Surprised to hear Coronado attempted to talk to Arch, a spinoff, previously.
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^I folllow a YouTube channel called Climate Town, and it's slightly painful seeing Peabody and Arch Coal pop up in his discussions. What would it take to get the fossil fuel industry to lead the way to renewables? In a somewhat more personal note, I have in-laws with a plastic container factory and I find myself wondering how to help them transition away from petrochems. I'm happy to see their business thriving, to see small business succeeding, to help them invest in production and technology and so forth. And I'll be even happier when we can lead the way into something not made of dead dinosaurs. (NB: I know oil isn't really dinosaurs. I think it's supposed to be something more like dead jellyfish. But a tank full of dinosaurs sounds funnier.)
(Also seeing the fossil fuel industry treat coal miners well would be nice. When my sister was at Siteman in 2009 for a bone marrow transplant I was shocked to meet a coal miner there with black lung.)
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Interesting I can believe its true when comparing kW to kW but to be truly fair they would need to compare it with the cost of off peak storage and recovery rates. Other wise you can't supply the baseload power required that the fossil fuels can and do. Not against solar by any means but i hate bad statistical comparisons.quincunx wrote: ↑Jan 31, 2023
As far as getting the Coal bigs to switch to other things, i am sckeptical whether most of the resources transfer. One option maybe would be to shift to alternate mineral extractions, like if Peabody suddenly started investing in LItium and Cobalt extraction. Of course their current mineral rites holding are tied to coal deposits so their would be a lot of baggage that would likely bog them down in the transition.
Plastic is even harder to replace at comparable cost. Its probably with us for a very long time. Transitioning to biologically based instead of petroleum based, as well as improving the cost effectiveness of recycling is probably the best we can hope for for the next several decades. Also plastics is sort of a carbon sink so, other than exposure to micro plastics, i wonder what the issue is with storing carbon that way.
Pretty sure oil and coal is mostly derived from plant matter but the animal bits get mixed in here and there.
It'll all be moot when the new generation of nuclear power comes on line. Even old-school environmentalists are beginning to see the light.
Are you serious? I'm not anti-nuclear but there have been almost no nuclear reactors constructed in the US since 1979 and it's exceedingly expensive to develop. To pretend that there's a new generation of nuclear power around the corner is nonsense.framer wrote: ↑Feb 01, 2023It'll all be moot when the new generation of nuclear power comes on line. Even old-school environmentalists are beginning to see the light.
South Carolina spent $9 billion on new nuclear and couldn't even get it up and running: https://theintercept.com/2019/02/06/sou ... ar-energy/
^ I'm with Framer on this one. What is being spent globally, pubic and private funds, between current nuclear capabilities, small modular scale versions and research is pretty massive. It is tough to see nuclear going away anytime soon even if construction of new facilities at a snail's pace. Updates on the two newest US nuclear units to come along can be found below. Georgia power Vogtle units 3 & 4 in testing mode with unit 3 to come online by end of 1st quarter of this year.
https://www.southerncompany.com/innovat ... and-4.html
Yes, to build new nuclear on the old technology has become mind numbing expensive in the US. But something has to give as that is becoming the norm on any infrastructure in the US. The two northeast rail tunnels that Biden touted are at what +20 billion together. I think Cali is looking at 6.5 billion to tunnel and extend Caltrains 1.5 mile extension of rail from its current 4th street station to the new Transbay. I also read a few articles of late on East Coast Offshore wind projects are starting to run into the same mind numbing cost of build out.
At same time, I find it interesting that some unique alliances might come together. Link to latest on Bill Gates's Wyoming Nuclear project. Bill Gates project being delayed in part to supply not able to come from Russia due to Ukraine war and a Republican pushing to put a lot more money to rebuild US ability to source material. Like the issue with Chip manufacturing I can see more commitment to nuclear not less coming out of Dept of Enerty/Feds for the foreseeable future in current geopolitical state.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/16/bill-ga ... 0by%202028.
https://www.southerncompany.com/innovat ... and-4.html
Yes, to build new nuclear on the old technology has become mind numbing expensive in the US. But something has to give as that is becoming the norm on any infrastructure in the US. The two northeast rail tunnels that Biden touted are at what +20 billion together. I think Cali is looking at 6.5 billion to tunnel and extend Caltrains 1.5 mile extension of rail from its current 4th street station to the new Transbay. I also read a few articles of late on East Coast Offshore wind projects are starting to run into the same mind numbing cost of build out.
