Put this on an insulated box, which then gets colder than its surroundings. Use the box interior as the heat sink for a heat engine with a heat source exterior to the box.
No, they'll just put a wind turbine on top of the oil derrick and proclaim it to be green. My understanding is that, in spite of all the green talk, Denmark has a pretty high per capita CO2 emission rate.
Except for islands and other locations isolated from large scale energy production, oil is little used for electricity production. Citing the drop in oil prices in the context of the cost of fossil fuel for electricty generation just confuses the discussion.
Because of the notorious problems with CFL lifetime, especially the first ones sold, the "Energy Star" certification for LEDs contains a requirement for minimum life. Unfortunately, because the testing takes a long time, most LEDs are not Energy Star certified. See https://www.energystar.gov/ia/... for the technical details of what is required. As I (quickly) read it, the requirements include maintaining 70% of brightness after 25,000 hours. There is also something about cycling on and off. I would love to hear more from someone with time and understanding to read document carefully.
I agree that a carbon added tax is far superior to a carbon tax, but I seldom see it mentioned. Has anyone in the public eye pushed for it? Some economist (Krugman?) talked about a carbon tax on the ultimate consumer, which I believe is about the same as a CAT, but that is the only discussion I am aware of.
Your label "global warmers" puts non-scientist activists (e.g. McKibben, who really does push for what can reasonably be called decivilization) and the actual scientists (e.g.. Hansen, who doesn't) in the same category. I am not a close observer of the debate, so I cannot say what, if anything, other real scientists, such as Mann, propose, but a meaningful debate requires the two controversies--is there a problem vs. what to do about it if there is--be separated.
I think you are missing the essence of my question, which is "Deduct from what? From revenue to compute taxable income or from U.S. income tax?" I am not intimately familiar with natural resource accounting and taxation, but I believe that if I mine a resource, say coal, and pay a property owner a royalty, that royalty is considered a cost of the coal and is accounted for as any other cost of production. I believe the same accounting is also applied to a severance tax, which is levied in some U.S. states. In contrast, a state income tax is accounted for as a business expense, albeit a period expense rather than part of the cost of the coal.
Foreign income taxes are, I believe, treated differently for purposes of U.S. income tax. There is at least the option of treating them as a credit on an income tax return. I know this is the way the taxes levied on foreign dividends are handled on a personal tax return. Say that a Thai company paid me $1,000 in dividends. I would only get $900, with Thailand withholding $100. I would be expected to report the full $1,000 in income, which if I were in the 25% marginal U.S. tax bracket, would increase my U.S. income tax by $250. I could, however, elect to file a foreign tax credit form (1116, I believe) and claim the $100 as a credit against my U.S. tax. The net result would be that I pay the $250 in tax, with Thailand getting $100 and Uncle Sam getting $150.
Again, I want to emphasize my ignorance of the actual practices, but it is my understanding that the "Royalties that companies pay to foreign governments for the oil they extract" could be properly accounted for as a severance tax. If they are accounted for like a foreign income tax and deducted from the U.S. income tax, then I agree with your implication that that is unfair. If it is treated as a state income tax and deducted as a period expense, than that is also unfair, but it shouldn't amount to much money compared to the theoretically correct accounting, which treats it as a cost of goods sold.
It is refreshing to see someone actually list the tax breaks and compare them to those given to other industries.
I would, however, appreciate a clarification as I have no time to look it up:
In your last paragraph, you discuss the treatment of royalties paid to foreign governments. The way you expressed it--they are usually not deductible but they usually are--makes no sense. Are you trying to say that they are not deductible from income in computing taxes, but they are allowed as a credit (i.e. a deduction from taxes as opposed to a deduction from taxable income) against U.S. taxes? If that is the case, that does appear to be preferential treatment.
Also, is treating oil company profits as manufacturing profits the same treatment as for other extractive industries, e.g. copper mining?
The Bloomberg article has somewhat confused terminology. The forged item they seem to mean is the reactor PRESSURE vessel, which during operation contains the core surrounded by water at approx. 100atm. The bottom head belongs to the CONTAINMENT vessel, which in normal operation contains air at near atmospheric pressure, along with the pressure vessel and other components. During an accident, the pressure would rise, but to a much lower pressure than the pressure vessel routinely holds. The idea is that the outside of the containment vessel would be kept cool in the advent of an accident by having water flow by gravity over it from a large tank above it. The cooling would condense enough steam inside the containment vessel to keep pressure within the design limit--seems like around 80psi, but I'm not sure. The containment vessel is itself surrounded by the shield building, which supports the water tank and allows air to flow over the containment vessel.
