for what? Some green energy pipe dream. If their plan works as they intend, according to EPA's own models (MAGICC) we would avert 0.02 degrees of warming !
Industry, especially high tech industry like chip fabs cannot have power interruptions, even a few seconds shuts the line down, scraping wafers and days at best. This past cold winter here in Illinois, the grid was taxed to the maximum. If we remove solid base load power there will be brown or blackouts when it is minus 10 degrees .
The earth atmosphere has not warmed for 12-17 years depending on which temperature series you look at. This shows at a time of the most CO2 emitted (25% of historical amounts) temperature has not gone up, so the computer models are wrong.
It is not about air pollution, which is declining in the US, it is about destroying the energy and manufacturing infrastructure in the US.
EPA wasn't on the ballot.
If they were though, I might not have voted for them, because they are such hypocrites. Get caught by them with so much as a dirty old eagle feather found in a ditch, and see what happens to you. Yet windmills in CA are up to 3000 Golden Eagles killed, and like 1 point something million birds total. Free pass. Doesn't matter if I love windmills or not; the birds are worth protecting with felonies and giant fines for regular citizens, or they are not. I'm a big fan of equality under the law.
My power bill is high as fuck now. So are other peoples'. I can't think of a reason why the EPA would care about that though.
Where is my Congress?
Of course nuclear power doesn't seem viable if you look at it's current state! All the reactors we have now were designed in the '50s. They use water as a moderator (ie thermal neutrons) and coolant, requiring complex assemblies of fuel rods and control rods. Thermal neutrons also cause way more incidental nuclear waste (irradiated steel cores, wires, etc). They use
It doesn't have to be that way! The most recent design for a fast reactor seems to be the most legitimate and feasible new design to date. It's called the dual fluid reactor. http://dual-fluid-reactor.org/
It separates the fuel loop from the coolant loop. This has numerous advantages. You can alter the rate of either independently to best suit the current need. The coolant used isn't liquid sodium. Which, aside from not playing nice with air and water has a low boiling point and high neutron cross section. This reactor uses liquid lead as its coolant. Its so stable and resistant to radiation that the coolant loop can be piped into the non-containment area for power generation. In the papers I've read they mention coupling it to an MHR generator then a super-critical water loop en route to turbines.
It is engineered to run at 1000C, which at that temperature, makes it possible to do pyro-chemistry with electrodes to filter out the daught products in line with the fuel loop. The separated daughter products are then sent to a passive cooling chamber (the super short lived ones are hooked up to the coolant loop where it contributes to energy production) where they remain hella hot for a few hundred years. Then they become inert. There are supposedly lots of valuble metals after about 90 years that make the waste itself a hot commodity.
The reactor is designed to be a 2 meter cube, for simple production there are no bowed parts, only 90 angles with straight pipes. A reactor this size can put out 1500MW thermal.
Couple this with the recent advancement of laser-based particle accelerators and you wouldn't even have to start with enriched fuel! The power required to drive the laser would be
As Elon Musk would say (probably): Seriously guys, it's the 21st century, act like it!
Clearly, the order of investment/research should be
Solar - we need to up the efficiency, pick a proven 'winning' system (parabolic trough would be my choice) and GO with deployment, Germany has shown that this can be done in even sub-par areas, and even with transmissions losses, the sun produces magnitudes more energy than we could possibly ever use.
Wind - offshore where appropriate, inshore where available, enhancing the solar production into both day and night.
Hydro - again, renewable, but limited to certain areas and not without its environmental challenges
Nuclear - fission and cleanup of existing fuels using thorium fuel cycle is likely the best approach, fusion research as the long term solution for sustainable renewable power (and yes, with 4th/5th generation reactors, specifically Liquid fluoride thorium reactors, nuclear fission can be safe, and better, it can be the solution to removing/making safe/reusing all that stored nuclear fuel at existing reactors)
Storage (near and long term) - this can be accomplished with better batteries, or better, thermal storage. You can even use kinetic flywheels or chemical storage in the form of fuel (use the excess energy to manufacture hydrogen from sea water anyone? or desalinate sea water to provide fresh drinking water? the uses for excess energy are endless)
Coal - Slowly phase out coal, starting with regulation to reduce/remove/offset the incredible amount of pollution/death it causes
Oil/Natural Gas - We should definitely NOT be using this for fuel, it is much MORE valuable as a resource for making things, think plastics and fertilizer. Granted, we don't have the infrastructure to stop using this stuff for energy, but its coming, so slowly phase it out of our energy systems in preference for the above 4.
Stop thinking small. Even 1% of the existing military budget would be a huge boost for the energy research sector. I'd rather have a failed solyndra, than 10 years of war in Iraq.
Big oil and your standard energy providers win if our electricity bills are going up. They're going up by 50% now around where I live. They figure,"Hey one way to compete with the electric car is to make it as expensive to fill up your electric car as buying gasoline." and it will work for the short run.
God spoke to me
That's who wins. Every time. No matter what regulators do, that's who wins.
If even a fraction of the money spent subsidizing the nuclear and fossil fuel industries had been spent developing renewables and storage technology imagine where we would be now
of burying everyone because some company decided to cut a few corners in order to get a bigger bonus.
The rule change doesn't help (or hurt) nuclear power and so therefore nuclear power loses? That's an interesting line of reasoning. I suppose FIFA, dirigibles, and panda bears are also losers in this rule change too, then.
that proves the Republicans rule over us 100% and control every part of our lives. It should be banned, the people that mine it should be put in prison, and its use should be punishable by time in prison. That is the only reasonable way to treat coal. It is the biggest killer in the history of mankind. The Republicans are responsible for the 200+ million people it killed last year.
> I think you can be sure no matter how this plays out, power is going to be more expensive.
No, you can't be sure of that. Wind power in the central portion of the country is cheaper than coal now. PV is cheaper than market power in the Southwest and the Northeast now. Many coal plants in tUSA are 50+ years old -- they're going to retire soon one way or another. And, not for nothing, wholesale electric power is cheaper now than it was five years ago due to cheap natural gas (and, by the way, switching from coal to gas helps comply with 111(d) and saves money).
> if the coal-fired plants are removed from the equation before replacement sources of power are in place, there will be power shortage
If my aunt had nuts, she'd be my uncle. There's absolutely no chance that 111(d) will result in reliability performance below the industry standard 1-day-in-10-years. Just won't happen. Retiring a unit requires years of planning. Google "integrated resource plan IRP" for your favorite utility and hunker down to a ~120 page report, produced every 3-5 years, laying out the company's plan, including projected retirements, new units, new transmission, etc.
111(d) doesn't require any coal plants to retire. It requires our fraction of electricity generated from coal to be reduced. The coal plants can still be "plugged in" and operated during times of peak load (weekday summer afternoons and winter mornings); what they can't do is operate much the rest of the time. Instead, a combination of new energy efficiency measures, new renewable energy production, more frequent operating of combined cycle natural gas generators, and squeezing even more MWh out of existing nuclear units through uprates or reduced downtimes will be the way states will comply with 111(d).
Seriously slashdot. Pithy remarks more frequently display ignorance than insightfulness.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Peak demand isn't as close to daylight as you might expect in the South. In fact, many systems are winter peaking (central Florida and Appalachia come to mind). Those systems peak winter 7-10am. Sure, the sun is just starting to come up, but PV isn't going to have a significant impact on that peak. Similarly, peak is 3-6pm. PV produces it's best power at high noon. As more PV comes on the system, the "net"-peak will push to 4-7pm, then 5-8pm. Again, solar contributes to meeting some of that peak, but depending on geography it isn't always going to align as well as you might think, including in the south.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
I see you're new to how this works.
Coal is heavily subsidized, both in extraction and in land lease conditions.
In addition costs of pollution are rarely if ever borne by the miners or shippers.
The only thing that is being changed is the conditions under which Power Plants burn coal.
Water scrubbing has been used since (forever) to remove pollutants, including acidic CO2 and SO2 from coal but is rarely used for existing plants, and never for coal exported overseas. I used to clean the scrubbers from Tek Cominco stacks that basically operate the same way, in my first adult job.
After these minor adjustments, coal will continue to be heavily subsidized at all other levels of production and distribution, just not as much at usage.
Which will still make it artificially cheaper than wind, but not artificially cheaper than already cheap solar. Passive solar today is cheaper for heating/cooling in the US, and is near coal costs in active solar for certain applications.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The next challenge will be natural gas - it's a decent improvement over coal on paper, but only if leakage is kept to a minimum, and the evidence right now is that NG leakage is high enough that it's forcing global warming faster than te extra CO2 from coal would be doing. But at least the environmental damage is hidden deep underground in contaminated water supplies.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
As soon as you consider places where there is industry consuming electricity instead of merely residential usage then you get plenty of consumption in full daylight. Slicing the top off that big daytime peak has resulted in a couple of coal fired units being mothballed near me and some expensive to operate gas turbines having a lot less running time.
