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Chinese Company Offers Free Training For US Coal Miners To Become Wind Farmers (qz.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: If you want to truly understand what's happening in the energy industry, the best thing to do is to travel deep into the heart of American coal country, to Carbon County, Wyoming (yes, that's a real place). The state produces most coal in the US, and Carbon County has long been known (and was named) for its extensive coal deposits. But the state's mines have been shuttering over the past few years, causing hundreds of people to lose their jobs in 2016 alone. Now, these coal miners are finding hope, offered from an unlikely place: a Chinese wind-turbine maker wants to retrain these American workers to become wind-farm technicians. It's the perfect metaphor for the massive shift happening in the global energy markets. The news comes from an energy conference in Wyoming, where the American arm of Goldwind, a Chinese wind-turbine manufacturer, announced the free training program. More than a century ago, Carbon County was home to the first coal mine in Wyoming. Soon, it will be the site of a new wind farm with hundreds of Goldwind-supplied turbines.
It's not just for their employees, they're offering this program to unemployed coal miners as well.
Apparently with the hope that these unemployed miners will provide support for Goldwind turbines where they live. This is a loss-leader for the company, but IMHO, it looks like a win-win-win for Goldwind, the residents of Carbon County, and the environment.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
It looks like Chinese communism is doing more for American workers than American capitalism has done for them in a long time. #MAGA
Actually over the last few years there's been a mini boom in Rawlins (the county seat of Carbon County), Wyoming. The boom wasn't coal (that's been long gone except for some small coal liquification projects), but in Uranium mining in neighboring Sweetwater County. I guess retraining uranium miners doesn't have the same "green" backstory that the press wants to write about.
It's *really* windy there all the time, so back in 2001, one company built a windfarm in nearby Medicine Bow (111MW farm), and there are many more under construction in the area. I wonder if this Chinese company simply can't find enough workers in the area and wants to train some.
FWIW, my family has been in Rawlins since the '50s and really there are only 3 big employers in the area: Railroad, Sinclair refinery, and the State Penitentiary. Rawlins used to be a big stop on US highway 30, but when they built the I-80 bypass, the town died (kind of like in the fictional movie Cars, Radiator Springs used to be a big stop on US highway 66, but when they built the I-40 bypass, the town died). My grandpa sold his (ironically chinese) restaurant just after the I-80 bypass was completed in the mid '70s. The town has never been the same since.
in engineering college, the foreign kids were sitting in the library on Friday night of a holiday weekend while most of the natives were out partying.
The families of foreign students sacrifice a great deal to send their children to Western schools. The "foreign-devil fees" are much higher than for domestic students. If foreign students don't go home with As, they go home shamed.
Being a foreign student in a Western school is a brutal existence. Show them some compassion.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
30% of revenue from energy production is equal to maintenance costs? Over what period, unit lifetime? In what environment? Regardless, to determine value you must compare whatever failure rates to energy produced in best, worst, and most frequent conditions. You can approximate the beta distribution with the triangular distribution and with reliability engineering you can find expected time until a repair event. Then you can figure out how likely each individual unit is to break even, and beyond that to produce profit. Those are the metrics of greatest interest, and given that market trade is the mantra of modern China that is the only motive required. All others face the test of reality vs paranoia.
>Gee... I wonder why that would be? Could it possibly be because of 'catastrophic man-made global warming' alarmists? Sorry - 'climate change' alarmists?
Nope. Firstly that group of people don't EXIST (the term 'alarmist' is not accurate unless the threat isn't real) and secondly the decline of coal had nothing to do with them anyway. That was driven entirely by the availability of cheap natural gas. Which fucking sucks for people who want something done about climate change since gas is only a tiny bit cleaner than coal. We'd rather have NEITHER - but we didn't kill coal, we wish we did, it got killed by a cheaper fossil fuel.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
For the record, the Audubon Society supports wind farms. Because while they kill birds, coal kills far more, between direct and indirect effects. Now, of course, they insist on proper siting and proper measures taken to minimize bird deaths, and work towards strong laws on this front. But they do support and advocate for wind power.
You're treating a symptom while the disease rages on. The fish rots from the head. Why not cut off the head?
Uranium mining is seriously dirty business, it's by far the most environmentally destructive resource to mine - mining coal is bad, but uranium mining is worse.
Luckily, because uranium in a fission reactor yields about a couple of million times more joules per kilogram when compared to burning coal in a plant, you end up needing mine overall less of it.
(Still you need to reduce that factor by around 5x ~ 6x, because it it need to be a little bit enriched to work as a fuel (0.7% natual to 3-4% fuel)).
I'm not saying the Uranium is clean.
I'm just saying that, whenever you speak about nuclear fission (or even nuclear fusion if that thing eventually takes of one day, before we've managed to drive ourselves into extinction), you have to keep in mind that the total amount of mass considered for a certain amount of energy is several orders of magnitude lower.
Or another angle to consider things :
Coal requires millions times more mass than fission to produce energy.
Coal contains radioactive isotopes, even if the quantity are very tiny. (Well like anything in nature, actually)
But we're burning such an absurd mass of coal and dumping all its outputs in the environment (ash),
to the point that the radioactive content of coal starts get significant.
And research shows that coal is actually producing more radioactive waste than nuclear
But yeah in the end if we manage to go solar/wind/hydro, it's even better.
But until then keep in mind that because of the quantities involved, environmental impact (both pollution and radioactive waste) isn't straight forward.
Ultimately both industries have another major advantage over coal as a local keystone industry: a lot less people dying young from blacklung.
I agree with that.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Agreed, but it does have everything to do with the parent post I was replying to.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *