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Trump Orders a Lifeline For Struggling Coal and Nuclear Plants (nytimes.com)
According to The New York Times, President Trump has ordered Energy Secretary Rick Perry to "prepare immediate steps" to stop the closure of unprofitable coal and nuclear plants around the country. From the report: Under one proposal outlined in the memo, which was reported by Bloomberg, the Department of Energy would order grid operators to buy electricity from struggling coal and nuclear plants for two years, using emergency authority that is normally reserved for exceptional crises like natural disasters. That idea triggered immediate blowback from a broad alliance of energy companies, consumer groups and environmentalists. On Friday, oil and gas companies joined with wind and solar organizations in a joint statement condemning the plan, saying that it was "legally indefensible" and would force consumers to pay more for electricity.
The administration has also discussed invoking the Defense Production Act of 1950, which allows the federal government to intervene in private industry in the name of national security. (Harry S. Truman used the law to impose price controls on the steel industry during the Korean War.) If the Trump administration were to invoke these two statutes, the move would almost certainly be challenged in federal court by natural gas and renewable energy companies, which could stand to lose market share. Such an intervention could cost consumers between $311 million to $11.8 billion pear year, according to a preliminary estimate (PDF) by Robbie Orvis, director of energy policy design at Energy Innovation.
The administration has also discussed invoking the Defense Production Act of 1950, which allows the federal government to intervene in private industry in the name of national security. (Harry S. Truman used the law to impose price controls on the steel industry during the Korean War.) If the Trump administration were to invoke these two statutes, the move would almost certainly be challenged in federal court by natural gas and renewable energy companies, which could stand to lose market share. Such an intervention could cost consumers between $311 million to $11.8 billion pear year, according to a preliminary estimate (PDF) by Robbie Orvis, director of energy policy design at Energy Innovation.
I openly admit that I voted for Trump because I didn't want to see the blatant corruption get into office.
Trumps history is a series of one corruption being defended by lawyers/fixers after another. His corruption is so blatant it will be defining definition of corruption for generations to come.
Low quality AC BS.
Natural Gas Advanced Combined Cycle plants are cheaper than coal plants right now, which is why they are pushing coal fired power plants out of business right now. Check out up-to-date levelized costs for all the types of power plants, NG advanced combined cycle beats them all - which is why hard nosed capitalist businessmen have been replacing coal with natural gas power at (currently) a rate of 20 GW a year.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
You don't have to like Elizabeth Warren, but at least get your basic facts straight about her political background. She rose to political prominence as a specialist on the issue of consumer finance, and was previously a professor focused on bankruptcy and commercial law. Her main claim to fame before running for senate in Massachusetts was being the mastermind behind the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and she's been clashing heavily with Republicans on that for years. Warren's political constituency significantly overlaps with Sanders on the left, as she was a higher profile anti-Wall St. crusader prior to his primary run, and if you actually believe in Sanders ideology for what it actually stands for then Warren is an obvious alternative.
It was actually her opponents that were really laying hard into identity politics, Scott Brown and more recently Donald Trump himself. Trump and associates were the ones called her Pocahontas and they were the ones that brought up the racial identity issue in the political arena, not her.
Don't take this as me advocating her running for president, however, she is a bit of a specialist. But her popularity on the left comes from many of the same places for the same reasons that Sanders does, and making it all about gender is more on you than on her.
Here's a lesson for young engineers out there: A good engineering solution is one that is intrinsically safe and simple, one that naturally fails in a safe way
Which modern designs absolutely are. Even older nuclear plants didn't depend on "everyone doing their jobs perfectly", they only depended on people not doing incredibly stupid things in large numbers at the same time. This invariably meant that at some point I'm the 70ish years we've had them, at least a few would fail in dangerous way. Their safety record was still fantastic, but not perfect.
With modern designs you don't even have that possibility. You could put a bunch of liberal arts majors in charge of the plant and the worst thing that happens is it stops working. Granted, there's still the possibility that one of them will try eating the nuclear fuel, but the damage from that particular failure will be quite limited in scope.
I'm astounded at how little people comprehend -- or even completely read -- what people write.
I already said the current designs aren't great, there are better ones, and potentially better technologies (e.g. thorium) but like too many you don't see to READ WHAT I WROTE and that annoys me.
The most modern 3G safe reactor designs out there still have safety problems.
And the economics of the industry has been devastated: A dozen reasons for the economic failure of nuclear power
Nuclear is done, it's more expensive than the alternatives with greater risk for catastrophe. You can drop the whole exasperated genius routine, we're not buying it.