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Coal Plants Get New Lease On Life With Natural Gas
HughPickens.com writes Christina Nunez reports in National Geographic that in the past four years, at least 29 coal-fired plants in 10 states have switched to natural gas or biomass while another 54 units, mostly in the US Northeast and Midwest, are slated to be converted over the next nine years. By switching to natural gas, plant operators can take advantage of a relatively cheap and plentiful US supply. The change can also help them meet proposed federal rules to limit heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, given that electricity generation from natural gas emits about half as much carbon as electricity from coal does.
But not everyone is happy with the conversions. The Dunkirk plant in western New York, slated for conversion to natural gas, is the focus of a lawsuit by environmental groups that say the $150 million repowering will force the state's energy consumers to pay for an unnecessary facility. "What we're concerned about is that the Dunkirk proceeding is setting a really, really bad precedent where we're going to keep these old, outdated, polluting plants on life support for political reasons," says Christopher Amato. Dunkirk's operator, NRG, wanted to mothball the plant in 2012, saying it was not economical to run. The utility, National Grid, said shutting it down could make local power supplies less reliable, a problem that could be fixed by boosting transmission capacity—at a lower cost than repowering Dunkirk. Meanwhile the citizens of Dunkirk are happy the plant is staying open. "We couldn't let it happen. We would lose our tax base, we would lose our jobs, we would lose our future," said State Sen. Catharine M. Young. "This agreement saves us. It gives us a foundation on which to build our economy. It gives us hope. This is our community's Christmas miracle!"
But not everyone is happy with the conversions. The Dunkirk plant in western New York, slated for conversion to natural gas, is the focus of a lawsuit by environmental groups that say the $150 million repowering will force the state's energy consumers to pay for an unnecessary facility. "What we're concerned about is that the Dunkirk proceeding is setting a really, really bad precedent where we're going to keep these old, outdated, polluting plants on life support for political reasons," says Christopher Amato. Dunkirk's operator, NRG, wanted to mothball the plant in 2012, saying it was not economical to run. The utility, National Grid, said shutting it down could make local power supplies less reliable, a problem that could be fixed by boosting transmission capacity—at a lower cost than repowering Dunkirk. Meanwhile the citizens of Dunkirk are happy the plant is staying open. "We couldn't let it happen. We would lose our tax base, we would lose our jobs, we would lose our future," said State Sen. Catharine M. Young. "This agreement saves us. It gives us a foundation on which to build our economy. It gives us hope. This is our community's Christmas miracle!"
You say that and you are correct, but when the best solution we have right now, nuclear, is mentioned the greenies freak the hell out and star screaming and running around in circles. Until we actually embrace what is possible to do and stop wishing on new technology to catch up, we'll be stuck here for a while.
The problem with nuclear, without even going close to the radiation boogeyman, is that:
- it requres huge investement before nothing happens
- it takes years to construct a power plant
- it's pretty much unflexible regarding any peaks or lows in consumption
- the latest generation concrete housings' carbon foorprint takes a decade to offset
- provided the fuel mining, enrichement and transportation is almost carbon neutral
- the nuclear plants require a lot of sweet water for cooling, 24/7, and the world is running out
Oh, and nobody is willing to foot the bill, including insurance and decomissioning, so techically greenies don't really need to freak the hell out or start screaming, because mostly nuclear power is off the table due to practical issues. Which probably is why I don't know any greenies who do run around in circles. Actually, most of the greenies I know are free-market liberals. Now, *that* doesn't make any sense...
Nuclear is dead in the US. It's been regulated to the point that it's not financially viable to build one. I know a guy who worked on the construction of one and he said what caused the massive costs overruns is that the plans constantly change while you are building. He said they would build a wall, then tear it down and build another wall with different specs then a year late the specs would change again. He built one wall four times. The cost overruns and impossibility to meet any kind of schedule kill it.
Well, Coal is very high in carbon, little hydrogen. Natural gas has a CH4 has 4 hydrogen to 1 carbon. Thus one CH4 burns to CO2 and 2-H2O
The heat from the H combustion adds no CO2 to the air and coal is over 90%(varies a lot with hard/soft coal - google that). In addition, the combustion of hydrogen makes more heat per mole than the combustion of carbon.