Everyone who likes to breathe normally and walk to work instead of swim, that's who wins.
There's more. The current trick in some parts of the world is spend a lot of money on "poles and wires" (they used this dumbed down term for infrastructure in general even when major parts of the cost are substations) with no oversight whether it is needed or not and charge that on to the consumer. For example in Australia there has been a lot built rapidly despite declining consumption which has led to a major gap between some of the lowest generating costs in the world and close to the highest bill per kW/h for consumers in the world.
Hang on - wasn't most of that done in the 80s and 90s? I thought I saw the tail end of precipitators, bag filters etc going in when I went into the electricity generating industry in 1994, and only holdouts like China did without.
You express way too much faith in politicians. Your responses are technically sound, but fail the classic "great idea checklist" that slashdot comments used to post routinely.
Rich campaign donors who bought this. Is that even a serious question?
Do you have ESP?
> in Southern states where peak demand is during daylight hours.
Specifically, 11AM-2PM. Human eyes see brightness log(n), so we don't realize that the sunshine is a hundred times brighter at some times than at others. It would suck if noon appeared to be a hundred times as bright as morning, so our eyes compress the difference. Solar panels DO notice that, and don't produce much at all during what we call daylight 7AM-10AM and 3PM-8PM. Same with cloudy days. What looks to be a little bit less bright is actually FAR less energy.
So what you end up with is "southern states, for a few hours per day while everyone is at work, on sunny days". Peak usage in most cases when people get home from work, turn on the TV and start cooking dinner. At that time, there's no solar available. Also in the morning when everyone is rushing around blow-drying their hair, microwaving breakfast, etc. Solar is AWESOME in theory, at first glance. Beyond that first glance, looking at the details, it starts to look like we've wasted a few billion dollars that could have saved about 200 million hungry people.
The Bulletin of the Atomic "Scientists" has a well known anti-nuclear agenda, and is shameless in their intellectual dishonesty. Slashdot ought to provide the [hostname] for links in stories as it does in comments. As for the story quote...
Assuming that states generally adhere to the prime directive of public utility resource acquisition—choosing the lowest-cost approach—the proposed rule will not alter the dismal prospects of nuclear power...
Nuclear is the lowest cost approach, and newer technologies have the potential to be much cheaper and even safer. The cost of nuclear in the US is artificially inflated by anti-nuclear policy and endless litigation, often instigated by groups such as this one. Through a concerted and continuing effort, they have succeeded in increasing the cost of nuclear, though historically it has been very economical and continues to be in other parts of the world.
No matter who wins, WE all lose...
When Obama first proposed Obamacare, he didn't jump in with specifics; he just laid out some high level guidelines and let the Democratically controlled Congress hash out the details. This was politically costly, because in the absence of specifics all kinds of claims were made about what was allegedly in the program, like "death panels". The house ended up passing something that looked like the plan Heritage Foundation put together for Bob Dole in the 90s. This was essentially the least they could do that met Obama's specifications for health care reform, and the long period over which it was impossible to defend because it had no concrete form cost Democrats control of the House.
This plan looks an awful lot like that. Broad goals, but implementation details kicked down the road and downstairs (in this case to the states). The one specific detail that's being talked about is a 30% reduction in emissions from coal in 26 years -- and even that's not very specific. The total CO2 emissions associated with mining, transporting and burning coal is at present about twice that of natural gas. It's possible that coal will be mined at even a higher rate than today if the industry develops more efficient ways to use it. Twenty-six years is a long time in technology.
In any case it's kind of a no-brainer that you can't allow coal emissions to grow in proportion to how the country's economy will grow in 30 years; not if you want to reduce pollution. It's the dirtiest fuel we use across the board, not just in terms of CO2.
But however you slice it, this is a very abstract plan that won't be translated into any kind of concrete action until long after Obama is out of office, if ever. The only thing that's close to certain is that it'll create a lot of political turmoil.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The coal plants can still be "plugged in" and operated during times of peak load (weekday summer afternoons and winter mornings); what they can't do is operate much the rest of the time.