I don't have a reference on this, and there is so much misinformation running around that I can't be sure of anything, but I have heard that the panels to take the electricity to the equipment were all in the basement of the plant and were flooded. Units 5 and 6 also had panels in their basement, but there was an alternate circuit that allowed the cooling equipment to be energized without going through the basement panels, explaining why they haven't experienced so much trouble.
"Wrong connector" doesn't make sense. It would be easy to wire around an incompatible connector. Wrong voltage or wrong frequency would be more plausible, but I haven't heard that explanation.
I wasn't aware that the Calvert Cliffs plant was ever scheduled to be the first new design plant to be built in the US. At one time that label was applied to the South Texas Project, and I believe that the two new reactors at Vogtle are now in the lead. The Vogtle reactors use the Westinghouse AP1000 design, and the latest revision to that design is nearing presentation to the NRC for certification. (An earlier revision has already been certified.) The Calvert Cliffs reactor was an Areva EPR, which is still a ways from having US approval of its design.
At Vogtle there has already been a lot of dirt moved, and parts of the containment are already being delivered to the site.
That most of the French plants were built by the military in an effort to become a nuclear power is, for the most part wrong. A few of the earlier plants were graphite moderated, gas cooled, which were presumably used for Pu production. There was a push in the bureaucracy for more of these to be built for electricity, put the engineers in the power producing group preferred light water reactors, which are much less useful for Pu production. When there was a push to get off of oil fired electric generation, almost all of the plants were light water. Given the British experience with graphite moderated power plants, the French evidently made the right decision.
Someone could have a field day with this data looking for discrepancies between claimed and actual paternity. A gold-mine for the tech savvy blackmailer.
Besides the fact that people who feel their writing is good are more likely to write, somewhere I have read a research study showing that poor students are likely to overrate their mastery of a subject whereas good students are more likely to underrate their ability.
Actually, Iran probably does need nuclear power. Instead of using oil and gas for electricity generation, it can sell them for hard currency. (I don't know the specifics for Iran, but a lot of middle eastern countries still use oil for power generation, which is very uneconomical. Just because they have lots of oil doesn't mean they should burn it for electricity any more than a bank should burn money for electricity.)
What Iran shouldn't need is enrichment technology which, unlike most modern power reactors, can be used to create weapons grade material.
It's been done several times. There is a study called "ExternE" that does the calculation for several methods of electric generation. Nuclear is low, especially if the calculation assumes centrifuge enrichment, although not as low as hydro. Nuclear opponents sometimes like to quote a study by a guy named Storm van Leeuwen who claims otherwise, but from what I can tell it is flawed.
Actually, if you talk to someone in a community that hosts a nuclear plant, the opinion is usually positive. I recently met a newspaper man from Waynesboro, GA, which has two reactors and two more on the way, and he said the plant was the best thing that had happened to the city.
Will there be a web site to track progress on the plant? This may seem like a crazy question, but the first two European "new build" plants, Olkiluoto 3 and Flamanville 3, both have web sites.
I don't have time to search for the exact reference or the numbers, but there was a European study of the total life cycle environmental costs, including CO2 and other pollutants, of various energy technologies. In terms of CO2, hydro was lowest. Nuclear, solar, and wind were roughly the same. (I believe nuclear was computed two ways, once with gaseous diffusion--still used, but being phased out--for enrichment and once with gas centrifuge. Gas centrifuge produced lower CO2 emissions, but neither figure was astoundingly high.) I believe nuclear (and wind and solar) come in at around 6% of coal. The concrete and steel use in a nuclear plant was taken into account in the study, as were emissions from mining. There is also a Swedish environmental report with similar conclusions.
As for what percentage CO2 reduction in US power plant emissions could be expected, that would depend on how much of the new capacity replaced gas, and how much replaced coal. Any (expensive) gas used for base load would be the first candidate for replacement. That would reduce the impact on CO2 because baseload gas fired plants, expecially the combined cycle plants most useful for base load generation produce less (half?) the CO2 per unit of electricity generated of coal plants, though still far more than nuclear plants. Once you cut into coal, which produces about 50% of US electric power, you see some serious CO2 savings.
Two other comments: The statement was that there would be a 30% reduction in emissions from POWER plants. I think electric power plants only account for about half on US CO2 emissions, so you would only get a 15% or so reduction in overall CO2 emissions. From your question, I suspect you are being misled by a discredited Dutch study which claims ridiculously high CO2 emissions for both nuclear plant construction and uranium mining.
Slashdot Mirror
Put this on an insulated box, which then gets colder than its surroundings. Use the box interior as the heat sink for a heat engine with a heat source exterior to the box.
Sounds like boolsheet.
According to Wikipedia, it is an Aussie Crawfish.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energ...