At same time, I find it interesting that some unique alliances might come together. Link to latest on Bill Gates's Wyoming Nuclear project. Bill Gates project being delayed in part to supply not able to come from Russia due to Ukraine war and a Republican pushing to put a lot more money to rebuild US ability to source material. Like the issue with Chip manufacturing I can see more commitment to nuclear not less coming out of Dept of Enerty/Feds for the foreseeable future in current geopolitical state.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/16/bill-ga ... 0by%202028.
StlToday - Missouri House votes to ease restrictions on nuclear power plant construction costs
https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/gov ... f7b76.html
https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/gov ... f7b76.html
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Solar company looking to set up $100 million St. Louis facility
https://www.stltoday.com/business/local/solar-company-looking-to-set-up-100-million-st-louis-facility/article_30fb071b-f643-5599-b679-8123a548a10e.html#tracking-source=home-the-latestA manufacturing company is seeking to open a $100 million solar panel production facility in the St. Louis area that could create 250 new full-time jobs.
The company, NewCo. Manufacturing, has tapped regional business group Greater St. Louis Inc. for help in finding a site in the St. Louis metropolitan area. The company is looking to lease a 150,000-square-foot to 250,000-square-foot building on 3 acres for five years and expects to be in production in a year, according to a Greater St. Louis Inc. document obtained by the Post-Dispatch.
The company would hire 175 full-time employees in its first year of operations and another 75 in its second year, with the average wage at $25 an hour. The company plans to participate in a new federal program that incentivizes domestic clean energy manufacturing. Customers would also be able to take part in a 10% tax credit through the federal program, the document shows.
Chouteau's Landing development sounds like a fit here.airforceguy1 wrote: ↑Apr 12, 2023Solar company looking to set up $100 million St. Louis facility
https://www.stltoday.com/business/local/solar-company-looking-to-set-up-100-million-st-louis-facility/article_30fb071b-f643-5599-b679-8123a548a10e.html#tracking-source=home-the-latestA manufacturing company is seeking to open a $100 million solar panel production facility in the St. Louis area that could create 250 new full-time jobs.
The company, NewCo. Manufacturing, has tapped regional business group Greater St. Louis Inc. for help in finding a site in the St. Louis metropolitan area. The company is looking to lease a 150,000-square-foot to 250,000-square-foot building on 3 acres for five years and expects to be in production in a year, according to a Greater St. Louis Inc. document obtained by the Post-Dispatch.
The company would hire 175 full-time employees in its first year of operations and another 75 in its second year, with the average wage at $25 an hour. The company plans to participate in a new federal program that incentivizes domestic clean energy manufacturing. Customers would also be able to take part in a 10% tax credit through the federal program, the document shows.
Ameren makes plans to add four new solar projects by 2026, able to power about 95,000 homes
https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/met ... 9d832.html
https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/met ... 9d832.html
The St. Louis-based electric utility said the power will come from four solar projects in Missouri and Illinois. The new solar arrays will have a combined output of roughly 550 megawatts — a little over half of the capacity of Ameren’s smallest coal plant.
The four solar projects are expected to be completed and begin service at different times between 2024 and 2026. The projects vary in size and will be located in Vandalia, Missouri, Warren County, and Bowling Green, as well as Cass County, Illinois. The Warren County project will be the biggest, with a capacity of 300 megawatts.
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Be a lot more efficient to just add that extra reactor at the nuclear plant they've got.
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^I was having an interesting conversation with a friend recently. We're both fairly solid nuclear power boosters, and she'd been doing some digging recently. Implied to me that nuclear power is the safest and least costly in terms both both carbon and human life, but that it was the most expensive in terms of amortized cost per kilowatt hour. I need to dig into that a bit. I'm pretty sure solar and wind were both more costly when they started, but maybe they're appreciating some real economies of scale now. I have to wonder if we could maybe bring that dollar cost on nuke plants down some if we built them in the kinds of numbers we've built coal plants. In any case, at this point I think we need an all of the above answer and we needed it twenty years ago, so I'm hardly going to complain when UE is doing the right thing, even if they could possibly be doing it better. My thinking is we need both and in quantity.