The problem with this is that coal plants can't operate this way. A typical coal plant takes 4-8 hours to reach full power from a warm start and can take 24 hours to cold start. This is why we currently use them for baseload power and use other sources (mostly natural gas and hydro) for load following.
Enigma
The problem with this is that coal plants can't operate this way.
We've had weather prediction down well enough for the last century or so to be able to handle that kind of lead time. The bigger problem is the cost of maintaining a coal plant for such infrequent use.
Isn't it obvious that in the near-term, fracking wins?
Let us hope that the methane it leaks doesn't do more damage than the carbon emissions it saves.
Obama crony George Soros went on a rather interesting buying spree.... He invested heavily along three basic themes:
1. "Green Energy" firms within the USA - he bought into a dozen of these firms which then got handouts of $11 BILLION from the federal govt for "green energy"
2. Firms whose value would rise IF coal was de-valued. (cha-ching! Obama's making this one pay-off for the resident proud Hitler-era NAZI collaborator)
3. Fossil-fuel-based energy firms in the BRIC countries. The emissions rules being slapped onto western economies by their own gullible elites would have no direct negative effects in the BRICs, and actually have positive side-effects as the BRIC economies would automatically be made relatively more-productive (by the artificially-imposed inefficiencies in the non-BRICs Soros was pushing in Europe and the USA) Oh, and his Brazillian oil investment REALLY paid-off when the Obama admin pumped US tax dollars into its offshore deep-water oild drilling efforts while suppressing off-shore leases for US firms in the Gulf.
Soros bought lots of stuff that would benefit NOT from natural economic activity but rather from political interventions... and he poured lots of money into "progressive" news outlets and web sites to support the Obama agenda that he was betting on. Soros pours his money into these outlets via his "Open Society Institute" and the "Tides Foundation" which in-turn fund everybody from "MoveOn" to the quasi-religious "Sojourners"... EIGHT TIMES as much on 501c organizations as the Koch brothers. This has paid-off handsomely... why leave your "return on investment" to the "whims of the market" when you can put a jack-boot on the scale?
Hmm, I just thought of a better rebuttal to your statement, actually.
The people proposing that we continue depleting the environment are the ones proposing sweeping changes, for the viability of life on this planet. Or, you know, so says science. Ignore it at your peril — the peril of looking like a dbag.
Fucking A slashdot, how will this comment improve by making me wait to submit it? I have figured out what is wrong with slashdot, the people running it are incapable of more than one act of insight per two minutes.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The coal plants can still be "plugged in" and operated during times of peak load (weekday summer afternoons and winter mornings); what they can't do is operate much the rest of the time.
The problem with this is that coal plants can't operate this way. A typical coal plant takes 4-8 hours to reach full power from a warm start and can take 24 hours to cold start. This is why we currently use them for baseload power and use other sources (mostly natural gas and hydro) for load following.
Stormv's argument was flawed, but it was unnecessary also. Coal has never been able to do load following, so other technologies were always required. Mothballed coal plants CAN be used as spare capacity when other generators are taken for maintenance or due to accident, with the same argument - they aren't operating all the time. This still reduces infrastructure, and thus overall, cost since otherwise spare (but unused) capacity must be built.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Once energy costs skyrocket once government basically bans cheap energy, people will have to turn to nuclear. Can't get any more Hydro power, Wind and solar can't make much power, natural gas can only do so much.
So until the Democrats get thrown out of office, energy prices till keep going up. But people will turn to nuclear eventually, can't live without some risks despite what government thinks.
Follow me around and mod me down, so that you can't use up your mod points on someone who doesn't have an inexhaustible fount of karma. (They used to be called a clue.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Check out the new 2014 NAT geo maps. Biggest change since the Soviet Union broke up.
But... Kos says there's death panels for Black people! Death Panels actually do exist... if you're Black....
Shielded by its own coolant. And its visible and detectable. It makes you wonder why sodium was ever considered? Certainly, they must have tossed the two up in the air, and sodium was chosen despite its evilness. Do you know why?
You are a fool and a liar. Plain and simple...this will be more costly, will hurt the economy, and will provide less reliable power. Why do you think otherwise? Because the DOE says so? Take your head out of your ass and look around at the real world fucktard
Actually modern coal burning plants can do load following. For example, your 4 hours to reach full power from a warm start is an example.