No, they'll just put a wind turbine on top of the oil derrick and proclaim it to be green. My understanding is that, in spite of all the green talk, Denmark has a pretty high per capita CO2 emission rate.
Except for islands and other locations isolated from large scale energy production, oil is little used for electricity production. Citing the drop in oil prices in the context of the cost of fossil fuel for electricty generation just confuses the discussion.
Because of the notorious problems with CFL lifetime, especially the first ones sold, the "Energy Star" certification for LEDs contains a requirement for minimum life. Unfortunately, because the testing takes a long time, most LEDs are not Energy Star certified. See https://www.energystar.gov/ia/... for the technical details of what is required. As I (quickly) read it, the requirements include maintaining 70% of brightness after 25,000 hours. There is also something about cycling on and off. I would love to hear more from someone with time and understanding to read document carefully.
I agree that a carbon added tax is far superior to a carbon tax, but I seldom see it mentioned. Has anyone in the public eye pushed for it? Some economist (Krugman?) talked about a carbon tax on the ultimate consumer, which I believe is about the same as a CAT, but that is the only discussion I am aware of.
Your label "global warmers" puts non-scientist activists (e.g. McKibben, who really does push for what can reasonably be called decivilization) and the actual scientists (e.g.. Hansen, who doesn't) in the same category. I am not a close observer of the debate, so I cannot say what, if anything, other real scientists, such as Mann, propose, but a meaningful debate requires the two controversies--is there a problem vs. what to do about it if there is--be separated.
I think you are missing the essence of my question, which is "Deduct from what? From revenue to compute taxable income or from U.S. income tax?" I am not intimately familiar with natural resource accounting and taxation, but I believe that if I mine a resource, say coal, and pay a property owner a royalty, that royalty is considered a cost of the coal and is accounted for as any other cost of production. I believe the same accounting is also applied to a severance tax, which is levied in some U.S. states. In contrast, a state income tax is accounted for as a business expense, albeit a period expense rather than part of the cost of the coal.
Foreign income taxes are, I believe, treated differently for purposes of U.S. income tax. There is at least the option of treating them as a credit on an income tax return. I know this is the way the taxes levied on foreign dividends are handled on a personal tax return. Say that a Thai company paid me $1,000 in dividends. I would only get $900, with Thailand withholding $100. I would be expected to report the full $1,000 in income, which if I were in the 25% marginal U.S. tax bracket, would increase my U.S. income tax by $250. I could, however, elect to file a foreign tax credit form (1116, I believe) and claim the $100 as a credit against my U.S. tax. The net result would be that I pay the $250 in tax, with Thailand getting $100 and Uncle Sam getting $150.
Again, I want to emphasize my ignorance of the actual practices, but it is my understanding that the "Royalties that companies pay to foreign governments for the oil they extract" could be properly accounted for as a severance tax. If they are accounted for like a foreign income tax and deducted from the U.S. income tax, then I agree with your implication that that is unfair. If it is treated as a state income tax and deducted as a period expense, than that is also unfair, but it shouldn't amount to much money compared to the theoretically correct accounting, which treats it as a cost of goods sold.
My question is, which method is used?
It is refreshing to see someone actually list the tax breaks and compare them to those given to other industries.
I would, however, appreciate a clarification as I have no time to look it up:
In your last paragraph, you discuss the treatment of royalties paid to foreign governments. The way you expressed it--they are usually not deductible but they usually are--makes no sense. Are you trying to say that they are not deductible from income in computing taxes, but they are allowed as a credit (i.e. a deduction from taxes as opposed to a deduction from taxable income) against U.S. taxes? If that is the case, that does appear to be preferential treatment.
Also, is treating oil company profits as manufacturing profits the same treatment as for other extractive industries, e.g. copper mining?
Actually, I believe that Doosan(sp?) in Korea made the Vogtle reactor vessel.
The Bloomberg article has somewhat confused terminology. The forged item they seem to mean is the reactor PRESSURE vessel, which during operation contains the core surrounded by water at approx. 100atm.
The bottom head belongs to the CONTAINMENT vessel, which in normal operation contains air at near atmospheric pressure, along with the pressure vessel and other components. During an accident, the pressure would rise, but to a much lower pressure than the pressure vessel routinely holds. The idea is that the outside of the containment vessel would be kept cool in the advent of an accident by having water flow by gravity over it from a large tank above it. The cooling would condense enough steam inside the containment vessel to keep pressure within the design limit--seems like around 80psi, but I'm not sure.
The containment vessel is itself surrounded by the shield building, which supports the water tank and allows air to flow over the containment vessel.
One milli-sievert = 100 millirem. Chest X-ray = 10 millirem=.1 milli-sievert.