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^ You absolutely can get cost down. A lot of the newer designs are designed for smaller-scale use than previous generations of nuclear plants. And of course, that's just fission. Once fusion is viable, it's more or less over for all other large-scale power production methods.
Yep. There's a whole new generation of nuclear plants that are almost ready. A few more years and everything will change.
I'm a proponent for nuclear and think Missouri and Ameren should get behind it but the recent cost overruns (Georgia, England, Finland come to mind) are so unappetizing. Has anyone seen studies as to why this happens? I have read that it's due to litigation but that doesn't fully make sense to me. In England and Finland there was a geopolitical component but that wasn't the only cause either. In Georgia the cost came out to be just over twice the estimate.
In France they also have been finding way more corrosion than expected recently so I wonder if some are reconsidering designs. I assume the French designs are similar to the US.
In France they also have been finding way more corrosion than expected recently so I wonder if some are reconsidering designs. I assume the French designs are similar to the US.
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Nuclear has its place but the reserves of nuclear fuel are somewhat limited as well. Ultimately its not a fully renewable nuclear solution and if scaled to replace the total power generation capacity of the world it would be exhausted that much sooner.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20NEA%2C%20identified,today%27s%20consumption%20rate%20in%20total.
The "at current rates" is fairly key. If all fossil fuel power generation was replaced with nuclear then i have heard of reserves as low as 50 years though i don't have a source for that. Also and they do cited technology advancements that if we develop that tech then the issue will have been rendered moot.
Nuclear also has some pretty huge drawbacks in geologically or politically unstaible regions. (Fukishima Japan and, Zaporizhia Ukraine being salient examples of the vulnerabilities that have to be considered)
I do think Wind and Solar, with Nuclear providing base load power is a fairly reasonable model to shoot for our lifetimes. Hopefully replacing Fission with Fusion in 50-100 year timeframe.
The proportion of wind & solar is very geologically dependent. The SW should be leaning heavily on Solar. The Midwest should favor wind more. I also think large scale energy storage is a key tech that needs major investment, whether it be battery based or things like the Mountaintop reservoir systems that took out Johnson ShutIns.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20NEA%2C%20identified,today%27s%20consumption%20rate%20in%20total.
The "at current rates" is fairly key. If all fossil fuel power generation was replaced with nuclear then i have heard of reserves as low as 50 years though i don't have a source for that. Also and they do cited technology advancements that if we develop that tech then the issue will have been rendered moot.
Nuclear also has some pretty huge drawbacks in geologically or politically unstaible regions. (Fukishima Japan and, Zaporizhia Ukraine being salient examples of the vulnerabilities that have to be considered)
I do think Wind and Solar, with Nuclear providing base load power is a fairly reasonable model to shoot for our lifetimes. Hopefully replacing Fission with Fusion in 50-100 year timeframe.
The proportion of wind & solar is very geologically dependent. The SW should be leaning heavily on Solar. The Midwest should favor wind more. I also think large scale energy storage is a key tech that needs major investment, whether it be battery based or things like the Mountaintop reservoir systems that took out Johnson ShutIns.
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Uranium isn't really that necessary for fission - most of the new reactor designs are thorium/molten salt and can even 'recycle' nuclear 'waste' (since it's not really waste, it just no longer can provide the same energy output for that reactor design) from other reactors.
And honestly, Fukushima was really a nothingburger. The only reason that plant even had issues after the earthquake was because the operating company cheaped out on the safety measures, including removing most of the seawall. It's why another NPP, much closer to the epicenter of the quake and whose operator didn't cheap out on safety, survived with hardly any damage, but of course no one ever hears about that. AFAIK no one (or maybe just one person?) died directly from Fukushima, with most deaths/injuries occurring from the precautionary evacuations. Zaporizhzhia is a bit more of a concern, but that can hardly be blamed on the source of the power itself, just unfortunate geopolitics.
Japan and Germany's foolish decisions to step away from nuclear energy are really going to come back to haunt them in the near future. Man, France must be loving the ability to sell tons of excess energy production to Germany while maintaining an energy carbon footprint 1/6 that of "clean" Germany. Can't wait for Germany to tear down another 1000 year old village or forest for more coal (which, coincidentally, is also is far more radioactive than any nuclear power plant).
In any case, you're right in that the base load of most power grids should be nuclear, with supplementary power coming from other clean sources where it makes sense (either driven by local climate or by the remoteness of end user making long-distance power transmission super expensive).
And honestly, Fukushima was really a nothingburger. The only reason that plant even had issues after the earthquake was because the operating company cheaped out on the safety measures, including removing most of the seawall. It's why another NPP, much closer to the epicenter of the quake and whose operator didn't cheap out on safety, survived with hardly any damage, but of course no one ever hears about that. AFAIK no one (or maybe just one person?) died directly from Fukushima, with most deaths/injuries occurring from the precautionary evacuations. Zaporizhzhia is a bit more of a concern, but that can hardly be blamed on the source of the power itself, just unfortunate geopolitics.
Japan and Germany's foolish decisions to step away from nuclear energy are really going to come back to haunt them in the near future. Man, France must be loving the ability to sell tons of excess energy production to Germany while maintaining an energy carbon footprint 1/6 that of "clean" Germany. Can't wait for Germany to tear down another 1000 year old village or forest for more coal (which, coincidentally, is also is far more radioactive than any nuclear power plant).
In any case, you're right in that the base load of most power grids should be nuclear, with supplementary power coming from other clean sources where it makes sense (either driven by local climate or by the remoteness of end user making long-distance power transmission super expensive).
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Exactly. Companies cheap out on safety which is extremely frightening and dangerous in the context of nuclear power. The Fukushima example works against your position not for it.Trololzilla wrote: ↑Jun 24, 2023
And honestly, Fukushima was really a nothingburger. The only reason that plant even had issues after the earthquake was because the operating company cheaped out on the safety measures, including removing most of the seawall. It's why another NPP, much closer to the epicenter of the quake and whose operator didn't cheap out on safety, survived with hardly any damage, but of course no one ever hears about that.
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^They cheaped out, and got hit by a massive earthquake. The reactors scrammed safely. Everything was fine. They got hit by one of the worst tsunamis on record and things went south, creating a giant mess that will take forever to clean up, but still no one died. Some radiation was released into the environment, but less than coal plants release on the regular. Nuclear power IS statistically the safest thing going. It has the lowest body count and the lowest environmental impact even WITH some terrible accidents. Fukushima was the nuclear equivalent of the Johnstown flood, an absolutely epic failure under positively catastrophic conditions, the second worst accident in the history of the industry . . . and no one died as a direct result.
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Not really, it just means safety regulations need to be enforced more stringently by the government/regulatory authorities and not be dictated by private operators. Despite the lack of safety regulations being adhered to, the fact that hardly any true long-term negative effects exist seems to be much more of a testament to the safety of nuclear power, as symphonic said.JaneJacobsGhost wrote: ↑Jun 24, 2023Exactly. Companies cheap out on safety which is extremely frightening and dangerous in the context of nuclear power. The Fukushima example works against your position not for it.Trololzilla wrote: ↑Jun 24, 2023
And honestly, Fukushima was really a nothingburger. The only reason that plant even had issues after the earthquake was because the operating company cheaped out on the safety measures, including removing most of the seawall. It's why another NPP, much closer to the epicenter of the quake and whose operator didn't cheap out on safety, survived with hardly any damage, but of course no one ever hears about that.
Even Chernobyl, more or less the absolute worst-case scenario of nuclear power accidents (and with a crappy reactor design to boot), was entirely preventable and is still 1000x less deadly than coal power, per the WHO.
Not to mention the thousands of coal miners killed every year around the world.
The US has made a lot of progress reducing the amount of power generated from coal, down about 60% from the peak. That's less heavy metals and radioactive stuff being sprinkled about , less ash, fewer mining mishaps and other negative from mining. But it's been made up for mostly by natural gas. A surprising amount is lost from production to where it's burned. Methane is a much more powerful GHG than CO2. Also good is that electrical production has been about the same since 2005, while the population and economy grew, so we're getting more out of it.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/ele ... the-us.php
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/ele ... the-us.php