That's the problem with you "environmentalists".
* You don't like coal because it emits soot and C02
* You don't like gas because it still emits C02, even though it's way better than coal
* You don't like nuclear because, well, you name it. Excuse after excuse after excuse.
* You don't like Hydro because of the fishes.
* Some of you don't like large solar because of he turtles or whatever else crawls on the ground and will be denied the Sun.
* Some of you don't like wind because...hell, I don't know. The fact that some of you do is hilarious considering the trubines regularly kill endangered birds.
You pretty much don't like anything. You don't have a solution except austerity/rationing/restrictions/taxes.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The problem with nuclear, without even going close to the radiation boogeyman, is that:
- it requres huge investement before nothing happens
- it takes years to construct a power plant
- the nuclear plants require a lot of sweet water for cooling, 24/7, and the world is running out
I'm a fan of the mini-nuclear reactors. These are about the size of a bus, can be mass-produced to make them cheaper, and require no maintenance or cooling. They are extremely fault-tolerant - they only operate in a narrow thermal band, if they get too hot or too cold the reaction shuts itself down. One produces enough energy to power a small city, or a large neighborhood in a big city. You sink them in a concrete vault and forget about them for a decade or so. When their nuclear fuel is spent, you pull them out, get rid of the waste (about the size of a softball) refurbish and refuel the reactor and put it back in the ground.
The bonus side-effect is a more stable and efficient electrical grid with fewer long-haul high voltage power lines running all over the place, more redundancy and less centralization.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Burning coal is pretty much just turning bulk carbon into carbon dioxide. Burning natural gas (methane, CH4) creates carbon dioxide, too, of course, but also releases energy from burning the hydrogen to make water. As a result, the combustion of natural gas produces less CO2 for the same energy output.
From the Energy Information Agency - Pounds of CO2 emitted per million BTU of energy:
Coal (anthracite): 228.6
Gasoline: 157.2
Natural Gas: 117.0
[I'll apologize for the units - I'm just quoting the result. If you must know, 1 lb / 1e6 BTU is equivalent to 0.43e-3 kg/MJ. Or, just look at the number as a figure of merit: lower is better.]
more data here
That was then. Today we have settled on standardized new-generation plant designs that avoid this problem.
What's really needed is a change in our legal system to eliminate the disproportionate power that small groups of activists have to disrupt construction. Their strategy is to raise costs by imposing phony legal delays on construction after the initial approval.
As a guy who very recently was involved in selling new power station equipment, I can say with 100% confidence that there is no such thing as a standardized power plant design in the USA. I was selling turbines to Duke, Southern Company, Exelon, Luminant, and many others. Every customer wanted something different. Some of them wanted triple redundant instruments on valves, and some were happy with dual redundancy. Some of them wanted the generator protection system to be redundant on 2 different vendor's kit, and some wanted redundancy with identical cabinets from the same vendor. Some wanted a stainless steel oil tank, and some were fine with the carbon steel + epoxy coating tank. Some of them wanted to have a large turbine deck to make maintenance easier, and some were cutting that cost since they were going to flip the plant anyway. We went into great detail about even the most mundane of things. Some of the customers wanted to have all our equipment numbering changed to their (internal and proprietary) numbering standard so that all the plants they owned had the same numbering scheme. No matter what our "standard" design was, someone had a problem with it. These guys know what they want and if it isn't included in your "standard" design, they want a price to make it happen.
This is a different philosophy from Europe and Asia, where standard designs are common and even preferred. But that's the US power market. Toshiba/Westinghouses' standard AP1000 plant isn't good enough for any of the US utilities who can afford to build such a thing. All the customers have their little quirks of wanting to be a little more safe in one area, or a little more convenient to operate, or a little cheaper to build. None of those changes affect the core safety principles of the design, they are just different. They do, however, drive up the build cost. Additionally, these plants don't get build often enough to keep the same crew on each job. By the time you build Unit #2, 10 years has gone by and a lot of the people who built Unit #1 have changed jobs or retired. It is difficult to keep such specialized experience in the economy if it is needed so rarely.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.