I don't have a reference on this, and there is so much misinformation running around that I can't be sure of anything, but I have heard that the panels to take the electricity to the equipment were all in the basement of the plant and were flooded. Units 5 and 6 also had panels in their basement, but there was an alternate circuit that allowed the cooling equipment to be energized without going through the basement panels, explaining why they haven't experienced so much trouble.
"Wrong connector" doesn't make sense. It would be easy to wire around an incompatible connector. Wrong voltage or wrong frequency would be more plausible, but I haven't heard that explanation.
I wasn't aware that the Calvert Cliffs plant was ever scheduled to be the first new design plant to be built in the US. At one time that label was applied to the South Texas Project, and I believe that the two new reactors at Vogtle are now in the lead. The Vogtle reactors use the Westinghouse AP1000 design, and the latest revision to that design is nearing presentation to the NRC for certification. (An earlier revision has already been certified.) The Calvert Cliffs reactor was an Areva EPR, which is still a ways from having US approval of its design.
At Vogtle there has already been a lot of dirt moved, and parts of the containment are already being delivered to the site.
That most of the French plants were built by the military in an effort to become a nuclear power is, for the most part wrong. A few of the earlier plants were graphite moderated, gas cooled, which were presumably used for Pu production. There was a push in the bureaucracy for more of these to be built for electricity, put the engineers in the power producing group preferred light water reactors, which are much less useful for Pu production. When there was a push to get off of oil fired electric generation, almost all of the plants were light water. Given the British experience with graphite moderated power plants, the French evidently made the right decision.
Someone could have a field day with this data looking for discrepancies between claimed and actual paternity. A gold-mine for the tech savvy blackmailer.
Exactly.
Besides the fact that people who feel their writing is good are more likely to write, somewhere I have read a research study showing that poor students are likely to overrate their mastery of a subject whereas good students are more likely to underrate their ability.
Actually, Iran probably does need nuclear power. Instead of using oil and gas for electricity generation, it can sell them for hard currency. (I don't know the specifics for Iran, but a lot of middle eastern countries still use oil for power generation, which is very uneconomical. Just because they have lots of oil doesn't mean they should burn it for electricity any more than a bank should burn money for electricity.)
What Iran shouldn't need is enrichment technology which, unlike most modern power reactors, can be used to create weapons grade material.
It's been done several times. There is a study called "ExternE" that does the calculation for several methods of electric generation. Nuclear is low, especially if the calculation assumes centrifuge enrichment, although not as low as hydro. Nuclear opponents sometimes like to quote a study by a guy named Storm van Leeuwen who claims otherwise, but from what I can tell it is flawed.
Actually, if you talk to someone in a community that hosts a nuclear plant, the opinion is usually positive. I recently met a newspaper man from Waynesboro, GA, which has two reactors and two more on the way, and he said the plant was the best thing that had happened to the city.
Also, a recent rethink of the safety of the German AVR has also taken some luster off of the PBR concept.
Will there be a web site to track progress on the plant? This may seem like a crazy question, but the first two European "new build" plants, Olkiluoto 3 and Flamanville 3, both have web sites.
I don't have time to search for the exact reference or the numbers, but there was a European study of the total life cycle environmental costs, including CO2 and other pollutants, of various energy technologies. In terms of CO2, hydro was lowest. Nuclear, solar, and wind were roughly the same. (I believe nuclear was computed two ways, once with gaseous diffusion--still used, but being phased out--for enrichment and once with gas centrifuge. Gas centrifuge produced lower CO2 emissions, but neither figure was astoundingly high.) I believe nuclear (and wind and solar) come in at around 6% of coal. The concrete and steel use in a nuclear plant was taken into account in the study, as were emissions from mining. There is also a Swedish environmental report with similar conclusions.
As for what percentage CO2 reduction in US power plant emissions could be expected, that would depend on how much of the new capacity replaced gas, and how much replaced coal. Any (expensive) gas used for base load would be the first candidate for replacement. That would reduce the impact on CO2 because baseload gas fired plants, expecially the combined cycle plants most useful for base load generation produce less (half?) the CO2 per unit of electricity generated of coal plants, though still far more than nuclear plants. Once you cut into coal, which produces about 50% of US electric power, you see some serious CO2 savings.
Two other comments:
The statement was that there would be a 30% reduction in emissions from POWER plants. I think electric power plants only account for about half on US CO2 emissions, so you would only get a 15% or so reduction in overall CO2 emissions.
From your question, I suspect you are being misled by a discredited Dutch study which claims ridiculously high CO2 emissions for both nuclear plant construction and uranium mining.
...just as the current cold winter in North America canNOT be considered as casting douby...